Search Party series trailer reveals first season 3 footage
After disappearing to Canada for three years, the mystery-comedy Search Party is finally returning next month with its long-awaited third season. However, before that happens, fans (and potential viewers) will be able to catch up on the millennial culture-skewering show's first two seasons on its new home, HBO Max, starting May 27. In fact, EW is debuting an exclusive trailer that recaps what you may have missed or forgotten and, more importantly, contains the first footage from the new batch of episodes.
For her part, star Alia Shawkat thinks the wait has been worth it because she hopes the move to WarnerMedia's streaming platform will mean the show is easier to find now — or at least easier than, say, locating Chantal Witherbottom was for Dory (Shawkat), Elliott (John Early), Portia (Meredith Hagner), and Drew (John Reynolds).
"I remember being like, 'Damn, everyone’s going to forget about it,'" says Shawkat, recalling how she felt when she found out season 3 was being delayed. "But now that it’s coming, it’s like, 'The wait is fine! Hopefully it’s easier for people to watch.' Like nobody used to know how to watch it before [when it aired on TBS], so I’m excited for that aspect."
Debuting on TBS in 2016, Search Party initially began as Girls meets Nancy Drew, following aimless and identity-less Dory and her friends as they searched for their missing college acquaintance Chantal (Clare McNulty). Eventually, they discovered Chantal was simply hiding out in Montreal because of a bad break-up; however, that's when things took a turn because Dory and Drew accidentally killed a private investigator in the season 1 finale. Then in the Hitchockian second season, the show became darker and ended with an even bigger shocker: Dory impulsively murdering her neighbor who was blackmailing the group and then subsequently being arrested for the P.I.'s death.
"It was really fun because she’s such an evolving character [and] every season goes through a whole other chapter of neuroses and individuation," says Shawkat.
Now the 10-episode third season will chronicle Dory and Drew's murder trial, and the media storm that engulfs and tests the entire friend group's bonds. As the trailer above reveals, Dory is being hounded by the press, and Elliott and Portia consider running out of town at one point.
"It’s this trial and court case, and we become very famous. [Creators Charles Rogers and Sarah-Violet Bliss] were like, 'This is kind of like a representation of media frenzy’ — What happens when everything is put under a microscope and these people are exposed to the world, and how that feeds them and feeds their egos or their shadows in a really dark way," says Shawkat. "It becomes this kind of Amanda Knox case." She adds that the trial "starts to really have a crazy splinter effect [on the friend group] where it’s like, 'We are bonded together, but is it by love or just trauma keeping us together?'"
Watch the trailer above.
Search Party season 3 kicks off June 25 with three episodes after which one new installment will drop every Thursday on HBO Max.
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