According to Variety, this week, Shrinking wraps up its third season on Apple TV with creator Bill Lawrence (Scrubs, Bad Monkey) taking to social media to give an update on the future of the series. Lawrence’s third season ends a three-season arc about grief, forgiveness and moving forward. Lawrence promised “a completely new story next year” that he said felt “scary/risky/fun.” In a follow-up, he added that Season 4 would be “a new story with the same cast.”
As per Variety, Lawrence has since confirmed that although the current three-season arc of the series is at its end, the same actors will be playing the same roles in the fourth instalment.
“This all got weird. lol. My bad. Yeah. They’re the same characters,” Lawrence wrote on X via Variety after people began to misunderstand his initial post.
In an interview with Variety, Lawrence added that “I think people will feel when they come back to this show that it’s a completely different story. We feel that the characters of this show have enough stuff going on in their life that we were interested in seeing what a new story for these characters looks like… We’re already deep into the writers room, in the fourth season, so I’m lucky enough to know what happens. And I think people will dig it.”
According to Variety, Shrinking follows Jimmy Laird, a grieving therapist who starts telling his patients exactly what he thinks, breaking ethical rules to force them to make massive life changes.
As per Variety, Jason Segel (How I Met Your Mother, Forgetting Sarah Marshall), Jessica Williams (Love Life, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore), Harrison Ford (Raiders of the Lost Ark, Captain America: Brave New World), Christa Miller (The Drew Carey Show, The Andromeda Strain), Luke Tennie (The Pitt, Abbott Elementary), Michael Urie (Single All the Way, Ugly Betty), Lukita Maxwell (An Autumn Summer, The Young Wife) and Ted McGinley (Revenge of the Nerds, The Love Boat). The show’s first two seasons earned a total of nine Emmy nominations, including a best comedy series nod last year. Segel and Williams have each been nominated for their acting work twice, and Ford and Urie landed 2025 nominations.
Shrinking is available to stream on Apple TV.