Earlier this year, TV fans were left delighted when it was confirmed that The Comeback would be returning for a third and final season, which will premiere in 2026. If you didn’t know, the HBO sitcom first aired way back in 2005, but it was canceled after the first season.
Nine years later, in 2014, it was revived for a second season of eight episodes, and fans then had to wait another 11 years for news of this upcoming last season.
The show stars Lisa Kudrow as a veteran sitcom actor called Valerie Cherish, who is attempting to revive her acting career after a decade-long hiatus — and ends up participating on a reality show in a desperate bid to stay relevant.
Despite what the long gaps between seasons might suggest, The Comeback was a huge hit with viewers and has a dedicated cult following, so when details of what we can expect from the third season dropped yesterday, people were eager to learn as much as possible.
At a HBO Max slate presentation in London on Wednesday night, Lisa and her co-creator, Sex and the City legend Michael Patrick King, confirmed that Season 3 will be hitting our screens in March, and that Andrew Scott had joined the cast.
They also revealed that the show’s plot will revolve around Valerie being cast in the first-ever sitcom written entirely by AI, with Michael explaining, per Variety: “The joke that’s already played out is that AI is bad. I mean, that was two awards shows ago — everybody said: ‘My speech was written by ChatGPT.’ So we had to go deeper and figure out what would be the issue if AI was actually learning fast and that people were trying to stay ahead of it. So yeah, I mean, we worried about what’s going to happen to everybody. It feels like a real moment.”
But there has, depressingly, been a huge misunderstanding when it comes to this plot point, with many social media users — somehow! — mistakenly interpreting the report as confirmation that The Comeback itself is the first sitcom to have been written entirely by AI.
On Wednesday evening, Pop Crave innocuously tweeted: “‘The Comeback’ Season 3 follows Valerie Cherish (Lisa Kudrow) booking a role in the first sitcom ever written by AI,” and all hell quickly broke loose on the social media site.
And, needless to say, these responses sparked concern from other X users, with one incredibly viral tweet noting: “judging by the quotes & comments, people read ‘written by AI’ & nothing else.”
Whew. As always, let me know your thoughts in the comments below!