Anyone who subscribed to Apple TV for sci-fi has learned to get comfortable with waiting. The streamer has quietly built the best genre lineup in streaming, with series like Severance, Silo, Foundation, and For All Mankind. But its shows have also become known for the long gaps between seasons, with Severance taking nearly three years to return for Season 2.

Naturally, when Apple’s sci-fi hit Pluribus ended its first season last December, it already had a two-season order in place. That still did not give fans much reason to expect a quick return. The Vince Gilligan series surpassed Severance’s launch record and became one of Apple TV’s biggest originals, while also earning 18 Emmy nominations for its first season. Now, the director has offered a more concrete update. Speaking on Deadline’s “Crew Call” podcast alongside composer Dave Porter, he said the writers have finished mapping out Season 2’s story and that filming will begin “in a couple of months.” That would put the start of production somewhere in the fall, presumably back in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the city where Gilligan has essentially shot almost everything since Breaking Bad, and where Pluribus Season 1 was filmed for the better part of 2024. It’s a bigger milestone than it might sound. Gilligan has been unusually candid about how slowly this season has come together, and the updates before now were not exactly encouraging. Back in June, he revealed that the team was only around the halfway point in the writing process, and Gilligan has long admitted that his writers’ room doesn’t plot arcs in advance.

He gave the world Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, so nobody is seriously arguing with the method. Hearing that the story is now fully broken is arguably the first update since the finale that actually makes the wait feel shorter. The obvious question is what this means for a release date. Season 1 started filming in February 2024 and did not premiere until November 2025. If Season 2 follows anything close to that pattern and begins filming this fall, it would most likely arrive sometime in late 2027 or 2028.

Apple’s programming chief, Matt Cherniss, has already suggested the show will miss the next Emmy eligibility window. In other words, nobody at Apple seems to be rushing this. Previously, Gilligan explained that he’s currently envisioning Pluribus running three seasons. With Rhea Seehorn (the show’s lead) emerging as a serious Emmy contender for a performance that could finally win her the recognition Better Call Saul never did, a self-contained run of a few seasons sounds much healthier than stretching the series out for a decade.

Release Date

November 6, 2025

Network

Apple TV

Directors

Adam Bernstein, Zetna Fuentes, Melissa Bernstein

Writers

Ariel Levine