Hulu has opted against a fourth season of period drama “The Great.” Created and produced by Tony McNamara, and starring Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult, “The Great” followed Catherine the Great — Russia’s longest-reigning empress from 1762 to 1796 — as she navigated her roller-coaster relationship with husband Peter III of Russia. The series followed Fanning’s Catherine from the naive beginnings of her marriage to Peter the Great, to her emergence as a key figure in the Enlightenment and rise to Empress of All Russia in her own right.
The now finale of “The Great” left off with Catherine at the start of a new chapter, having experienced all five stages of grief and looking forward to the next era of her rule.
“For me, it’s not an ending, it’s a rebirth in a way for her as a character,” said Tony McNamara of the finale. “She hasn’t ruled by herself yet and been without [Peter]’s… everything, even the grief of him colored everything she did. So I guess for me, it’s like now she’s free of him and she’s deeply damaged, what happens now? She’s kind of cut loose in the way that [the real] Catherine the Great was once she was free of all that — she ruled in a quite crazy way. So I’m interested in that version of Catherine that we haven’t seen.”
Looking ahead, he added, “I think yesterday I was reading some things and I thought ‘that’d be cool for season 4.’… I feel like I’m interested and I’m excited about what it is — what is this iteration of the show, which was always kind of one we were heading towards.”
“The Great” also starred Phoebe Fox, Adam Godley, Gwilym Lee, Charity Wakefield, Douglas Hodge, Bayo Gbadamosi, and Belinda Bromilow.