'Mindhunter' Season 2 Release Date Netflix: Creator Reveals a Launch Window

Joe Penhall has been keeping busy. In between researching and writing Mindhunter Season 2, he also had time to pen King of Thieves, a new movie out next week about a group of elderly British burglars. But we couldn’t resist asking about his hit Netflix show, and, in an interview, Penhall tells Inverse approximately when we can expect Mindhunter Season 2 to arrive along with his plans for Season 3 and beyond. (Listen to the interview in the video above, if you can stand the sound of my rapid note-taking throughout.)

You might think that, as series creator, Penhall would be heavily involved with the editing process, but once filming wrapped in December 2018 he was essentially finished with Mindhunter Season 2.

“The editing process is quiet for me because David [Fincher] locks himself away and doesn’t really want to share with anybody,” Penhall says. “And I don’t particularly need to see things half finished.”

He added that Season 1 took about “6 months of 8 months” to edit, suggesting that Mindhunter Season 2 could see a similar timeline, only faster. In that case, it could be finished and ready for release by May 2019 — or even sooner.

“We’re working as fast as we can,” he says. “There’s only eight episodes in this one [down from 10 in Season 1]. So he doesn’t have quite as much to do.”

With Mindhunter Season 2 currently in editing, Penhall says he has plenty of ideas for Season 3 and beyond, but he’s waiting to see the finished product before he decides where the series will go next. Still, he was willing to share a few plans for the future, specifically when it comes to series protagonists Holden Ford and Bill Trench.

“I think the idea if we get to Season 3, is that the more illustrious and successful the unit becomes, and the bigger the scalps — for example, Manson is a big scalp for them — I guess the more power they have,” Penhall says. “At the end of season 1, Holden was becoming vaguely narcissistic himself and realizing that in a way he’d fed off Ed Kemper and got a career out of it.”

Given enough time, Mindhunter may even become of a commentary on the strange connection between criminal psychology and Hollywood, along with a critique of our own cultural obsession with serial killers

“You’ll see Holden and Bill mirror what really happened with John Douglass,” Penhall says. “In real life, he became less of an FBI agent and more of an author, and then a rather glamorous consultant on Hollywood movies like Silence of the Lambs. My vision for the later seasons is that’s what starts happening. Holden starts becoming aware of his power and his voice and spends less time in law enforcement and more time becoming a pundit and becoming more narcissistic himself. There’s an element of satire there in the way that serial killers become entertainment and those involved with them become entertainers. There’s so many books by FBI criminal profilers, it’s ludicrous. That’s where I hope it will go.”

Mindhunter Season 2 is set to release sometime in 2019. King of Thieves hits VOD and Digital HD on January 25.