The Haunting of Bly Manor season 3: Release date, cast and everything we know

If you’ve binged Netflix’s The Haunting of Bly Manor and The Haunting of Hill House, you’re probably keen to wrap yourself in another beautifully tragic horror.

While it’s early days for any updates on the next “season” of the anthology, we know what showrunner Mike Flanagan is currently working on, plus the show’s renewal status at Netflix.

Here’s everything we know about the third instalment of the Haunting anthology.

Read more: The Haunting of Bly Manor: That ending and all your questions answered

Release date

Flanagan confirmed to Entertainment Weekly on Oct. 12 that season 3 isn’t in active development yet.

Prepare to be patient: It took two years for Bly Manor to arrive after Hill House in 2018 and, judging by Flanagan’s hectic schedule, it might take even longer for the next installment.

Flanagan tweeted in August the first day of production on his current Netflix project, Midnight Mass, had kicked off. The horror series set in an isolated island community is likely to hit Netflix in 2021 and will feature Kate Siegel, who played Theo and Viola in Hill House and Bly Manor.

But at least that’ll tide you over until Flanagan’s next project: Revival, a Warner Bros. adaptation of the Stephen King novel by the same name. It might be even darker, with themes like addiction and the afterlife. There’s no production start date yet, but it’ll likely begin sometime in 2021 after Flanagan wraps Midnight Mass.

Flanagan has a deal with Netflix to develop multiple projects, so a third instalment of Haunting should be on its way. But production could start as late as 2022.

The timing could also depend on Flanagan’s directing duties. While Flanagan is directing all episodes of Midnight Mass, it hasn’t been announced yet whether he’ll direct Revival in 2021. If he chooses not to, that might free him up to get started on season 3 of the Haunting.

We can also add his directing involvement in season 3 to the timing speculation: Flanagan directed all episodes of Hill House, but only the first of Bly Manor.

Season 3 Netflix renewal status

As of Oct. 11, the official Netflix renewal status for season 3 of the Haunting is: Pending.

This isn’t cause for panic: Netflix renewed The Haunting of Hill House four months after its release, plus Bly Manor has been topping Netflix’s US most-watched shows charts.

What will season 3 be based on?

Each installment of the Haunting anthology is a reimagining of a famous ghost story. Hill House drew from Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel The Haunting of Hill House and Bly Manor is based on Henry James ghost stories including 1898 novella The Turn of The Screw.

What ghost story will Flanagan adapt next? He doesn’t know yet, but just like with the first two instalments, he’ll continue to explore what it means to be a ghost.

“A ghost is an impact from the past on the present in every ghost story,” Flanagan told EW in October. “That’s all it really is, no matter how you dress it up. A ghost is simply an element of the past that refuses to live in the past and instead just encroaches upon the present that it alters the present. It changes the trajectory of the person who’s experiencing that little piece of the past… That link between memory and ghosts and between ghosts and the past, that is the lifeblood of the show.”

“I feel like there’s no shortage of ghosts in the world for all of us,” he continued. “So, if we could find some common language with which to talk about them, then that’s something we always aspire to do this season or beyond, if that’s the way it goes.”

Cast

If the Haunting anthology takes the American Horror Story route, it’ll keep reusing cast members for different roles in each season’s unconnected story.

Siegel, Victoria Pedretti, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Carla Gugino and Henry Thomas all played roles in both Hill House and Bly Manor, so there’s a decent chance Flanagan will continue to collaborate with them.

But it’s still too early to say.

“I don’t really know anything about future seasons,” Pedretti, who played Hill House’s Nell and Bly Manor’s au pair Dani Clayton, told The Wrap in October.

Jackson-Cohen, who played Hill House’s Luke and Bly Manor’s Peter Quint, said he’d be keen to work with Flanagan again.

“I think that it’s one of those where, if Bly Manor does well, then I’m sure conversations will happen with Netflix,” he told The Wrap. “But it’s entirely up to Mike and entirely up to what ideas he’s got up his sleeve. But I think all of us would definitely collaborate and work with him again, if the opportunity arose. But there is genuinely nothing concrete as of now.”

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