A new year is upon us, which means there’s a fresh batch of wishful thinking to keep fans busy as they attempt to remember to scribble the correct date on essential documents. Stoking the fire of idealism about a return for David Fincher’s Mindhunter series is Holt McCallany, who says Fincher has thought about bringing back his disturbing episodic thriller. McCallany plays Bill Tench, an FBI agent who co-founded the Behavioral Science Unit, in Fincher’s unnerving thriller.
Mindhunter has the following synopsis: Catching a criminal often requires the authorities to get inside the villain’s mind to figure out how he thinks. That’s the job of FBI agents Holden Ford and Bill Tench. They attempt to understand and catch serial killers by studying their damaged psyches. Along the way, the agents pioneer the development of modern serial-killer profiling.
Speaking with AwardsDaily about his new film The Iron Claw, where he plays Fritz Von Erich, the American professional wrestler, wrestling promoter, and patriarch of the Von Erich family, McCallany waxed rhapsodic about Mindhunter and its possible return.
When asked about his affinity for the show and thoughts about its cancelation, McCallany told AwardsDaily, “Did I want Mindhunter to be canceled after two seasons? Uh, no, but that’s not my decision. That’s my friend David’s (Fincher) decision. And if that’s David’s decision, that’s David’s decision. I understand, and I accept, and I move on. I remain grateful, and I mean this sincerely, for the opportunity to have made Lights Out (the 2011 sports drama series featuring McCallany as boxer Patrick ‘Lights’ Leary), for the opportunity to have made Mindhunter, even if they didn’t last as long as I might have hoped, I still got to be there, and I’m proud of the work that we did. You’re talking about my two favorite projects. Let me prattle on just for five more seconds. I loved making those shows, and I can only hope that at some point in my career, there’ll be something else that I feel as strongly about as I do about those two television series, because not all series are created equal. Let’s face it. Most of them are pretty forgettable. I don’t think you can say that about Mindhunter. And for the boxing fans and for the people out there who really love the fight game, I think the same can be said for Lights Out.”
Continuing to talk about Mindhunter, McCallany touched on whether or not he thinks a third season is possible, saying, “I’ve heard that David’s thought about it. I’m not saying it’s going to come back. But what I am saying is that if it comes back, I’m coming back with it. You can take that to the bank, but it’ll depend on what David wants to do. It’s been a few years now, so it’s probably unlikely, but just even that he would think about it is a hopeful sign.”
Last year, Fincher told the French magazine Le Journal du Dimanche there wouldn’t be a third season of Mindhunter, saying that Netflix decided to end the series. “I’m very proud of the first two seasons. But it’s a very expensive show and, in the eyes of Netflix, we didn’t attract enough of an audience to justify such an investment,” Fincher told Forbes in February 2023. “I don’t blame them; they took risks to get the show off the ground, gave me the means to do Mank the way I wanted to do it, and they allowed me to venture down new paths with The Killer. It’s a blessing to be able to work with people who are capable of boldness. The day our desires are not the same, we have to be honest about parting ways.”
Would you like for Mindhunter to get a third season? Let us know in the comments section below