"Sex Education" Season 4 will most likely premiere 2023

Netflix’s “Sex Education,” the fourth season is on its way — though the cast won’t be exactly the same. Another star has confirmed she won’t be returning to the show: Tanya Reynolds, who portrays the quirky Lily Inglehart.

Reynolds stated, “I’m not [returning], actually, which is sad, very sad.” She elaborated, “It’s just the natural progression of these shows – when you have such big ensemble casts and so many characters, I think you have to let a few older characters go to make way for newer ones, which is absolutely the right thing, the way it should happen.”

Reynolds’s news comes after her castmate (and onscreen love interest) Patricia Allison revealed that she too won’t be back to reprise her role as Ola Nyman on the show. Allison indicated that she wants to focus on new opportunities, which include starring roles in the film “Paradise” and the action-adventure-comedy series “Extraordinary.””I absolutely have loved being on ‘Sex Education’ so, so much . . . but unfortunately, I won’t be joining the team for season four,” she said in an interview “Some other opportunities have come up. I’ve been doing it for three years, and I’ve genuinely loved it.” Allison’s character Ola was also a love interest for protagonist Otis Milburn (Asa Butterfield) until they discovered they were sexually incompatible, and Ola’s relationship with Reynolds’s character Lily was a major highlight of the second and third seasons.

Netflix officially confirmed that “Sex Education” had been renewed for a fourth season after a long wait. The first two seasons premiered only one year apart, whereas viewers waited around 21 months for the third season due to filming delays caused by the pandemic. In the third season, Moordale High School suffered through the presence of a new headmistress who enforced strict protocols that removed the sex-positive environment that had previously existed on campus.

The fourth season is expected to begin filming sometime during the summer of 2022, meaning it likely won’t premiere until 2023. In the meantime, some the show’s principal cast members are going to be quite busy. “Sex Education” stars Emma Mackey and Ncuti Gatwa will appear in Greta Gerwig’s forthcoming “Barbie” movie, which stars Margot Robbie, and Gatwa will also appear as The Doctor in the next season of “Doctor Who.”