Apple TV+’s Shrinking ended its third season on April 8 with a finale title — “And That’s Our Time” — that was, on the page and in the room, the rough cut of a series ender. Bill Lawrence and Jason Segel had written the episode under the assumption Season 3 was the end. Apple, in the production weeks immediately after the season’s January launch, changed its mind. The renewal landed before the finale shot. The script, by everyone’s account on the post-production call, did not get changed.
The finale itself ran 39 minutes. Paul Rhoades, the Parkinson’s-living therapist Harrison Ford has played for three seasons, packs and moves from Pasadena to Connecticut to be closer to his daughter Meg (Lily Rabe) and her family. Jimmy Laird (Segel), the show’s grieving-widower lead, walks Paul to the airport. They eat a final breakfast across a Pasadena diner counter. Paul tells Jimmy that the worst part of moving will be the breakfasts. Jimmy tells Paul the worst part will be having to eat them alone. They embrace, briefly, before Paul gets in the cab.
Jimmy’s arc closes more quietly. He breaks off the second-season relationship with Julie (Brett Goldstein), takes a six-month sabbatical from the practice, drives north to the Pacific coast with his daughter Alice (Lukita Maxwell), and tells the camera — in the season’s only direct address — that what he wants, for now, is the kind of silence the show has never allowed him.
According to The Hollywood Reporter’s creator interview, Lawrence has confirmed that Season 4 will open on a deliberate time jump — “long enough to let everyone come back changed,” he said, “but short enough that they recognise each other.” Every main cast member is contracted to return, including Ford. Jessica Williams, Christa Miller, Michael Urie, Luke Tennie, Ted McGinley and Goldstein are all locked. Williams’s Gaby and Miller’s Liz, whose Season 3 arcs were the season’s most popular by Apple’s own internal-stream rankings, will get expanded Season 4 storylines.
What the finale also did was thread a piece of housekeeping around Lawrence’s Apple deal. The same week Shrinking’s Season 4 renewal lands, Apple’s Margo’s Got Money Troubles also picked up Season 2. Vince Gilligan and Rhea Seehorn are more than halfway through writing Pluribus Season 2. The Morning Show Season 4 is in production with a Jon Hamm Emmy disqualification of its own. Apple is, by its own accounting, running its largest concurrent multi-season-prestige bench since the platform launched.
Ford, who joined Shrinking at 79 in 2023 and has now spent three seasons as the Apple ensemble’s grumpy heart, will continue to film Connecticut-set scenes in New Haven and Westport. NME’s finale recap reported that Apple has cleared $4 million-a-day production days for the Connecticut shoot, the highest Apple TV+ has ever cleared for a single TV scene, in part to accommodate Ford’s reduced shoot schedule.
Shrinking’s first season averaged 6.5 million weekly viewers, by Samba TV. Season 2 grew to 9.1 million. Season 3 finished at 10.4 million weekly average and, by Apple’s own count, drew the platform’s largest single-episode dwell time of any 2026 original outside of Severance. The renewal numbers — plus the finale’s emotional resolution — leave Shrinking in the unusual position of a hit show that earned the ending it did not, in the end, need.
Production on Season 4 begins in November in Pasadena and Connecticut. Lawrence has confirmed but Apple has not formally announced a target premiere of late 2027. The premise, he has said, will pick up after Jimmy’s sabbatical — “whatever Jimmy has decided to be next is what we work with.” Ford’s Paul will, Lawrence confirmed, return in episode three. The series remains under its original three-year overall deal at Warner Bros. TV. The Shrinking writers’ room reconvenes in August.
