Sad news for fans of aging thespians arguing about Cheetos today, as Deadline reports that star Alan Arkin has dropped out of the third and final season of Netflix’s The Kominsky Method. Somewhat surprisingly, Arkin’s departure from the series—which he co-leads with Michael Douglas—apparently had nothing to do with the COVID-19 production shutdowns, and was reportedly made all the way back when the show aired its second season last October.
There’s no indication of that in last season’s finale, though, which ended with Douglas’ acting teacher Sandy Kominsky and Arkin’s tireless agent Norman doing their standard grousing and grumbling about the perils of growing old together. The show will (obviously) address Arkin’s departure in its third season; the most obvious way of doing so is, of course, depressingly obvious, but hey: The second season did end with Norman taking an interest in Scientology—courtesy of his Haley Joel Osment-played grandson—so we can always keep our fingers crossed that he’s just out plowing the waves with the Sea Org instead. (Is that just a lateral move to dying? We’ll leave that to the thetans to decide.)
Produced by Chuck Lorre, The Kominsky Method was picked up for a third season this summer. No word yet on when this final, Arkin-less season is set to film or air.