After the great success of Designated Survivor (season 3), The third season of the American political drama series Designated Survivors, the excitement for its next season is at it’s best.
Designated Survivor started on September 21, 2016, on ABC in the United States, and CTV in Canada. Netflix aired the series outside the United States and Canada, adding the episodes weekly, with distribution handled by eOne.
Designated Survivor season 1 premiered on September 2016 on ABC, and the second season premiered one year later with 22 new episodes. However, ABC canceled it in May 2018, but Netflix then acquired the series and showed Designated Survivor season 3 that following September.
The 10-episode season was shown on Netflix but didn’t have the same content restrictions.
Since late last year, Netflix also canceled a few shows of this series that it considered insufficiently successful. However, seeing as they saw fit to save the show previous year based on its ratings and the Netflix viewership outside of the USA (it distributed seasons 1 and 2 to the UK and other markets), there could be good chance we’ll see another season of this fantastic series, only if there hasn’t been a significant drop off in interest in the extended break between seasons.
While Designated Survivor season 4 isn’t happening, the streaming service did say that they will continue to host the series on their platform for years to come. Given that both ABC and Netflix have now canceled Designated Survivor, it’s highly unlikely that season 4 will happen on another network ever.
If Netflix chose to renew Designated Survivor for season 4, then there would’ve been a great chance the new season could’ve released by summer 2020, just in time to coincide with the U.S. President Election later that same year. But since Netflix chose not to renew Designated Survivor for season 4, Thomas Kirkman’s story is, unfortunately, officially over.