Fans of Lisa Kudrow’s cult-classic sitcom The Comeback will definitely want to see this — season 3 is officially in the works.
HBO confirmed the news on Friday, June 27, revealing that the upcoming season, which begins production this summer, will be the last.
Kudrow, 61, and creator Michael Patrick King shared their excitement over the news via a joint statement, saying, “Valerie Cherish has found her way back to the current television landscape. Neither of us are surprised she did.”
Kudrow also slipped back into character for the official announcement, but in typical Valerie form, she couldn’t quiet nail the delivery. “This is the last one, last time. Never doing this again,” she declared in a YouTube video shared on Friday.
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After several failed takes, she finally said, “Well, I’ve got a new show, how’s that and I’m so excited,” and stormed off set.
The playful announcement revealed that The Comeback season 3 will return to HBO and HBO Max in 2026.
“No matter what the industry throws at her, Valerie Cherish is a survivor,” executive vice president of HBO & Max Comedy Programming Amy Gravitt said in a press release. “On the 20th Anniversary of her debut, Michael Patrick King and Lisa Kudrow have brilliantly scripted her return to HBO and we can’t wait to see that.”
On the HBO mockumentary, which she cocreated with Sex and the City’s King, 70, Kudrow stars as fictional sitcom actress Valerie Cherish. Season 1 of the fan-favorite series aired 13 episodes from June to September in 2005 before being canceled. However, nine years later, The Comeback was revived for season 2, consisting of eight episodes that aired in November and December of 2014.
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The first season followed Valerie as she filmed a reality show called The Comeback, which chronicled her journey on a new sitcom with young costars as she tried to resuscitate her Hollywood career. Set 10 years later, the second season saw Valerie attempting to produce a reality TV pilot for Andy Cohen and appearing in a documentary film about her career resurgence.
In addition to Kudrow, The Comeback starred Damian Young as Valerie’s husband, Mark; the late Robert Michael Morris as her hairdresser and friend, Mickey; Laura Silverman as reality show producer Jane; Lance Barber as Valerie’s foe Paulie G; Malin Åkerman as her costar Juna; Robert Bagnell as sitcom cocreator Tom; and Dan Bucatinsky as Valerie’s publicist, Billy.
In June, Kudrow and King celebrated the 20th anniversary of The Comeback, hinting at the time that a third season could still happen.
“There’s always a meeting, every now and then, where we put ideas on the table,” King told Variety. “It has to be a really intricate combination of things to get us both to the place where we think, oh, God. We laugh at anything; Valerie could be funny anywhere. But the thing we’re always looking for is, what would make an event worthy of Valerie coming back? So we’re constantly meeting — hey, what about this?”
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As for what it would specifically take for season 3 to materialize, King said, “It’s really about whether we can find an idea worth going beyond one joke.”
Kudrow, for her part, confirmed that the collaborators are “always talking about it and looking for it.”
King added: “She’ll show up at one of those lunches, and I’m laughing as hard as I did 20 years ago. It’s the same vibration. The thing about Valerie — the reason why, if we find an arena, it’s going to be great — is that Valerie will never get everything she wants. It’s thrilling when you have somebody who’s practically a Greek character, going through the underworld to get the golden apple and coming back up like, ‘Well, I got it!’”
