‘Mistletoe Murders’ Season 3 First Look — Plus Scoop on What’s Next for Emily & Sam
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‘Tis the season to start getting ready for the holidays. And there is never a better place to start than the Hallmark Channel, which is gifting us with a third season of their deliciously devious mystery series, Mistletoe Murders.
And if you are new to the show, strap in because this is more than your average cozy rom-com confection (which we also love). Nope, this one is edgy and unexpected. Sarah Drew (Grey’s Anatomy) stars as Emily Lane, a seemingly cheery young woman who has moved to the so-Hallmarky hamlet of Fletcher’s Grove in Upstate New York, where she runs a year-round Christmas shop, as well as an inner monologue that belies her sunny exterior.
Because as we’ve learned over the last two seasons — as Emily has fallen for dreamy local cop Sam Wilner (Peter Mooney) while helping him crack the town’s alarmingly frequent homicides — she is actually a former member of a hacker group known as Chimera that morphed into a domestic terror cell. Not exactly Tyler Hynes kissing Hunter King at a Chiefs game, right?
“We started on our Hallmark+, so we had a little more flexibility,” says showrunner Ken Cuperus, who created Mistletoe Murders as an Audible series with wife and co-EP Michelle Melanson. “And they’ve just been [great]… They have certain rules we need to follow and that’s awesome, but they’ve been really open to letting us do a little bit more, pushing the boundaries a little bit of what they’ve done in the past. So I’m loving that.”
And we are loving this first-look pics from the season’s opening episodes, which will deal with the sudden return of Emily’s ex-partner at Chimera (Aaron Ashmore) and set up a potentially major change for the show moving forward.
So take a look…and keep a lookout for news on when Season 3 is headed our way!
“Emily is really trying to navigate the fact that the walls are closing in on her,” says Drew. “Even though she has told Sam no more secrets, she has another secret that she’s not allowed to tell him.”
Closing time! Cuperus says that Emily’s past may force her to “give up her life” in Fletcher’s Grove.
Emily’s friendship with Sam’s daughter Violet (Sierra Marilyn Riley) will be impacted by Em’s possible move, says Cuperus. “How do you fill in the gap of Emily not being in town?”
Yes, Under the Mistletoe is stocked with Hallmark realness, confesses Cuperus. “What they do is, every year, they send us just a bunch of boxes of stuff and at the end of the season, we send it back to them and then they refresh it for the next year.”
Hold on to your candy canes! “We kick off the season with him at the door,” says Cuperus of that cliffhanger return of Emily’s ex-partner Aaron. “We see that scene through. That really kind of sets the tone for the whole season.”
Can Emily and Sam handle the arrival of her former partner? “We’re [seeing] what that is going to do to the two of them,” teases Cuperus.
Drew is so excited for fans to see the new flashbacks to her work with Chimera and more of “the badassery that I always love to do.”
The Good Witch fave Catherine Bell drops by in the opening case as the wife of the Christmas chairman, “who we begin to suspect may be a black widow killer,” reveals Cuperus.
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