Netflix Renews "Dear White People" for 4th and Final Season

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"Dear White People" Returns to Netflix for Fourth & Final Season
by Peter White
October 2, 2019


"Dear White People" is returning to Netflix for a fourth and final season.This comes after its third season launched on the streaming service in August.

Creator Justin Simien is returning as co-showrunner, writer and executive producer of the final season alongside co-showrunner and executive producer Yvette Lee Bowser as the characters head back to Winchester University one last time.

While there is nothing imminent, Deadline understands that developing potential spin-offs down the road is likely.

https://deadline.com/2019/10/dear-wh...on-1202750233/

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Dear White People creator Justin Simien has "complicated" feelings over the surge in the show's demand amid George Floyd protests

Parrot Analytics found that Dear White People has seen a 329% surge in demand amid global support for the Black Lives Matter movement that has prompted people of all races to delve into pop-culture featuring racial topics. "Man, it’s complicated," Simien says of the newfound interest in his show and movie. "I have been grateful to fight tooth and nail for Dear White People since 2013 when we first started raising money for the movie. It continues to be a show I have to fight for — for the proper budget, advertising, promotion. It’s a conversation that me and my village of creatives think we really deserve to keep having. We are pouring our whole hearts into these issues to make something that not only is pop culture entertainment but also feels urgent and relevant. These are tragic events that have led to this uptick of viewership, and that’s really devastating. It’s also nice to feel that (we) have contributed something that can be meaningful in this time. These issues have been on our minds and in our hearts for a very long time, and the show we've made speaks directly to what is happening. It's nice to know people are listening." Simien is currently prepping to film Dear White People's final season. Simien says he hopes Dear White People will see increased promotion since it's become relevant to this moment. "I would love to hear from Netflix about how to further promote the show," he says. "The Netflix team really does care about the show and they fight for it. I’ve had many conversations with Ted Sarandos and the marketing team to say it needs more attention."

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Dear White People Vol. 4, the musical final season comes to Netflix September 22.

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Dear White People creator on making the final season a 1990s musical event: “I just really wanted to"

“We found out that the show was coming back and that it was ending all in the same moment, and so I wanted [to do] something that was going to feel worthy of an ending that we also couldn’t have had the benefit of building to because we never knew we were coming back every time the show came out,” Justin Simien tells TVLine. “It was one of two things that we had never quite gotten to do but wanted to do since Season 1. When we got to the final season, it was like, ‘Well, you know, make an event of the end of Dear White People. Let’s just do it for the whole season altogether.'” Simien adds, in a separate interview with Entertainment Tonight: "Part of it is, that's what was in my soul. That's what I needed to do at the time...But the intellectual smarty-pants answer is that the '90s is such a clear flashpoint for Black culture, particularly with music. You see it in film, too. We were coming out of the post-Do the Right Thing moment of Black film and, suddenly, there were three Black filmmakers working in Hollywood at the same time. And it feels like this big cultural renaissance, but at the same time, once you get to the end of the '90s, what was the renaissance has now become a bit of a trap."

ALSO:

• Justin Simien and co-showrunner Jaclyn Moore point out Dear White People predicted Trump, COVID and much more: “Police violence and weaponizing was something our show was concerned about since Season 1, and I think what we started to feel was there was this sense that suddenly a lot of the things we had been saying on the show were becoming more and more a mainstream conversation,” says Moore. “We were drawn to the ways in which predominantly white institutions were pretending to be on the forefront of that conversation and using Black folks and people of color as a PR shield at times. And so, that was the last piece of it that really felt like it really connected to this, which is Winchester, turning around and starting to use them. The problem is you’re gaining power, but at what cost?”
• Ranking Dear White People's final season musical moments