Seasons 1-3 of Derry Girls are fantastic, following the comedic adventures of teenagers Erin, Clare, Michelle, Orla, and James as they navigate school, family, and friendship in ’90s-era Northern Ireland. With the show being such a rousing international success, will there be a Derry Girls season 4? Here’s what we know.
Derry Girls season 3 ends on a pretty definitive note. (Skip the rest of this paragraph if you don’t want spoilers!) The girls turn 18 and vote on the Good Friday Agreement, which historically ended most of the violence of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. In the final scene, the show flashes forward to the present day, when Chelsea Clinton receives a long-delayed letter that the girls wrote back when they were teens. The season 3 finale is a beautiful cap to the series.
Not only does it have a definitive ending, but in 2021, series creator Lisa McGee released a statement saying that the series would end with season 3.
“It was always the plan to say goodbye after three series,” the statement reads. “Derry Girls is a coming of age story, following five ridiculous teenagers as they slowly…very slowly…start to become adults, while around them the place they call home starts to change too and Northern Ireland enters a new more hopeful phase — which was a small, magical window of the time. Derry Girls is a love letter to the place I come from and the people who shaped me. It has been an honor to write it and I will be forever proud of everything it’s achieved. I’d like to thank the people of Derry and Northern Ireland for getting behind us. Thanks also to the team behind the series, the incredible Hat Trick productions and a special thanks to Channel 4 – the channel I grew up watching; the channel that made me want to write comedy and the only channel that could have made our show.”
“Who knows if Erin, Clare, Orla, Michelle and James will return in some other guise someday,” McGee continues, “but for now this is it for us and we’re excited to start filming this series with our incredible cast and crew to hopefully take our loyal fans on one last adventure.”
What about Derry Girls spin-offs?
Although she has no plans to revive Derry Girls itself, McGee has teased ideas for spin-offs. In May 2022, McGee told Bustle that she’d been talking with Derry Girls director Michael Lennox about spin-off ideas, including a possible series about the men in Erin and Orla’s family: Gerry, Joe, and Colm. She also told Digital Spy about ideas for a spin-off about Erin’s mother Mary and aunt Sarah, or the girls’ annoying classmate Jenny Joyce.
However, McGee was careful to clarify that she has no immediate plans for a spin-off. “I wouldn’t do a spin-off now, and I have no plans to do a spin-off,” she told Digital Spy, saying that her spin-off ideas are “for my own amusement.”
So, if you’re pining for Derry Girls, it looks like new stories aren’t in the works anytime soon. However, you can still revisit the original series on Netflix.
(featured image: Channel 4 / Netflix)
