Altered Carbon Season 3: Will More Episodes Ever Release?

Netflix's sci-fi series Altered Carbon is one of the best recent cyberpunk stories on television, and many are wondering if the show will ever receive a third season.

Altered Carbon is an adaptation of Richard K. Morgan's sci-fi novel of the same name, exploring a future in which the rich are able to transfer their consciousness into new bodies. 

Takeshi Kovacs (played by The Suicide Squad's Joel Kinnaman) is a former soldier and rebel brought back by a wealthy aristrocrat to solve a murder. After solving the murder, Kovacs is revived and re-sleeved many years later for Season 2 (in which he is played by Anthony Mackie) and hunts down his lost love.

Will Altered Carbon Season 3 Ever Happen?

Altered Carbon's first season released on Netflix in 2018, and the second season followed shortly after in 2020. 

Unfortunately, Deadline confirmed in August 2020 that Netflix had opted not to renew Altered Carbon for a third season citing the streamer’s "standard viewership vs. cost renewal review process" as the reason. 

Altered Carbon was no doubt an expensive series, with many VFX-heavy scenes and complex action and set-pieces required to authentically portray its world. According to The Guardian, Kinnaman once referred to the series as "a world that’s got a bigger budget than the first three seasons of Game of Thrones."

It appears a third season of Altered Carbon may have been on the cards at Netflix at some point, with showrunner Alison Schapker revealing to Inverse earlier in 2024 that they had "a great Season 3 written" and that she still holds out hope someone will "want to continue that story:"

"I am not going to give up. I still harbor a dream that someday, somebody will come knocking and want to continue that story. Quellcrist Falconer was off to foment a revolution! We had a great Season 3 written, and I’m sorry we were not able to bring it to people. Sometimes that happens."

What Could Happen in Altered Carbon Season 3?

Altered Carbon may be dead for now, but a cancelation hasn't stopped other series from being revived later down the line. 

If a Season 3 of Altered Carbon was to happen and in the way that the creative team had planned, it seems likely it would have followed Quellcrist Falconer's (Renée Elise Goldsberry) plans for revolution. 

Kovacs also sacrificed himself at the end of Season 2. However, his friend Poe (Chris Connor) was shown in the finale to be rebuilding a person's stack based on his memories of them, which is more than likely Kovacs, meaning the main character could rise again in another season, likely in a new body.

Schapker hinted that Kovacs could even return in a female sleeve in a potential third season, telling CinemaBlend in 2020 (prior to the series' cancellation) that she was "100% open" to Kovacs coming back in a gender-swapped form:

"Yeah! At this point, I would discuss anything with my writers in the writers' room, like 100% open to who that Kovacs is going to be."

Morgan also wrote three Altered Carbon books, the latter of which (Broken Angels and Woken Furies) still have plenty of plot that weren't realized in the TV series and could form as a rich source for any future seasons of the show.

Altered Carbon Seasons 1 and 2 are streaming on Netflix.