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Spoilers below.
“Wait, what year is it?” is a valid question to ask both in real life these days (2020-2023 still feels like one continuous mush) and while watching The Morning Show. Ever since the series premiered on Apple TV+ in late 2019, it has reflected on recent events to keep its storylines timely. The characters do work in news, after all. Season 1, which focused on a sexual misconduct controversy in the newsroom, premiered roughly two years after Matt Lauer was ousted from NBC. Season 2, which premiered in the fall of 2021, was set around the COVID outbreak in March 2020. (Jennifer Aniston’s Alex even tests positive by the end of the season.) So when does the newly released third season pick up?
Thanks to a time jump, The Morning Show season 3 kicks off on March 10, 2022. COVID is no longer the top story; the employees at UBA aren’t behind masks or plexiglass anymore, though there is a mention that we’re “two years after the world shut down.” Later in the episode, news lead Stella (Greta Lee) notes that it’s Women’s History Month. “We decided it was important to step forward by two years to find characters somewhat floating and trying to find their footing, trying to find their home and where they belong now,” director and producer Mimi Leder told The AV Club.
So what happened in those in-between years?
Tig Notaro and Jon Hamm join The Morning Show.
For one, UBA fell deep(er) into debt. The network launched a streaming platform during COVID, which was successful while everyone was at home, but now the bubble is about to burst. CEO Cory (Billy Crudup) is looking for big pockets to buy them out, and the answer might lie with tech billionaire Paul Marks (Jon Hamm), whom he met during the pandemic. “While everyone was doomscrolling under the covers during COVID, two guys crossed paths at high tide in the Hamptons to forge the biggest media deal in a decade,” he says. To ease into the partnership, they plan to broadcast Alex becoming the first female journalist in space, courtesy of Paul’s private Hyperion spacecraft. Yes, The Morning Show goes to outer space, in what feels like a wink at Elon Musk’s SpaceX launches.
An award ceremony honoring Bradley (Reese Witherspoon), now an evening news host, fills us in on what else happened these past few years: She reported from inside the Capitol during the January 6 insurrection with just her cellphone, giving the public incomparable access, hence the honor from the American Alliance of Journalists. She and Laura (Julianna Margulies) are no longer together, which makes their run-in at the ceremony all the more uncomfortable. And some ominous conversations with Cory hint that they’re hiding a big secret. Bradley’s also been rigorously reporting on the lack of abortion access in Texas, a timely reference to our post-Roe world, but she’s ordered to kill the story to avoid losing viewers ahead of the upcoming election.
Herein lies another major theme for season 3. “This season, the focus was women’s agency, reproductive rights, the state of journalism ,and the state of the truth,” Leder told The New York Times. She also told The AV Club that this chapter is “very much focused on women’s autonomy, how it’s undermined, and the ways [in which] power is being challenged right now.” Interestingly enough, Leder said that executive producer Charlotte Stoudt and the writers room created this arc before Roe v. Wade was overturned. But these themes don’t just refer to abortion; episode 2 dives into a woman’s lack of agency when her intimate footage is leaked without her consent.
Jennifer Aniston as Alex Levy.
After debuting with a #MeToo-inspired storyline, it makes sense for The Morning Show—which hinges on the star power of two famous Hollywood women—to continue exploring women’s bodily autonomy, this time through the lens of reproductive rights. Bradley, ever the rebel, shows her dedication to the cause by going to Texas to film the story anyway after a source gets arrested, but she’s intercepted by Cory. She ends up flying to space, and Alex is the one to report from the abortion clinic.
As for other updates: New anchor Christina (the lovely Nicole Beharie) has joined The Morning Show. Alex wants more power at UBA, namely, a seat on the board, but Cory thinks she’s asking for too much. Naturally, Alex is surprised by Cory’s secret plans to sell the company to a tech titan.
Even that feels like a timely plot point, not just because of the Lukas Matsson deal on Succession, but because of the fraught and ever-changing state of media these days. (See: the Warner Bros./Discovery merger, Jeff Bezos and The Washington Post, and other acquisitions.) And when Cory lectures Alex about bringing broadcast news into the future—like, perhaps one day anchors will be projected virtually into people’s homes rather than just appearing on their screens—it’s hard not to think about the ongoing debates regarding AI that are racking the media and entertainment industries, as seen in the current writers and actors’ strikes.
The past year and a half have provided us with so much meaty material for a new season, some of it ripped right out of a soap opera (or horror movie). But it sets up an intriguing arc that will show everyone’s true colors, especially Alex and Bradley’s—and past seasons have shown that they are not pretty.
Erica Gonzales is the Senior Culture Editor at ELLE.com, where she oversees coverage on TV, movies, music, books, and more. She was previously an editor at HarpersBAZAAR.com. There is a 75 percent chance she’s listening to Lorde right now.