The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Season 3 left its titular protagonist in a bad place: after a major breakthrough in her career and months of touring, she was disinvited from the second leg of the tour. While she seemed to have saved her family from losing their home, Midge (Rachel Brosnahan) now has to continue sorting out the state of her finances. And that’s all before she learns her manager Susie (Alex Borstein) has gambled away their tour earnings.
Still, she is the marvelous Mrs. Maisel — the housewife who built a successful comedy career from the ashes of her marriage in the 1960s. Since then, she’s been working her way up through the circuits and finding some acclaim, and she’s proven herself to be scrappy. Here’s what we know so far about what’s to come in Season 4.
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Season 4 Cast
The show is expected to pick up mostly from where it left off in Season 3, with many of the original cast members returning. You can of course expect to see Brosnahan as Midge, as well as Borstein as Susie Myerson, Tony Shalhoub as Abe Weissman, Marin Hinkle as Rose Weissman, Kevin Pollak as Moise Maisel, Caroline Aaron as Shirley Maisel, and Luke Kirby as Lenny Bruce.
Zachary Levi, who played Midge’s romantic interest Ben in Seasons 2 and 3, is unlikely to return (at least in Season 4) due to scheduling. And while Sterling K. Brown (who played Shy Baldwin’s tour manager Reggie in Season 3) hopes to come back because he loved working on set, nothing has been announced yet — but also pointedly not ruled out by Maisel co-creators Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino. Jane Lynch’s Sophie Lennon is similarly a “maybe,” according to Sherman-Palladino.
Mrs. Maisel will also be welcoming some new faces in Season 4. Feud star Jackie Hoffman and Allison Guinn of On the Town will join as recurring characters, although no other details have been released. And famed director John Waters has been seen filming an undisclosed guest role.
Finally, there will be two former Gilmore Girls stars joining the cast: Kelly Bishop and Milo Ventimiglia, whose roles are again being kept under wraps. Aside from a video announcing Bishop on set and some paparazzi photos that captured some of Ventimiglia’s scenes with Brosnahan, neither of the Palladinos have said much about what to expect from their characters.
Kelly Bishop, an excellent addition to any cast.
“You have to see it in context,” Daniel Palladino said of Ventimiglia’s character, “because it’s actually a very different thing we’re doing with him. We needed someone of his caliber and his handsomeness, so we asked Milo to do it. But you have to see it in the context.”
The Plot Of Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Season 4
The Palladinos have been similarly tight-lipped about any plot details. The show will inevitably deal with the fallout of Midge’s Season 3 tour with Shy Baldwin (Leroy McClain), whom Midge outed in the finale during a hometown gig at the Apollo Theater. After her set, Shy’s manager Reggie (Brown) dropped Midge and Susie from the rest of the tour — a real predicament since Midge spent her tour earnings to buy back her family’s apartment.
“We may be doing a little jump within the season, but when we first start up we want to [stay in that time],” Amy Sherman-Palladino told The Hollywood Reporter. “I mean, what’s the fun of totally destroying someone’s soul and heart and not getting to see the aftermath? That’s what comedy’s made of, soul-crushing defeat.”
While the Sherman-Palladinos have said they took a while to sort out exactly what that would look like, the pair is reportedly working from the trajectory of several seasons they mapped out at the beginning of the show. And given that the actor who plays Midge’s son Ethan looks so much older in production photos, some fans are speculating that there wil be a time jump after the dust settles on Midge’s post-tour life. Whether that means Luke Kirby’s Lenny Bruce will only appear just before his real-life death in 1966 — well, that’s too heartbreaking to speculate on.
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Season 4 Premiere Dare
Amazon hasn’t yet announced the release date for Season 4, despite the rabid fan attention being paid to their production shots. But if it’s anything like Season 2 or 3, it may be here before the year is out: both of the two previous seasons dropped at the beginning of December. And with Maisel Season 4 production already making headlines with on-set photos in New York City, it’s possible the show will aim for the same release cycle.
As of June 2021, however, Amazon hasn’t even released a teaser trailer for the new season, and it’s possible that COVID delayed their production schedule.