“Search Party” showrunners Charles Rogers and Sarah-Violet Bliss will have to explain what the “everything” Dory (Alia Shawkat) saw when she died was, as the comedy series has been renewed for a fifth season, HBO Max confirmed to Variety.
The showrunners also signed a two-year overall deal with the streamer.
“We are thrilled that HBO Max has not only given the world a fifth season of ‘Search Party,’ but also shown this much faith in our partnership with them as we develop new projects for the platform,” said Bliss and Rogers. “Potential titles for upcoming shows include ‘Monkeys Love Manhattan’ and ‘The Pineapple Predicament.’ Those aren’t actual shows we would ever pitch but it exhibits that we can make up titles if we need to.”
The fourth season saw Dory be the character that needed a titular search party after Chip (Cole Escola) kidnapped her and held her captive in a painstakingly re-created but smaller scale version of her New York City apartment in the basement of his aunt Lylah’s (Susan Sarandon) house in the small town of Babyfoot. At the end of the season Chip and Lylah left Dory locked in the basement as the house burned. The finale episode saw her friends saying their goodbyes at Dory’s funeral, but the very last moments of the episode revealed Dory awoke on the gurney after being pulled from the house, exclaiming that she died and “saw everything.”
After the finale, Bliss told Variety that Dory, and the story, was evolving because “you can’t continue to go down denial again; you don’t want to replay the same part over and over again.”
“Search Party” premiered on TBS in 2016 and aired its first two seasons on that linear Turner network, before moving to WarnerMedia’s new streaming service, HBO Max, for Season 3. The third season launched early in HBO Max’s infancy, in June 2020, and the fourth season followed hot on its heels in January 2021.
“Charles and Sarah-Violet are the masters of genre-blending and we can’t wait to see what they come up with next!” said Sarah Aubrey, head of original content, HBO Max. “It’s been a joy working with them — they are whip smart, wildly funny and have such a distinctive worldview — we couldn’t be happier that they are continuing to call HBO Max their home.”
Bliss and Rogers created the series with Michael Showalter, who all serve as executive producers alongside Lilly Burns and Tony Hernandez of Jax Media. The series stars Shawkat, Meredith Hagner, John Early and John Reynolds.
