On Oct. 20, the nostalgic Amazon original series, Red Oaks, takes us back to the country club for another summer. The show, which first premiered on Amazon in 2014, follows a young tennis instructor's adventures at a New Jersey country club during the 1980s. It's received not only critical acclaim but also cultivated a devoted fan following. It's not a surprise that audiences are wondering whether Red Oaks will return for a fourth season.
Unfortunately, this is the last hurrah at Red Oaks Country Club. The show's third season will be its last, according to Decider. Amazon only ordered another batch of six episodes to close out the comedy this season. As of now, there are no plans to bring it back for a fourth.
While the cast has accepted the fate of the show, their love for the series and desire to have potentially continued on with it is clear.
“We could’ve done more. I think we certainly could have in the last season done 10 [episodes]," star Paul Reiser told Decider in the same interview. "I think going into it, we all would’ve been happy to do a full season and then another season after that.” Though they surely had more to give, Reiser said that as it ends, the total 26 episodes make up "a nice entity" that can stand on its own.
Another of the show's stars, Richard Kind, told The New York Daily News that though Amazon's decision was to discontinue the show, he appreciated that the company allowed them these final six episodes to wrap things up neatly rather than just denying a third season altogether.
“I think it was sort of a gift from Amazon to say ‘you know this is a really great show and we're not going to continue with it anymore but we would like to give some finality to these characters,’” Kind told the publication.
Craig Roberts, who plays the show's protagonist, David Myers, said in the same Daily News article that he's pleased with the journey his character has made in these few seasons. Audiences saw Myers struggle as an aspiring filmmaker, and Roberts said that arc has been a satisfying one to play.
“I never knew that it would go this far when I read the pilot… I never thought it would go all the way down the rabbit hole of him doing it so I’m very happy that he has,” Roberts said. “It's very, very cool.”
Despite the inevitable disappointment that they won't see more of Red Oaks in the near future, devoted fans of the show can cling to a little hope. Though the stars confirm that they've filmed a satisfying and appropriate ending to the comedy, it seems like there might be a little wiggle room one day — it seems as though they've left possibilities for a continuation.
“If next year there was a ground swell and they said ‘we want more,’ you absolutely could pick up and say there's more story to be told,” Reiser told The Daily News.
This season's plot seems to be a lighthearted finale for the show. There will be drama and conflict, but nothing too heavy, fitting into the rose-tinted nostalgia that Red Oaks has cultivated so well. “We do struggle, but the struggle ain’t that hard," Kind told Decider in the piece mentioned above. "They’re small. They’re not grand operatic problems. They’re life’s sweet little challenges."
Red Oaks will follow Myers to New York City this season as he continues to pursue his filmmaking dreams, straying a bit from the main backdrop of the country club. There fans will see more of the incredible all-star cast, including not just Roberts, Kind, and Reiser but also other immediately recognizable actors like Jennifer Grey and Gina Gershon.
Though the setting and story may change a bit, the final season of Red Oaks promises to say its goodbye with the quirky coming-of-age laughs that fans have come to know and love.
