Sex Education Season 4: Highlights
– Refurbished by Netflix in September 2021
– It will probably keep the same eight-episode structure as previous seasons
– No release date has been set yet, although it is expected to arrive in early 2023
– Asa Butterfield, Emma Mackey, Ncuti Gatwa and Gillian Anderson have been confirmed to return
– However, Patricia Allison, Simone Ashley, Rakhee Thakrar and Tanya Reynold will not appear
– Dan Levy has joined the cast
– The story will likely focus on the impending closure of Moordale
Season 4 of Sex Education has been officially confirmed by Netflix, and it seems we don’t have long to wait for the show to return.
Laurie Nunn’s groundbreaking high school drama has been one of our top Netflix shows since first airing in 2019, and it was no surprise that Netflix renewed Sex Education for a fourth outing, considering how quickly season 3 topped its most-watched charts at the end of last year.
We, for one, are excited to return to the show’s hormone-filled halls in season 4 – especially after the cliffhanger season 3 finale left some major unanswered questions.
In this article, we’ve rounded up all the latest news, rumors and tidbits that might give us a clue as to where this very popular Netflix show is headed. We also examined our own predictions about what will happen in the history of Sex Education.
Naturally, spoilers for Seasons 1-3 of Sex Education are revealed ahead of timeso proceed with caution.
Throw: Asa Butterfield, Emma Mackey, Ncuti Gatwa, Gillian Anderson and Aimee Lou Wood will return, although Patricia Allison, Simone Ashley, Rakhee Thakrar and Tanya Reynold have confirmed that they will not be reprising their roles.
Plot Predictions: With Moordale out of cash and set to end at the end of Season 3 of Sex Education, this dilemma will form the main narrative thread of Season 4. The episodes will also deal with Maeve’s new life in America. Later in this article, we’ve detailed further possible plot threads.
Release date: Filming for the new episodes officially began on July 4, 2022, so we don’t expect Season 4 to arrive in January 2023 at the earliest.
Sex Education season 4 release date
There’s currently no confirmed release date for Sex Education season 4 – though rest assured the series has been officially renewed by Netflix. For our money, it will appear in the first half of 2023.
These estimates were confirmed by casting for Season 4 in 2021, where the show’s producers expressed a desire to hire two trans actors for a pair of new characters. “The project is rolling in the period April-November 2022”, was the call – ia latest production list (opens in a new tab) confirmed that filming began in July – meaning we certainly won’t be seeing Sex Education season 4 this year.
CALL FOR CASTING Two New Trans Characters For SEX EDUCATION Season 4 @NetflixUK 🍆 Trans Actors Get To Work!!! 😁💗🌸💪🏾 Share with your buddies too! pic.twitter.com/QUQ9tTms8YNovember 17, 2021
But we’re happy to see the series return, even if Moordale’s students can only stay in the fictional school for so many years before it becomes illogical to continue roaming the classrooms as 20-year-olds destined for university.
Still, that may indeed be the path the show decides to take, and now that Netflix has renewed Sex Education for season 4, it may align with the release schedule of previous entries – regardless of a third season hampered by the pandemic – which each landed in January 2017. 2019 and 2020 respectively
The latest official update for the upcoming season of Sex Education came in April 2022 when the Netflix UK Twitter account teased (opens in a new tab) the following message: “More sex. More drama. Moor…away. What’s next? Well, we can’t tell you that. But we CAN tell you to watch this place for season 4 news.”
We’ve got our ears open for more official grunts in the coming months.
Sex education season 4 cast
As for who will be returning to the show in Season 4, the show’s main characters Asa Butterfield, Emma Mackey, Ncuti Gatwa, Gillian Anderson, Aimee Lou Wood and Mimi Keene will reprise their roles as Otis, Maeve, Eric, Jean, Aimee and Ruby.
The likes of Connor Swindells (Adam), Kedar Williams-Stirling (Jackson) and Mikael Persbrandt (Jakob) are also likely to return, along with most of the show’s third season’s new characters, including Headmistress Hope (Jemima Kirke) and new student Cal (Dua Saleh). .
