The Killing officially coming back, officially promises not to jerk you around this time

Resolving a mystery that many have already decided they are no longer interested in, AMC has officially confirmed rumors of a third season for The Killing, beginning production on 12 more episodes next month in the rolling sweater-lands of Vancouver. As previously reported, Veena Sud will return to run the show and give interviews in which she rejects all your criticisms about how she runs the show. Meanwhile, Mireille Enos and Joel Kinnaman are the only confirmed returning cast members, following the recent news that Billy Campbell, Michelle Forbes, and Brent Sexton had finally been deemed as unnecessary to the plot, but in a new way that means they’re not worth paying anymore.

Other lessons that Sud and Co. seem to have learned this time around: All involved promise that the third season will have a single, self-contained story—one concerning a runaway girl and a string of murders, with a past connection to Enos’ character that, like the show’s renewal, pulls her out of the welcome bliss of retirement. More importantly, the finale will have the end to that story, the network having learned its lesson about setting viewer expectation by asking questions it has no intention of answering. Presumably it will soon debut a newer, more appropriate tagline for the third season, like, “What is the meaning of life?”