The Marvelous Mrs Maisel: Everything we know about Season 4

Amazon Prime Video gave us an early present shortly after the third season of The Marvelous Mrs Maisel premiered by announcing that the series had been renewed for a fourth season. (Though it was expected—and absolutely necessary). Late in 2019, the company announced that it ordered another instalment of the Emmy-winning series starring Rachel Brosnahan as Midge Maisel, the titular character and charmingly hilarious 1950s housewife turned stand-up comedian. The fourth season was scheduled to begin filming in late spring 2020, and now thanks to science, it's finally filming!

Amy Sherman-Palladino, the show’s creator and executive producer, celebrated the update in a press release. “We were thrilled to hear that for the fourth time, we do not have to pack up and vacate the premises,” she said. “We’d like to thank Amazon for all their faith and support, their partnership and enthusiasm, and for letting us hang with our favourite people, the cast and crew of Maisel, for a little while longer.”

Over the course of awards season and at the cast’s first virtual Paleyfest LA panel (which you can watch in full below), we asked the cast and crew for a few clues about season four—and to fill us in on any remaining questions about The Marvelous Mrs Maisel Season 3. Warning: Spoilers ahead.

There are no exact details yet—but per creative and producing team Amy Sherman-Palladino and Dan Palladino, the writers room has been hard at work since March. Now they’re waiting on a production start date once it is safe to begin filming. That being said, the earliest the show would probably premiere would most likely be the second half of 2021.

Season 3 saw Midge going on her first big tour, opening up for singer Shy Baldwin. It was a big step for her career, but it also involved huge shifts in her life after Shy kicked Midge off the tour in the finale.

So where does she go from there? “We’re debating that now,” Palladino tells Glamour. “We’re going to be telling the Maisel story slightly differently in the coming season.” What, exactly, does that mean? Palladino says the new season will be “a little more open for us because we try to see a couple seasons down the line…because everything affects everything, so we’re trying to figure that out now.” (That’s not at all cryptic, is it?)

Brosnahan says she’s excited to see her character grow in season four. “I think she definitely took some steps forward in season three, and then a couple steps back,” she says. “But I’m excited to see the ways in which her eyes keep getting opened to the world around her. There’s so many new layers now, and I’m excited to see the world keep expanding.” (We hope that means more hilarious scenes of Midge and Susie in unexpected situations, like their swimming lesson in episode five).

Throughout season three, viewers saw Susie (Alex Borstein) become more and more entrenched in gambling; by the end of episode eight, she had gambled away most—if not all—of Midge’s tour money. Midge, however, thinks she still has that money to buy back her old apartment.

So what’s next? “We can’t assure you of anything,” Palladino says when asked. Adds Sherman-Palladino, “We’re not here to make anybody feel good. That’s not why we were put on earth. We’re still figuring everything out.”

If it’s up to Brown, then yes. “It’s the closest thing to theater that I’ve done, and it was exhilarating,” Brown says of the experience. “Hopefully there will be room for me to revisit the show in the future.”

It has to fit the storyline, of course, but Sherman-Palladino notes that show business is a small community. “You’re going to cross paths with other people more than once,” she says. “It’s just going to happen. So I don’t think it would be too horrible to drag the effortlessly delightful, wonderful Sterling K. Brown back.”

At the end of Season 3, Susie seemingly ended her business relationship with Sophie after the comedian went rogue in her Broadway stage debut. That doesn’t mean we won’t see her return at some point, though. “We love Jane more than anything in the world,” Sherman-Palladino says. “She’s so lovely to have around, and it was really fun to watch her work this season because there were so many other nuances to Sophie.” Adds Palladino, “If Jane said, ‘I’m never coming back,’ it would be the end of Sophie Lennon. But she did not do that. So the answer is maybe.”

If Sophie does appear again—and tries to come crawling back to Susie—it will be interesting to see what transpires since Palladino says Susie was never that passionate about her newest client even though she moved mountains to make her successful. "In the moment outside the theatre after Sophie [purposely ruins the show], Susie understands what it’s like to take on a client without having any passion for the client. It blinded her. She thought she could make money off Sophie and expand [her business]. She learned you tend to get sunk when you don’t have that passion.”