However, Patricia Allison will not return to the role of Ola in Sex Education. The actress revealed on Capital Xtra in July that she would “not be joining the team” for the show’s fourth season, citing a desire to pursue “other little things”.
The same goes for Simone Ashley, whose ongoing commitment to another Netflix series, Bridgerton, means she cannot return as Olivia Hanan in the upcoming season of Sex Education. Rakhee Thakrar (Miss Sands) and Tanya Reynold (Lily) will also not be reprising their roles as both will focus on other projects.
Emma Mackey’s Maeve Wiley’s future has been uncertain for a while, but now we know that Mackey is currently filming new episodes of the series (for radio times (opens in a new tab)). However, given her character’s departure to America at the end of the third season, the Death on the Nile actor confirmed that she would not appear “as consistently” as in previous seasons.
Still, with Mackey currently filming Greta Gerwig’s long-awaited Barbie movie alongside Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, fans should be grateful she didn’t prioritize entirely new Hollywood-caliber roles over a return to Sex Education (which she was perfectly qualified to do).
Incidentally, Ncuti Gatwa, who is also on the entry list for Gerwig’s Barbie movie, was confirmed as the next Doctor Who, so while there was an outside chance that he too could pull out of the upcoming episodes of Sex Education, his involvement was officially confirmed in August 2022
In line with the casting call above, several new actors will be joining Sex Education in season 4 – but hopefully more so than the very underutilized Jason Isaacs in season 3.
One of those actors is Schitt’s Creek star Dan Levy, who will appear in Season 4 of Sex Education as Maeve’s American teacher, Mr. Molloy. You can check out the pair in action via a tweet (shared by Netflix in August) below:
Season 4 of Sex Education is in production – and Dan Levy has joined the cast as Mr. Molloy! pic.twitter.com/Lxitrgb0FaAugust 19, 2022
Sex education season 4 story
As above, the third season of Sex Education conjured up an air of finality for some of the narrative threads – but it also opened up a lot more.
As Mackey herself has admitted (see cast info above), Maeve’s departure to America will have ramifications for her screen time in Season 4, which may result in Otis being forced to overcome his love for her once and for all, despite the promise of a mutual romance before Maeve’s decision to leave the country.
How teaser synopsis (opens in a new tab) for the upcoming season of Sex Education reads: “Season 4 of Sex Education follows Eric and Otis at Cavendish Sixth Form College with a non-competitive, student-led approach. In the United States, Maeve is studying at Wallace University. Otis misses her, adjusting to not being an only child or the only therapist on campus.” There seems to be a lot more heartache on the cards.
Other characters, however, seem to be waiting for an even rockier ride. Adam and Eric decided to part ways after a period of romantic ups and downs, and the latter’s kiss with another man in Nigeria was the final nail in the coffin for a relationship that always seemed oddly balanced given Adam’s ongoing journey to understand his own sexuality. But we’ve also seen Adam grow closer to the former Eric Rahim in the later episodes of season 3, suggesting there’s potential for a romance between the pair that once seemed impossible.
Elsewhere, after receiving the paternity test results, it looks like Jean’s new baby girl, Joy, may not be Jakob’s daughter at all. This plot twist is yet to be confirmed, but her shock – and “oh shit!” – the result suggests that an awkward conversation awaits the couple.
Then there’s the matter of the further development of Jackson and Cal’s relationship, Hope’s as yet unexplored struggle to conceive a child, and arguably the biggest story shock of all, Moordale’s near future.
In the final episode of season 3, it is revealed that the school will be closed due to a lack of investors – a move allegedly caused by students’ reluctance to back down on calls for sexual liberation on campus.
This will have big implications for Season 4 of Sex Education. Will Moordale students and staff be forced to move elsewhere? The aforementioned synopsis describing “Cavendish Sixth Form College” suggests so.
As such, we would expect the main characters of the series to unite with the local community to generate the last funds for Moordale – their true school – although it is a challenge that would probably take an entire season.
In any case, that would be our best guess for the main narrative hook of Sex Education’s fourth run. Sure, it’ll be interesting to see how Otis copes in Maeve’s absence, how Adam deals with breaking up with Eric, and how Jean plans to tell Jakob that her baby probably isn’t his – but without Moordale school, there’s no sex education.