The highly anticipated third season of Kristen Bell and Adam Brody’s fan-favorite Netflix romcom Nobody Wants This has finally landed on the streaming platform, and while this new installment is a clear improvement compared to Season 2, Season 3 still hasn’t quite achieved the magic of the show’s very first season.
Part of the trouble with Nobody Wants This Season 2 was that it felt like the show was stuck in a never-ending loop of Joanne (Bell) and Noah (Brody) bumping into the very same issues over and over again in their relationship—namely, that Joanne’s refusal to convert to Judaism to be with Noah was creating difficulties in Noah’s personal and professional life and leading to serious tensions between the two lovebirds. While that might be realistic and perhaps even accurate to the true story on which the series is based, it didn’t make for very good television.
However, Season 3 certainly didn’t have that problem. As the Nobody Wants This Season 3 trailer promised, this new season picks up with Noah and Joanne having moved in together, Joanne well on her way to fully embracing Judaism with her conversion classes and even Sasha (Timothy Simons) and Esther (Jackie Tohn) undergoing serious changes following their shocking separation at the end of Season 2. The latter, in turn, also meant some interesting narrative updates for Joanne’s sister, Morgan (Justine Lupe).
Related: Nobody Wants This Cast and Character Guide: Who’s Back — And Who’s New?
Season 3 also maintains that energy from beginning to end, with major updates and twists coming throughout the season, right down to the final ten minutes of the last episode. What’s more, this is arguably the best season for certain characters. Joanne and Morgan’s dad, Henry (Michael Hitchcock), for example, has never seemed funnier, and Morgan herself actually shined this season—and was considerably more likable than she has been in seasons past, especially in terms of how she treats Joanne.
As was expected by many fans of the show, this was also the best season so far for Esther, who was finally able to strike out on her own and begin establishing her own life and sense of identity now that she is no longer married to Sasha. That made room for Tohn’s personality and comedy background to shine through, adding greater depth to a character that many viewers had already been drawn to, even as it was clear that she was being restricted, to a degree, by her marriage.
Related: Jackie Tohn Teases a ‘Whole New Journey’ for Esther in Nobody Wants This Season 3
Yet, even with these exciting plot details and positive character updates, there’s no question that Nobody Wants This Season 1 continues to be far superior to anything that the show has put out since. There was something downright magical about the chemistry between Noah and Joanne in that season, and it made audiences root for them despite the very daunting odds and the fact that, on paper, the two didn’t make much sense together. And that wasn’t solely about their different religions, either; at first, Noah was a more reserved, even traditional character, whereas Joanne was a zany, often chaotic sex and relationships podcaster.
It’s been nice to see the couple settle down together and become happy and comfortable in their relationship, although it has dimmed the original vibrancy of their dynamic, to a degree. Things, at times, feel a bit too perfect between the two of them, such as with one scene in Season 3 in which Noah isn’t making nearly as big a deal as he should about an issue that arises at an airport (that Joanne is actually making significantly worse, not better, with her response to it).
The trouble, in part, seems to be that Season 3 treated Joanne and Noah’s relationship as something that has already been resolved narratively, despite that not quite being how relationships work in real life. Yes, the two face obstacles in the season, but there is very little tension between them at all, outside of a one-off argument that actually felt out of place because the rest of the season made their relationship seem so free from internal stresses. On a larger scale, this created a weird us versus them dynamic with various other characters, wherein Noah and Joanne suddenly seemed perfect and everyone else seemed flawed—including in ways that came across as Noah and Joanne looking down on others, at times.
Even so, fans of Nobody Wants This will undoubtedly love this new season. Bell continues to prove that she can play the Eleanor Shellstrop character type with plenty of charm and humor, and the supporting characters were finally given the room to become more than just extras in Noah and Joanne’s great love story.
Nobody Wants This Season 3 arrives on Netflix on Oct. 22, and all ten episodes will be released at the same time.