Will There Be a 'The Serpent Queen' Season 3? There's Certainly More Story to Tell

Period drama The Serpent Queen wrapped up its second season with an uber-dramatic and exceptionally bloody final installment that featured everything from a surprise pregnancy and a forced wedding to literal mass murder. "All Saints Day" is the sort of audacious, over-the-top storytelling that this show does best, as Catherine de Medici presides over the epic, bloody madness that viewers had been waiting for weeks to see. (For a sense of its scope, this episode's real-life events helped inspire the infamous Red Wedding in George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones books.) 

Though the finale has a reasonably ambiguous ending in which Catherine hints at Charles's death and Anjou's eventual succession to the throne of France, Starz has yet to announce whether The Serpent Queen will return for a third season. But if history is anything to go by, there's plenty of story to tell. 

"All Saint's Day" sees Catherine finally abandon her plans for peace and stability between France's competing religious and political factions, engineering not only the murder of supposed Protestant prophet Edith but her primary supporters and most of the queen's enemies to boot. (It's not Catherine's fault if both the Princes of the Blood miraculously survive somehow.) This event would become known as the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, and it's one of the darkest events of Catherine's rule. Though the true extent of the royal family's involvement remains unclear, its fallout was very real, extending throughout France and much of Europe. 

The Serpent Queen has played a bit fast and loose with some of the specifics of French history — for example, Catherine's son Hercule technically lives for over a decade longer than the show grants him and dies of malaria, not a peasant-thrown rock to the head. However, the broad strokes have been (mostly?) accurate. The extended religious conflict between French Catholics and Huguenots did drive much of the policy during the reign of Catherine and her children. Margot married Henry of Navarre, and even if it's unlikely she slept with the Duke of Guise beforehand, The St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre is an actual event. (However, it didn't involve a random prophet named Edith.)

Season 3 would likely deal with the dramatic events on the horizon in Catherine's life with a similar regard for what makes good drama versus what's technically historically accurate. After all, the best scenes from Season 2 involved Minnie Driver's Queen Elizabeth I, who most likely never went to France in her life! Since Catherine herself already hints at this, it's likely a third season of the show would depict the death of King Charles, who passes away just a couple of years after the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. His brother, the Duke of Anjou, ascends the throne as King Henry III. 

But the long-tail religious struggles — intensified by the mass murder we saw play out in Season 2 — mean that Anjou's reign is not a particularly calm one (though it lasts for the better part of fifteen years). This predominantly involves the last of what is commonly known as the French Wars of Religion, known as the War of the Three Henrys. 

Catherine's son (and future king) Anjou is one of the Henrys in question, along with Margot's new husband, Henry of Navarre (spoiler alert: also a future king), and Henry of Lorraine, son of the Duke of Guise. Sparked by a succession crisis upon the death of Catherine's youngest son — and Anjou's presumptive heir — Francois, which made Margot's Protestant husband the next in line for the throne, the ensuing conflict sees Anjou ban Protestantism, Henry of Navarre get excommunicated by Pope Sixtus V and the assassination of the Duke of Guise. In short, it's a lot. And it's precisely the messy, bloody story The Serpent Queen delights in telling. 

Season 3 would also likely delve into Margot and Henry's marriage, one which historically was not a particularly happy one, but when has that ever stopped this show before? If we don't get some aspects of Alexander Dumas's famous novel La Reine Margot, which depicts the future queen's alleged affair with a charismatic Protestant soldier and her increasingly adversarial relationship with her mother, I'd be shocked. By which I mean, I would be seated. 

All episodes of The Serpent Queen Seasons 1 and 2 are streaming on Starz.