It was a long wait between the second and third seasons of Netflix’s Sex Education. Between Isaac deleting Otis’s heartfelt message on Maeve’s answering machine and Otis growing a hideous senior year mustache, three hundred years passed.
The (in reality) nineteen months between seasons came as a result of pandemic production delays. The team wasn’t able to start filming until September of last year; they wrapped filming this March. In June, actor Asa Butterfield (Otis and mustache) tweeted, “Lemme just say, you lot aren’t ready for season 3, trust me.” And we were not.
Season 3 finally gave us The Kiss—we don’t need to explain who on whom; you know—as well as events we really weren’t ready for, like The Breakup, and finally The Goodbye. (The wounds are still a little fresh, so we’re just gonna leave these events with their monikers.)
With the season now over, the wait has begun, first for a confirmation on season 4, then for filming, then for release, then repeat.
We’re optimistic. As the students at Moordale have one final term before graduation (the season seems to wrap sometime in autumn; we haven’t yet seen holiday decorations), we imagine the storyline is set to continue at least until the characters reach university. (And then perhaps the series turns into Normal People?)
But we still don’t know. We can, however, wildly speculate.
When is Sex Education season 4 coming out?
In an interview with Cosmopolitan, Butterfield said, "We don’t know [whether there will be more.] It’s out of our hands at this point. I wish I could tell you more, I genuinely don’t know."
We’ll likely know in the coming weeks whether the series will be picked up for a fourth season. (The show’s popularity and expected opening week viewership should help ensure at least one more season, we hope.) From then, the series could begin filming this winter—which would be the fourth season’s setting—through Christmas and into the spring.
If filming is able to wrap in the spring, we could see a similar release for season 4: late summer 2022.
What will season 4 be about?
There are several storylines still unresolved after the season 3 finale, including (obviously) Maeve’s going to America, Eric and Adam’s breakup, Aimee’s breakup, Jean and Jakob becoming parents, and the new job opening at Moordale High.
We also have a whole school term before Otis and company graduate and go off to Sex University—a term they must now figure out following the school’s loss of funding. Season 4 would likely focus on Otis and Maeve’s LDR and what’s sure to be a chaotic final term at Moordale High.
