Succession has a cheeky reason for not incorporating the pandemic into season 3

It seems the Roy family won't be hit too hard — or hit at all — by the COVID-19 pandemic in Succession's latest season.

The acclaimed HBO show, which follows the wealthy Murdoch-esque Roy family, is set to return for a highly-anticipated third season this fall. But although the season began filming after the start of the COVID-19 crisis last year, Vulture reports that creator Jesse Armstrong decided not to rewrite any of the scripts to incorporate the pandemic.

"These are really wealthy people," star Sarah Snook explained to Vulture. "And unfortunately, none of the world's really wealthy people were going to be affected by the pandemic."

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That's not to say the show itself wasn't hugely affected by the pandemic, though. As Vulture notes, it was originally expected to begin shooting weeks after COVID-19 lockdowns hit the United States in March 2020, and as a result of the ensuing production delays, the show will return about a full year later than originally expected. Armstrong told The New Yorker that amid this period of uncertainty before filming could begin, executives at HBO were urging him to wait "rather than have Logan do a series of Webinars we can put out on HBO Max." Eventually, the show was able to restart production while following COVID-19 protocols, and the third season is now set to finally premiere in October.

Succession won't be the only highly-anticipated upcoming HBO show to mostly ignore the pandemic, either. The new season of Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm is also set to premiere in October, and according to star Jeff Garlin, "except for the first episode, we don't do any COVID stuff."