'Series of Unfortunate Events' Season 4 Release Date: Is It Really the End?

A Series of Unfortunate Events Season 3 hit Netflix on January 1, but die-hard fans of the original Lemony Snicket books (myself included) may have already binged through all seven new episodes. The latest season covers the final books in the series to offer a satisfying conclusion, but it also makes a strong case for a Season 4 release date that could take the Series of Unfortunate Events story even further than the books ever did.

Look away! Spoilers for A Series of Unfortunate Events Season 3 ahead.

Before I go any further, I want to fully acknowledge that Season 3 serves as a perfectly good conclusion to the Netflix adaptation and, as far as I know, there are no plans to continue the series past its current final episode, titled simply, “The End.” However, the show also makes several decisions that both differentiate it from the books and suggest there may be more story to tell.

For one thing, Season 3 of the Netflix series offers clear explanations for several mysteries that were never explicitly solved in the books. The best example is the Sugar Bowl, a mysterious object that’s never really explained in the books but gets completely clarified in the show (it contains a vaccination for a fictional deadly fungus). We also get more detailed backstories for many characters, including the narrator himself, Lemony Snicket, suggesting that the actual author (Daniel Handler, who co-produced the show), had more ideas than he could fit into the original books.

Additionally, the Netflix series already takes the story one step further than the books ever did, essentially confirming that the Baudelaires managed to escape the island in the final book and make it back to civilization. We see this confirmed in the final episode where Beatrice Baudelaire (Lemony Snicket’s) niece who was born on the island, finds her uncle back on the mainland.

What we don’t see is what happens to the Sunny, Klaus, and Violet Baudelaire after the return to society. Are they arrested for the various crimes they were forced to commit in their struggles with Count Olaf? Do the join the V.F.D. and perhaps take over the hidden library revealed earlier in Season 3? Or do they set out on their own adventures now that Count Olaf is finally dead?

With the original books long-finished we may never know, but Netflix has the opportunity to keep A Series of Unfortunate Events going with Season 4. Based on everything we saw in Season 3, there’s clearly more story to tell.

**A Series of Unfortunate Events is streaming now on Netflix.