HBO renews The Deuce for a third and final season

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

David Simon and George Pelecanos' The Deuce returned for its second season earlier this month, and now HBO has renewed the series for what will be its third and final season. The Deuce follows follow the story of the "legalization and subsequent rise of the porn industry in New York’s Times Square from the early 1970s through the mid-1980s, exploring the rough-and-tumble world at the pioneering moments of what would become the billion-dollar American sex industry." This doesn't exactly come as a huge surprise as David Simon told Collider that year that it was always the plan for The Deuce to last three seasons.

Assuming that all the critics in the world don’t come down on our heads and it finds an audience of some sort, it’s planned for two more seasons. The ensuing season will be in the late’70s, after these characters have been around, in this world, for about four or five years. And then, the final season we’ve planned for is ‘85/’86, which is when Times Square came crashing down around their heads. That would conclude it…The same core characters will last, I think, although in this life, there’s obviously a lot of attrition. Not everyone will be where we left them, five years later.

In a statement on Twitter today, David Simon said, "We're always conjuring the last scene before we write the first. So much the better when we work for people who allow us to consistently plan, arc and execute as intended. Thanks, @HBO, for the third and final season renewal and the chance for #thedeuce to tell its full story." Despite being a fan of David Simon's other HBO shows, I haven't actually gotten around to checking out The Deuce. Perhaps I should jump onboard now that the series is nearing the end. Each season of the series has jumped forward in time, with the first kicking off in 1971, the second moving forward to 1977, and HBO has said that the third season will land in the early 1980s as it explores "the rough-and-tumble world that existed there until the rise of HIV, the violence of the cocaine epidemic and the renewed real estate market all ended the bawdy turbulence."