Rose was never supportive of her daughter’s career as a stand-up comedian, but it didn’t seem like a major issue for Midge until her mom started paying secret visits to Midge’s ex-fiancé, Benjamin, in an attempt to set him up with someone else for her new matchmaking business. So when the mother and daughter finally had it out in the season three finale, it felt like a long time coming. Will they ever learn to respect each other’s careers?

“They’re both completely and utterly right,” Sherman-Palladino says of the argument between Marin Hinkle’s Rose and Brosnahan’s Midge. “Rose has been ignoring this side of Midge. She got drunk on purpose so she didn’t have to watch her do her job. At the same time, all this stuff that’s been happening—losing the apartment, losing her daughter, losing everything—Midge has paid no attention to that whatsoever. So it was a little bit of the pot calling the kettle black when Midge says, ‘You’ve been doing this, you’ve been doing that.’ Her mother turns around and says, ‘That’s right, I have, but I’ve lost everything too. I’m exactly where you are.’ I think that’s the first moment Midge has ever even thought about it that way.”

Meanwhile, Brosnahan adds that she’d like to see more of that dynamic with Midge and Rose in season four. “I loved Rose’s and Midge’s journeys last season, and that moment [in the finale] felt so cathartic. It was a tough scene, but there were so many different colours that Marin brought out take-to-take, and it’s nice for that to be the foundation that they get to build on in season four.

“These are two generations of women who are affected differently by the time that they live in,” Brosnahan says. “Their relationship feels like one of the most challenging in the series. And it’s another pivotal moment where Midge has to realise that while she’s the centre of her own universe, she isn’t the centre of everyone else’s all the time, and it’s not an easy pill to swallow. But I think it will be really important for both of them moving forward.”

Midge and Joel got divorced (and then accidentally remarried) in season three. While it’s obvious the two have chemistry and will never be out of each other’s lives completely, Joel also embarked on a new relationship with Mei, whom he met through the launch of his club. In the last episode, Mei and Joel seem to be in a good place, and Sherman-Palladino says there’s a reason why she’ll stick around.

“We kept thinking in our casting process, Who is the girl that is going to make Joel’s head turn from Midge?” Sherman-Palladino says. “Because not only is Midge very adorable, but she’s very strong and very funny and very independent. Even though those things ended up breaking up the marriage, it’s the thing that drew him to her in the first place. The one thing we couldn’t do was put another woman in there who wasn’t of equal power, because I don’t think Joel would consider that. That would not be a turn-on for him.”

Midge and Mei interacted only briefly in S3, but it’s obvious there’s more to explore with these women and how they’ll react to both being in Joel’s life. So will we see more scenes with them in season four? “Oh, you’ll get them,” Sherman-Palladino promises.

Stephanie Hsu, who plays Mei, says the role was a dream job. “I had never seen a character like Mei before—a character that was a Chinese American woman in a period piece—but also smart, strong, and contemporary for her time. It was powerful for me, personally.”

Sterling K. Brown thinks they should. During his panel with the cast for Paleyfest, Brown took a few minutes to gush over Brosnahan and Luke Kirby’s chemistry, especially in the Miami club scenes. “That shit was butter,” Brown says with a laugh. “Absolute butter. I don’t know what Amy and Dan have planned, but I love the relationship that Rachel and Luke have as Midge and Lenny. They are two good-looking people on screen that have a bond that goes beyond that. It’s hot and sexy. Then when you have the two of them looking at each other? I’m like, ‘Shit, it’s about to go down!’”

While Brosnahan has said in the past that she’d like for the pair to remain platonic, even she acknowledges there’s something magnetic in those scenes. “As much of the pace of the show is set, it changes when Luke comes in the room,” she says. “It feels like a completely different side of Midge that I am not in control of.”

Sure, Kirby is easy on the eyes, but a large part of the attraction is how Lenny supports Midge's career and genuinely champions her. “He’s obsessed with the human experience from a multitude of angles and is always looking for a through line of simpatico in our experience together,” Kirby says. “So, yeah, I do think it’s fair to say he would be very considerate about Midge’s experience and what she’s had to endure and be very sympathetic about it.”

Sherman-Palladino says it’s no coincidence that the version of Lenny Bruce—the only Maisel character who was a real person—you see on the show is written that way. Years ago, she says, she would have breakfast every weekend with Bruce’s mother, Sally Marr; in their time together, Sherman-Palladino says, she got to see how strong Marr was. “As odd as [Lenny’s] upbringing may have been, she instilled a respect for strong women,” she says. “In all the stories I’ve heard about him, there was never anything that felt sexist. It was just the opposite. He was a cheerleader.”

