‘Chad Powers’ Boss Reveals Season 3 Details and Cut Russ and Ricky Scene (Exclusive)

Chad Powers scored again on laughs and drama in Season 2 of Hulu’s hit comedy from Michael Waldron and star Glen Powell, but what’s on the horizon for the sports-centric series? Warning: Spoilers for the Chad Powers Season 2 finale ahead!

While the series has yet to get the Season 3 greenlight, one more chapter was always part of the plan for the creatives, who have envisioned Chad Powers as three seasons. Season 2’s six-episode run was a darker tale with higher stakes as Russ Holliday (Powell) tried to preserve his secret after breaking coach and crush Ricky’s (Perry Mattfeld) trust.

As other obstacles piled up, Russ found some relief after being blackmailed by backup quarterback Gerry (Colton Ryan) after pal Danny (Frankie A. Rodriguez) recruited wealthy booster Tricia (Wynn Everett) to maintain the secret and eliminate the threat of exposure. But a chance encounter in the laundry room may have blown everything up as Coach Hudson (Steve Zahn), Ricky’s dad, walked in on her and Chad kissing, just as she began ripping the prosthetics from his face.

So, what could be next for Season 3, if Chad Powers does return? Waldron details plans below, including Ricky’s potential choice moving forward after the kiss and if Russ is on a careening course to tragedy.

Disney / Daniel Delgado Jr.

Did you have a Season 3 plan mapped out already while working on Season 2? 

Michael Waldron: We have a sense of where we’d go. I think three seasons is probably as far as you can stretch this premise, but who knows? Maybe we keep going, maybe we try and go like 15 or 20. It seems like people really like the show, so maybe we try and stretch it out. I know some of the cast would love that. But no, I think that three seasons — that’s always been Glen and my plan, and the show is always meant to take place over the course of one college football season. So, if we’re fortunate enough to get to make another one, then I guess we would dive in creatively, and that would be how we approach it.

This season, the stakes were higher, and things were darker tonally as well as visually with the cinematography. How do you determine the right balance between that darkness and comedic levity?

Well, as far as the look, that was me, and so much of that credit goes to Isaac Bauman, my DP who came on this season. Isaac shot Season 2 of Loki, and it’s so brilliant; he shot all the episodes that I directed, and we’re really deliberate about [establishing] a new look. I wouldn’t say we were going for a darker look, but maybe a more serious look. We’re always with this show — which has such a ridiculous premise — fighting the battle of how can we get the audience to take it seriously, because we’re taking the story seriously. We’re putting our characters through things; the story is serious for them. And so, this season, we said, let’s shoot it like a thriller and like a drama, and let’s continue to trust that our amazing actors will make it funny no matter what, even if it looks more serious.

I think audiences are more willing than ever to embrace things that are maybe dissonant or daring. If you look at Widow’s Bay, is that show a horror thriller, or is it one of the funniest shows on TV? It’s both. But it’s something that looks beautiful and it looks serious and announces itself as a real cinematic experience. So, I think when something really looks elevated, the audience is just more willing to come on a crazy ride.

Disney / Daniel Delgado Jr.

Russ is still grappling with his identity as Chad in Season 2, and his father and Tricia are on opposite sides of the same coin there. Who sees the real Russ at the end of the day? Is it Ricky, Danny, or someone else? 

I think that it’s Ricky and Danny. They’re the first friends he’s made in maybe his whole life. I think Danny sees him for who he is immediately, which is why that relationship was so special. Danny’s also just a highly evolved character; he’s probably seen enough of Russ and guys like Russ on reality TV. And then Ricky, obviously, it takes longer for her to come around, but I think the way she sees Russ is how he wishes he could see himself. If Ricky could fall for him, if she could forgive him, if she could love him, then Russ Holiday would have been forgiven, and so that’s the special place she has in the story.

Russ and Ricky’s kiss in the finale isn’t as explosive as Season 1’s bus scene, but it’s still electric. Which moment from the scripts were you most excited to capture during filming? 

