You’re Not Ready For Young Royals Season 3
Young Royals Season 3 is finally here, queer, and going to break your heart.
Spoiler alert: This contains spoilers for Young Royals Season 1 and Young Royals Season 2. If you haven’t watched those, I envy you. Your life is about to change. No spoilers for Young Royals Season 3.
I’ve been obsessed with Young Royals since it crossed my Netflix recommendation list. Marathoning episode after episode of Young Royals Season 3, I couldn’t stop thinking: Teens today are so spoiled.
Everybody says it, but it’s true. Teens have it so much easier. Sure, they must have unique problems. But queer teenagers have one thing I didn’t have: an abundance of queer cinema.
In high school, I watched every contemporary queer film available to me. With Tumblr as my launch point, I started with actual queer films like Blue Is The Warmest Color and then moved on to films with achingly intense queer subtext like Black Swan.
As for television, my life changed alongside everyone else’s when Ryan Murphy released Glee, the most unhinged and revelatory show I've seen to this day. Rewatching that show is more absurd each time — but no one was doing it like they were. A gay character that had an actual storyline including, but not limited to, his sexuality? It was the blueprint.
I also watched every single other show that Tumblr gave the stamp of approval for having queer storylines, even if they were merely in the background. It’s the only reason I watched Shameless to the end — which you may know as the launchpad for Jeremy Allen White - but I know for its groundbreaking queer relationship.
Between episodes of shows like Shameless and Eyewitness, I expanded to foreign films and TV. Not like a pretentious indie boy, but as someone starved for queer content, I’d take what I could get. I watched brooding Norwegian films like Jongens and North Sea Texas alongside soapy shows like SKAM because they were all I had.
Now, queer teens have Heartstopper, Everything Now, Sex Education, and more — and those are just the gay shows on Netflix. But some things never change: International queer TV is still top tier. After watching Young Royals Season 3, I can confirm that this season has some of the best episodes of TV I’ve ever watched. Tense and tender, Young Royals works because it leans into the messiness of adolescence, the idealism of youth, and the beauty of queerness to paint a portrait that feels grounded in reality but also infinitely hopeful.
When Will Young Royals Season 3 Come Out?
After months of commenting on @NetflixNordic Instagram posts (guilty), fans finally got an answer to their most pressing question: “When does Young Royals Season 3 come out?”
Alongside the Young Royals Season 3 trailer, we got not just one release date, but two.
Young Royals Season 3 is out now on Netflix. The first five episodes of the third and final season dropped on Monday, March 11th. But the show isn’t over yet. The final episode of Young Royals Season 3 will be released on Monday, March 18th.
Watch the Young Royals Season 3 trailer here:
Maybe teens today do have it hard — their dopamine-deprived brains have to wait a whole week for an episode of TV.
Season 3 will be released alongside a documentary, Young Royals Forever, about the making of the show. The show will chronicle the journey of this certified queer classic from casting to the final line of Young Royals Season 3. After that, it will truly be over.
Watch the Young Royals Forever trailer here:
What is Young Royals Season 3 about?
In a 2023 Netflix Nordic interview with Edvin Ryding and co-creators Rojda Sekersöz and Lisa Ambjörn, Edvin said, “We never problematize sexuality. We never problematize what is outside the norm. But rather, we problematize the norm.”
And it’s this problematic, normative world that Young Royals Season 3 explores. Wilhelm (Edvin Ryding) — Crown Prince of Sweden and king of grand gestures — ended Young Royals Season 2 by telling all of Sweden about his relationship with Simon (Omar Rudberg). But now that the world knows about their relationship, the world can intrude. Suddenly the two are battling Instagram comments as well as the centuries-old expectations of the Swedish monarchy. And unlike candied representations of boys-vs-monarchy we’ve recently seen (ahem, Red, White & Royal Blue), the powers that be put up a formidable fight.
The Season 3 teaser trailer (which I watched an unspeakable number of times), saw Wilhem and Simon together for the first time in the Palace. Season 2 began in the palace too. The Wille we found there was battling grief and betrayal, dreaming of a relationship with Simon that seemed out of reach. He references these dreams to Simon in Episode 1 of this season, saying: “It’s not how I imagined it.”
Indeed, the season that follows is not how Wille could have imagined it. Nor any of us. None of the fan theories and predictions have even scratched the surface of what ensues in Young Royals Season 3. And that’s to say nothing of the finale.
How does Young Royals Season 3 end?
For years, fans and critics alike have applauded Young Royals for representation. It was cast with actual teenagers (though they’ve grown up over the four years since the show began), and small details like showing textured skin and normal outfits (as normal as the old-money Hillerska crowd gets) set it apart from teen shows like Riverdale, Euphoria, and even the Spanish hit Elité.
Mental health is also a major theme of the show. Our troubled protagonist Wilhelm has been struggling with so much in just one term at Hillerska — thank goodness he goes to therapy. Over the last three seasons, Edvin Rydings has put on a masterclass in portraying characters with mental health issues. The progression of how Wilhelm externalizes his anxiety is also telling of how the plot develops. Every choice is intentional, from the subtle lip-biting to the gut-wrenching screams. In Season 2, he was finally starting to connect how the outdated traditions he is beholden to contribute to his mental state. In Young Royals Season 3, will he finally figure it out?
For Simon, social class has always been an obvious barrier between him and the privileged Hillerska elite. But unlike his sister Sara, he doesn’t feel the need to change himself to fit in with his upper-class peers. Despite their taunts, he stands up for himself and speaks his mind. Season 3 asks: can he still do this under the watchful eye of the Royal Family?
The only critique I might have had of the representation in Young Royals Season 1 and Young Royals Season 2 was its quiet examination of race. Was it too quiet? Too subtle? Small gestures were obvious to me, a keen-eyed viewer who was also one of very few non-white students at a tiny boarding school. Things like Felice changing her hair from pressed to curly — and experiencing microaggressions because of it. Or Simon and Sara being ostracized not just for their class, but for their race.
In Young Royals Season 3, it becomes clear that the creators were building a foundation to thoroughly explore in this concluding act. From Felice’s racial disillusionment after being used as a token Black student to Simon's thrust into the spotlight and being dubbed a “typical Latin lover,” race is foregrounded in a new way this season. All these things create a world that becomes unteneable for our two protagonists to navigate. And how they stumble across it, experiencing friction at every turn and unable to communicate what they mean without who they are getting in the way, reflects so clearly the pitfalls of youth.
Is Young Royals Season 3 good?
The test of a good show is if you can stick by its characters even as they frustrate you. I, an adult woman, want to shake these Swedish boys all season. I want to force them into a room to really talk, to make them explain how they see things so that their differences stop surprising them. They have moments where they come to small revelations. “Isn’t that supposed to be a good thing,” Wille says of their differences in a Season 3 episode. “Aren’t we supposed to learn from each other?”
But moments like these are obstructed by what Young Royals Season 3 portrays so well: the inherent selfishness of youth. Even as they try their best to be there for each other, all the characters are clearly motivated by their own urgent, teenage desires. They’re also blinded by their teenage insecurities, thinking every problem they face is somehow their fault. Cue the miscommunication trope. In the words of a now-bygone TikTok trend: It’s a canon event, I can’t interfere.
And while we don’t know how it ends — we’ll have to wait for the finale for that — whatever happens, it will have been bold, brilliant, and beautiful. Young Royals Season 3, don’t break my heart!