Will 3 Body Problem Get a Season 2?

3 Body Problem has now been a television series in English, a separate one in Chinese, and the origin for both shows, is a critically acclaimed, award-winning trilogy of books by Chinese author Liu Cixin.

But before all that, it was actually a mathematical conundrum. So, before we figure out if 3 Body Problem will get a season 2, it would help to understand the science behind the science fiction. 

For centuries, mathematicians have understood how to predict the orbits of planets, the appearance of the sun, and the importance of the moon. These predictions are relatively easy when you’re dealing with only two planetary “bodies,” like the planets and their moons or the sun. 

As far back as Isaac Newton, three hundred years ago, mathematicians have been trying to figure out how to make predictions when three or more bodies interact.

When you have at least three planetary bodies with equal, or close to equal, strength, their gravitation pushing and pulling against each other throws everything into literal chaos. Hence, the birth of Chaos Theory, which explains just this—the three-body problem. 

The Netflix series, like the Chinese series and the novels, clearly deals with big math and science, with lots of fun fiction thrown into the mix. 3 Body Problem certainly needs a season 2, as the first season barely scratches the surface of the large issues that arise. 

In the first season, which closely follows the novel, we enter a scene from the Chinese Cultural Revolution, where a young girl watches her father, a physicist, murdered by the Red Guard in 1966.

Fast forward to the present day, and this young girl is now a grown woman (played by Rosalind Chao), a physicist in her own right.

She is being questioned by a detective, played by the remarkable Benedict Wong, who is investigating a series of mysterious deaths of scientists around the world. Wong’s character is also questioning an eccentric billionaire, Mike Evans, (played by Jonathan Pryce of Game of Thrones), who, the audience discovers, is communicating with an alien civilization called the San-Tis. 

What does all of this have to do with the three-body problem? Well, the San-Tis, called the Trisolarans in the book, have one.

You see, they have three suns, and each time one of the suns is pulled too close to the planet, the entire civilization comes to near destruction as the planet is torched.

When the suns move too far away from the planet, the entire surface freezes, and again the Trisolarans face extinction. The 3 Body Problem is going to need a season 2 and a season 3 to work all this out. 

Why? Well, by the end of the first season, without giving too much away, the audience is left with an origin story and a cliffhanger. We have all of these characters, good and bad, and we have the pieces to a puzzle.

The San-Tis want to invade Earth and colonize it to live a better life than what they have on their planet. Some humans are cooperating with them, but the San-Tis live 400 light-years away, and they are not close to arriving. 

So, creators David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, and Alexander Woo, along with director Derek Tsang, are all already hard at work on the next season.

They’re confident that 3 Body Problem will be renewed for a second season, and they know that to even hope to help viewers follow along with all of this science fiction, they will need to give us a tight storyline that continues to blow our minds. 

Season 1 left us with a mostly unified earth preparing to battle the San-Tis upon arrival, and they have 400 years to prepare.

As task force has been assembled by Liam Cunningham’s Thomas Wade, and Alex Sharpe’s Will has had his brain sent into space to intercept the San-Ti fleet (yes, it’s science fiction, people), but all seems lost in space at this point.

The seemingly omniscient San-Tis have contacted Wade to let him know that they will arrive unchecked and that they will make him a part of their regime upon arrival. 

We’re left with this vague and threatening end, far from being wrapped up. If 3 Body Problem gets a season 2, we will expect it to loosely follow the books, which means we should get a significant time jump and set off with a bang, literally.

We’ve got a new human contact for the San-Tis in Marlo Kelly’s Tatiana now that Jonathan Pryce’s characters is on the outs.

So, yes, there are many loose ties to sew up. Perhaps season 2 will tie those up and then time jump? We have so many questions and very few answers. 

For those of us dying to know what happens next, we’ll just have to settle for the books in the meantime.