Source: Entertainment Weekly

You wouldn’t expect grieving, healing, and forgiving to be at the center of a laugh-out-loud comedy, but Shrinking’s emotional center has resonated with both viewers and Emmy voters.

Created by Bill Lawrence, Brett Goldstein, and Jason Segel, the Apple TV hit has been nominated for seven Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Comedy Series. It stars Segel as Jimmy, a therapist who unravels after the death of his wife and begins to cross boundaries with his patients. Season 2, which wrapped at the end of 2024, ended with Jimmy taking a major step forward in his grieving process.

So, will there be a third season of Shrinking? When does it premiere? And will the How I Met Your Mother reunion continue with Cobie Smulders’ Sofi, who appeared in season 2? Here’s everything we know about Shrinking season 3.

Yes, Shrinking was renewed for a third season in October 2024, just after the premiere of season 2.

“It has been wonderful to watch audiences around the world fall in love with the memorable characters and rich world that Bill, Brett and Jason have created in Shrinking,” said Apple TV head Matt Cherniss, who went on to celebrate the show’s “moving, heartwarming and very funny journey in season three.”

Season 2 ended with Segel’s Jimmy taking a huge step in his healing journey by forgiving Louis (Goldstein), the man responsible for the death of Jimmy’s wife in a drunk-driving accident.

Earlier in the season, Louis opened a line of communication with Jimmy’s daughter Alice (Lukita Maxwell), to which Jimmy disapproved. Still, Alice meets with him and forgives him. In the finale, overwhelmed with guilt, Louis goes to a train station and contemplates suicide. He reaches out to Alice, but Jimmy arrives instead.

“Alice had found peace in episode 6 where she forgives him and that sets her free,” Goldstein told Entertainment Weekly following the finale. “The whole story from the end of episode 1 is Jimmy has to free himself and he is in denial the whole season that he’s okay. It has to be him for there to be some peace.”

Elsewhere in the season 2 finale, Paul (Harrison Ford), Jimmy’s grumpy colleague, finds comfort and community as he enters into a relationship with Julie (Wendie Malick), the doctor helping him manage his Parkinson’s disease.

And Jimmy, too, finds a potential spark with Smulders’ Sofi, a recently divorced woman from whom he considers buying a car. “You got to see these little sparks of what pre-accident Jimmy was probably like,” Segel told EW of his scene with Smulders, with whom he previously co-starred on How I Met Your Mother.

Apple TV has yet to release an official Shrinking season 3 synopsis, but Segel discussed his and the creative team’s approach on EW’s The Awardist podcast.

“Each season we have a word that is our true north for the theme of the season,” he explained. “Season 1 was ‘grief,’ season 2 was ‘forgiveness,’ and season 3 — I acknowledge that this is two words — is ‘moving forward.'”

That dovetails with remarks the actor and writer made to EW following the season 2 finale. “I would like to see [Jimmy] try to be happy,” Segal said. “For Jimmy, he does not feel like he deserves to be happy. So, it would be nice to see Jimmy get to a place where he puts himself first in a way of, ‘What would make me happy after all this sadness?'”

Segel, Ford, and Maxwell will all return for season 3, as will main cast members Jessica Williams (Gaby), Luke Tennie (Sean), Michael Urie (Brian), Christa Miller (Liz), and Ted McGinley (Derek). Malick will also return as Julie, as will Damon Wayans Jr., who plays the love interest of Williams’ Gaby.

As for Smulders? Lawrence confirmed her return in June 2025, telling TVLine that she’ll be a key character in “whether or not [Jimmy] can find a way to even imagine himself being happy again.”

Goldstein’s Louis will also appear in season 3, raising the question of whether his relationship with Jimmy will extend beyond forgiveness. Following the finale, Goldstein told EW he couldn’t say “if we’ll even see Louis again,” but Segel sounded more bullish about the character’s return.

“The reason that it was important to me that it be somebody who is a contemporary of Jimmy’s is that I wanted looking at Louis to be looking in the mirror,” he said. “It’s built into the storyline that these guys could have been friends.”

The ensemble will continue to grow with the addition of actors Jeff Daniels and Michael J. Fox.

Daniels, the two-time Emmy winner who led HBO’s The Newsroom, will join season 3 as Jimmy’s father. “That was the most brilliant casting for my dad,” Segel told Variety in August 2025. “Because, we’re doing very similar stuff. There were moments where in my head I was gonna try to mimic his movements. So I was kind of spying on him during scenes, and I realized we’re already doing the same thing.”

It’s still unclear who Fox will play in season 3, but it’s likely that the actor, who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1991 and has long been an advocate for Parkinson’s research, will share scenes with Ford’s Paul, whose Parkinson’s diagnosis is key to his character’s arc.

Shrinking will premiere with a one-hour episode on Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026. New episodes will drop weekly on Wednesdays, with the finale airing on April 8, 2026.

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