'The Great' Season 3 Trailer Sees Catherine and Peter Try to Salvage Their Marriage

The couple that rules an empire together...stays together? That's the question (sort of) at the heart of The Great Season 3, the Hulu historical dramedy that focuses on a fictionalized version of the reign of Catherine the Great. The series, which hails from Oscar-winner Tony McNamara (The Favourite), is offbeat, irreverent, hilarious, and largely historically inaccurate, a tale that nevertheless manages a surprisingly deft exploration of the roles of women in power and the compromises they must often make to stay there.

In this version of the story, Elle Fanning stars as Empress Catherine the Great, the longest-reigning female monarch in Russian history, while Nicholas Hoult plays her charming, occasionally violent husband, Peter III. Season 2 saw Catherine finally take the Russian throne for her own. However, she ran into plenty of problems trying to "enlighten" a country that isn't necessarily eager to embrace new ways of thinking and living. And, of course, there's Peter, who Catherine just can't seem to shake — either politically or from her own heart; even though she overthrew his government, he killed her mother, and she very recently tried to stab him, ultimately taking out one of his many body doubles instead.

(Yes, the real Peter III died pretty early on in Catherine's reign from mysterious circumstances that may or may not have involved his captors trying to smother him with a mattress and/or strangle him with a scarf, but just trust, you won't mind ignoring history in this specific instance.)