Mike Flanagan has created a nice career of creating horror tales for Netflix and that is no more apparent than his “Haunting” anthology series that consisted of The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor.
The first season, The Haunting of Hill House, was released in 2018 and was loosely based on the Shirley Jackson haunted house novel about a family faced with the ghosts of its past.
The second season, The Haunting of Bly Manor (REVIEW), premiered on Netflix on October 9, 2020, and was very loosely based on the Henry James novella, The Turn of the Screw, telling the story about a young American woman who took over as governess for two young orphan children at a large manor in Bly.
What is next for Flanagan and Netflix?
Here is everything we know so far about The Haunting of Bly Manor Season 3.
This article provides everything that is known about The Haunting of Bly Manor Season 3 and all related news. As such, this article will be updated over time with news, rumors, and analysis. Meanwhile, let’s dig down into what is known so far.
Is there going to be a Season 3 of The Haunting of Bly Manor?
Netflix won’t announce whether or not there will be a third season for Mike Flanagan’s Haunting anthology series until numbers come in for The Haunting of Bly Manor.
For Flanagan, he said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly what he considered to be the connecting point between different seasons of his Haunting series on Netflix.
“There’s not a narrative connection, but there are little Easter eggs, for sure, not only in small details but in moments of dialogue and in some of the ideas from Hill House,” Flanagan said about The Haunting of Bly Manor.
“There are definitely going to be things that will set off that little dopamine rush that those kind of connections create. But it’s not a direct connection from a story point of view.”
So, what would a third season look like?
Producer Trevor Macy spoke to Vanity Fair about the process of making a different season for the Haunting anthology series.
“The process is the same, in that it’s a literary remix,” Macy said.
“You want to update the story, you want to find whatever fertile ground for elevating the character that you can in the source material, but we obviously took some liberties in updating it with a more modern setting.”
Release date latest: When does The Haunting of Bly Manor Season 3 come out?
Since there is no third season of the Haunting Netflix series greenlit yet, there is no word on when it could arrive.
However, The Haunting of Hill House came out on October 12, 2018, and The Haunting of Bly Manor arrived on October 9, 2020.
Expect the third season to arrive in October 2022 at the earliest. With the coronavirus pandemic shuttering productions all over the world, a two-year wait would be expected anyway.
The Haunting of Bly Manor Season 3 cast updates
With no Season 3 greenlit yet, don’t expect a cast list to come anytime soon.
However, we know a lot about what to expect. Both seasons shared cast members taking on new roles, similar to how Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story series does.
The following actors took part in both seasons of the show: Victoria Pedretti (Nell in Hill House and Dani in Bly Manor), Oliver Jackson-Cohen (Luke in Hill House and Peter in Bly Manor), Henry Thomas (Hugh in Hill House, Henry in Bly Manor), Kate Siegel (Theo in Hill House, Viola in Bly Manor), and Carla Gugino (Olivia in Hill House and the narrator in Bly Manor).
Expect several of the actors to return once again for a possible third season.
“The stories are boundless,” Henry Thomas said in an interview with OprahMag.com. “Though Haunting of Hill House and Bly Manor are both horror genre, they deal with so much more than your average horror genre piece. We’re dealing with big themes.”
Tahirah Sharif, who stars as Rebecca Jessel in The Haunting of Bly Manor, told Digital Spy she is “100 percent” willing to rejoin the cast for another season.
“I think anybody that works with Mike and Trevor and the whole team always wants to come back. Mike has such an incredible mind, in the stuff that he writes and directs, and it’s so interesting.”
The Haunting of Bly Manor Season 3 spoilers
If there is a Season 3 of The Haunting series on Netflix, expect Mike Flanagan to go back to another classic horror novel.
The Haunting of Bly Manor was based on several stories by Henry James, with the title coming from his 1898 novella. The Haunting of Hill House was based on the 1959 novel by Shirley Jackson, a book Stephen King called the greatest haunted house story ever written.
There is so much material out there for Mike Flanagan to pull from for a third season. He could go way back again and tell a story straight out of the wheelhouse of Edgar Allen Poe, mixing in several of his story ideas. The Tell-Tale Heart could set it up in the proper haunted house setting.
He could also go for something like Hell House by Richard Matheson, who also has a massive library of frightful tales under his belt.
Netflix has yet to announce when The Haunting of Hill House Season 3 will premiere.