That final scene, of course, was just a long time coming, and obviously the journey that these two characters have been on is pretty profound. It felt like we’d earned it, which was nice. And we arranged the schedule so that was the last thing we filmed, was Russ and Ricky in the laundry room. So, it was cathartic for them, it was cathartic for us. It was the middle of the night, and we’ve been on a long, intense shoot together, and so it was charged with a million things, so that was cool.

Then also the moment where Russ and Ricky come together on the field and the lights go down because they’ve never really put their hands on each other in that way. That was also a big moment to me, and that was a tricky technical thing because we’re working off of the stadium lights at the Georgia State Stadium, which, fortunately, were kind of that Catfish blue, and so you got all your extras on the field, you’ve got Glen and Perry coming at each other, and then you’ve got me and Isaac and the lighting team, and we’re trying to time it just perfectly. Took a few tries to get it, but the one on camera was really special. There’s one other time that we got that right, and we had to shoot that scene over two days because the first time we were shooting it, out of nowhere, a huge storm popped up and they came together; the lights went down perfectly, but all of a sudden it started pouring down rain. So, we have this footage of Russ and Ricky holding each other in the rain and the lights, and it’s so amazing. This is like the stuff of dreams, but it doesn’t make any sense because it’s not raining in the episode, but it’s a beautiful image.

Disney / Daniel Delgado Jr.

Oh, I feel like the Russ and Ricky fans are going to want to see the rain cut now.

I don’t know, I’m just like those fans that love good romances; truthfully, that’s probably why I’m writing this stuff. I think it’s cool, and I think it’s fun that audiences love it and wanna engage with it, and it’s fun to see how it exists on the page and how actors choose to interpret it.

What allows Ricky to finally embrace her feelings for Russ? Is it his love confession, her new job prospect, or something else? After all, Coach Hudson catching Ricky and Russ kissing leaves her with a lot more to lose than him. 

Yeah, she’s so at risk, but I guess in this episode, where she finally admits, “I am incriminated,” which is maybe her way of saying, I also have feelings for you. It’s her admitting that she’s been going along with this in some ways for her own selfish reasons, and not just because she wants to win, because she has come to care about Russ. And I think in those final moments, it’s just the release of everything. It’s going beyond the thrill of winning in this impossible game, which is, in its own way, just another caper that our heroes constantly have to go on, as Russ says, “We’re gonna figure it out” and “we always figure it out,” and they always do.

That’s kind of what they do together; they always solve these impossible problems, whether on the field or now off. In those final moments, she becomes emotional because I think it’s landing on both of them that it is over, that everything she said is true, this is the last night she’s gonna coach him, and so I think that’s overwhelming. And everything that happens from there makes them both vulnerable and reckless.

That calls into question Tricia’s role as she acquired the Chad Powers brand to protect Russ’s secret identity. Will that pressure Ricky to stick around and pass on the new coaching gig she accepted?

That’ll be a big thing for us to figure out. The show’s a lot of fun when you’ve got Perry and Glen and Frankie and Steve and Quentin [Plair], and everybody running around together, so do we want to strand her up in Syracuse? It’d be like Jim being in Stamford [on The Office]. We’ll have to see where the story takes us and what’s best for Ricky because I think that’s what the show has evolved into in a way. The show belongs to Russ and Chad, but I do think that it also belongs to her now.

The stakes were so high in Season 2. Can it get even darker going forward?

We talked a lot about it in the writers’ room… I don’t know. The deck is really stacked against our heroes. So, I would be excited to try and figure out how we are meant to feel at the end of all this.

Yeah, I would imagine that the journey for a happy ending versus a tragic one would be very different.

In some ways, I had a strong sense that it’s hard to get out of this lie alive, so let’s make sure that this season, we end on a happy note, ’cause I can’t promise that I’m gonna be able to deliver that again.

Chad Powers, Seasons 1-2, Streaming now, Hulu