Viewers never saw Midge break things off with Benjamin at the end of season two, leaving everyone to wonder when Levi would pop up in Season 3. By the time he did—in episodes seven and eight—one had to wonder if the timing of his appearance was because of Levi’s own busy schedule or if it was always planned for Benjamin to be absent until then. “It’s both,” Palladino says. “We wanted to pay the Benjamin story off, but first you have to suss out if the actor is remotely available. Zach was like, ‘I want to make it happen. I want to do it.’”

In short, it sounds as if the character’s storyline may be wrapped—at least for now. As Palladino says, “We left it on a precipice, but we always knew that’s what the relationship was going to be. It was going to be a relationship that Midge would have jumped at before, but she’s learning that being a comic is a lonely life. It’s a selfish life, and she’s selfish. It’s also heartbreaking for her because she knows he’s the real thing.”

On June 10, TV Line confirmed that Gilmore Girls alum Milo Ventimiglia will be reuniting with Palladino for season 4 of Marvelous Mrs Maisel. While an Amazon rep confirmed the casting decision, there are no further details on the character. This will also, of course, make Ventimiglia the second This Is Us main player to snag a role on the ’60s-era comedy.

And that’s not the only familiar face Gilmore fans can look forward to! In June, news broke that Kelly Bishop, who played matriarch Emily Gilmore on the long-running series, would be joining the Marvelous cast in a guest-starring role. And gracing us with her fantastically withering put-downs, we hope?

Abe’s journey from Columbia University professor to theater critic in season three was definitely unexpected, but it’s one that Tony Shalhoub is excited to dive into next season as well. “He had to rebuild his identity and get back in touch with his core,” Shalhoub says. “He gets an offer to become a theater critic for the Village Voice. I don’t know where the writers are going to take that, but my hope is that he develops a real appreciation for the theater that leads him to appreciate what Midge is doing more.”

To recap: Before Midge opened for Shy at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, Reggie advised her to play to the singer’s hometown crowd by talking about him. So she did—and revealed too much about Shy’s private life in the process. While she didn’t explicitly say that Shy is gay, she alluded to it in her comedy. That makes her a liability to Shy and his career, even if her intentions were pure.

“Part of our theme this year was Midge learning what the business is,” Sherman-Palladino says. “You have to learn in show business the difference between real friendship and of-the-moment friendship. You’re on a show and best friends with everybody in the room, and then it gets canceled and you never see them again.”

Sherman-Palladino says viewers also have to remember this is happening in the 1960s, and Shy is a Black singer popular with white female fans. In short, he can’t risk even the slightest rumours about his sexuality being made public. “It’s a precarious situation for him, and the fear is that anything like that could stop the ride,” Sherman-Palladino says. “Midge learned a lesson that she needed to learn, but I feel like Shy also got the scare of a lifetime. He saw everything he spent all this time working for possibly going away because she just riffed into the ether.”

Brosnahan is on Shy’s side. “She outed a Black man in the 1960s,” she says. “That’s dangerous, and she’s a liability at that point. There was a misunderstanding between [Reggie and Midge] when they had a conversation backstage. Even so, what she did was terrible. Even if she didn’t mean to. I want Midge to succeed, but I think this will be an important learning experience for her.”

Brown agrees. “After you watch Midge’s performance at the Apollo, Reggie is like, ‘Yo, sis, I told you to go out there and say stuff, but I didn’t know you were going to do that.’ I think it was one of those things where Shy was like, ‘I’m not comfortable, I can’t do that anymore,’” Brown explains. “I think if there was a way to massage it, Reggie would have, but Shy calls the shots. Ultimately what he wants, he gets. I don’t blame him. Midge crossed the line as far as I’m concerned. Maybe it was Reggie’s fault for not articulating the line better, but he’s like, ‘Look, this is what it is. You’re not going to enjoy it, but I wish you the best.’”

For more on the season-three finale of Maisel—including Sterling K Brown fanning over Midge and Lenny, and Alex Borstein and Amy Sherman-Palladino casually throwing insults at each other—watch their Paleyfest LA panel below:

This story originally appeared on Glamour.com

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