The Alienist season 3 UK premiere date, cast, episodes and more

The Alienist season 2 spoilers follow.

Season two of The Alienist, titled The Angel of Darkness, once again reunites Laszlo Kreizler, Sara Howard and John Moore, who are on a mission to find the kidnapped baby daughter of the Spanish Ambassador-General.

But it's not the first time a baby has gone missing in New York, and what they unearth along the way is truly horrifying.

TNT

Season three hasn't been given the thumbs up just yet, but if more episodes are greenlit, what can we expect?

Here's everything you need to know.

The Alienist season 3 UK premiere date: When will it air?

Season two of The Alienist landed on TNT in the States back in July, before hitting Netflix in the UK on October 22.

Why the long wait? Licensing rights mean that the series must run its full course on its original broadcaster, with an additional wait tacked on before it's made available to those further afield.

Once we know the US release date for a prospective third series, we'll have a better idea about when we can expect it in the UK.

TNT

You Know What has resulted in delays and cancellations galore, and while best case scenario is mid-to-late 2021, your guess really is as good as ours at the moment.

The Alienist season 3 cast: Who's in it?

The central trio – Laszlo, Sara and John – are all alive and kicking at the end of season two, which means Daniel Brühl, Dakota Fanning and Luke Evans could all return in future episodes.

And we'd expect to see lots of new faces, too.

The Alienist season 3 episodes: How many will there be?

The first chapter had ten episodes, while the second went two fewer.

If the show does return for round three, expect something in that range.

The Alienist season 3 plot: What will happen?

Here's where things get complicated.

The series is based on Caleb Carr's Kreizler series, which contains three books in total.

But while The Alienist and The Angel of Darkness are set in 1896 and 1897 respectively, the third book, Surrender, New York, takes place in 2016.

Netflix

The protagonist is Dr Trajan Jones, a criminal psychologist and the world's leading authority on Laszlo Kreizler.

Showrunner Stuart Carolan could choose to leave the current characters in the past, which would work given that they've gone their separate ways. Instead, we could see Jones and his partner in justice, trace-evidence expert Mike Li, take centre stage.

However, there are other options for season three, as Caleb Carr is currently writing two more books in the series. In an interview with James Altucher, Carr revealed these new books will come in the form of a sequel and a prequel. And they'll also involve a significant perspective change.

"They're both going to be told by Kreizler," the author said.

"I needed to find a way to speak in the voice of what's always considered the man behind the curtain in these things. Like Sherlock Holmes. Conan Doyle wrote one story told by Sherlock Holmes – terrible failure.

"But Kreizler's a very different character. I wanted to find a way to speak about these matters – about all the things we've been discussing, these psychological matters and personal matters - in a way that would make people comfortable … so it didn't sound like a case file, so it didn't sound like a scientific study. So it gave you insight into the character because people really are fascinated by Kreizler. They want to know what gives with this guy."

We wonder if anyone's told Dakota Fanning, who was extremely happy with season two's female focus.

"We get more female energy this time around and that was important to me and I was really happy to see that," Fanning told Deadline.

"In The Alienist, we saw her as the first female to hold a position at the New York Police Department and we saw her wanting more," Fanning said.

"Right away in this new season, we see that… she has opened her own business and is struggling to be taken seriously as a female detective and constantly discovering and rediscovering what it means to be a modern woman 1897, the choices that women were and still are forced to make and the pressures of having a career, family and what that all means. We see her all season grappling with that."

Whether there'll be room to continue that journey in a Kreizler-centric story, time will tell.