Jonathan Groff Is Still Keeping Hopes for Mindhunter Season 3 Alive

Like a dedicated detective still on the hunt for a killer long after the case has gone cold, Jonathan Groff is still holding out hope for more Mindhunter. The actor and Broadway veteran appeared on The Tonight Show recently, and was asked an interesting question: Are we more likely to see him in a Frozen 3 or Mindhunter season 3 in the future? One might have expected Groff to reply that another Frozen is a significantly bigger possibility, given the huge pop culture clout of the Disney film series, but the actor’s reply was instead much more interesting: “I feel like, even though those projects seem very different, Frozen and Mindhunter, I feel like a third Frozen and a third season of Mindhunter are equally possible.”

Now that is interesting indeed, and it continues a trendline that has seen talk about another Mindhunter season slowly creep back into the realm of possibility after the series seemed all but dead a couple years ago, at the start of the pandemic. Mindhunter’s second season went off the air without providing any satisfying sense of closure for FBI agents Holden Ford (Groff) and Bill Tench (Holt McCallany), so a chance to do exactly that would be extremely welcome.

Mindhunter was created by Joe Penhall, in collaboration with film director David Fincher, and based on the 1995 true crime book Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit by John E. Douglas and Mark Olshaker. With Fincher serving as a part-time director and spiritual showrunner, the series drew critical acclaim for its outstanding production design and mesmerizing performances as it followed the early days of the FBI’s criminal profiling department, as the characters begin a descent into trying to clinically understand the nature of evil. Much of the show revolved around scintillating recreations of interviews with imprisoned serial killers such as Ed Kemper or Jerry Brudos in the late 1970s, conducted by the FBI agents and consulting psychologist Wendy Carr (Anna Torv). At the same time, overlapping vignettes showing the rise of serial killer Dennis Rader (BTK) always seemed to imply that there was another side of the series we hadn’t yet been able to explore—a Mindhunter that would conceivably advance its timeline all the way to the mid-2000s, when Rader was finally caught.

Mindhunter, however, went on “indefinite hiatus” according to Netflix after season 2 in 2019, ostensibly due to Fincher’s busy schedule and attachment to other projects. Fincher, however, suggested in 2020 that it was budget more than anything that made Mindhunter untenable in the eyes of Netflix, saying that “on some level, you have to be realistic about dollars have to equal eyeballs,” suggesting that the show’s cost didn’t measure up to its viewership.

In late 2021 and beyond, though, the conversation regarding Mindhunter seemed to change, especially after Fincher signed a new four-year development deal with Netflix. Addressing rumors about the show on Twitter, Fincher said that season 3 might be possible if audiences let their desire be heard: “Audiences around the world need [to] let Netflix know that there is a real interest & demand for Season 3 of Mindhunter. If you make enough noise, It might actually happen…”

And now here we are, with Groff seemingly ready to get onboard as soon as Netflix gives them the go-ahead. Here’s hoping that Mindhunter will finally get the payoff that it always deserved.