How Will ‘Rivals’ Finale End to Set up Season 3?

Meredith Jacobs July 13, 2026, 11:25 am

What To Know

Rivals returns in November for the second half of Season 2.
Executive producer Dominic Treadwell-Collins teases how the remaining episodes will end to set up the already-renewed Season 3.

Rivals knows how to do a cliffhanger, whether it’s to end a season or the first half of one split into two parts. And based on what executive producer Dominic Treadwell-Collins told TV Insider while discussing the midseason finale for our in-depth digital cover with David Tennant and Nafessa Williams, another one is coming to set up Season 3.

Season 1 ended with the major question of whether Tony (Tennant) was dead after Cameron (Williams) hit him in the head with an award, and he was seen bleeding out on his office floor, as well as what would happen next between Rupert (Alex Hassell) and Taggie (Bella Maclean) following their first kiss. The first episode of Season 2 addressed both (Tony lived, and Rupert went off with Cameron to protect her in the aftermath). Then Season 2 Episode 6 ended with Rupert revealing to Tony that his wife Monica (Claire Rushbrook), having gone out in the middle of a storm after learning about his affair with Declan’s (Aidan Turner) wife, Maud (Victoria Smurfit), and deciding to divorce him, died after a tree landed on her car.

Treadwell-Collins, looking ahead to the end of Season 2, promised us, “satisfaction and a whopping great cliffhanger.”

He called it “very different” from Season 1’s cliffhanger. “It still makes you want more. It makes you want another season, but also, we’ve got to be careful not to leave the audience frustrated. We’ve got to be careful with our couplings and who we get together and who we don’t get together,” he explained.

'Rivals': David Tennant Teases a 'Dangerous' Tony After Monica's Death

He continued, “And I think we need to make sure that at the end of Season 2, the audience feels satisfied and want to come back for another season. It’s been something we’ve been really, really careful about and really rigorous with Episode 12 that I’ve written with Dare Aiyegbayo, who wrote Episode 11 as well. But it’s magic. That’s the word I’m going to give you: magic.”

What’s your prediction for Season 2’s cliffhanger? Let us know in the comments section below.

Rivals, Season 2 Return, November 2026, Hulu