Plus, Segel teases how Jimmy’s dating life is going.

Shrinking stars Jason Segel and Lukita Maxwell on Jimmy and Alice in season 3: ‘2 of them versus the world’

Plus, Segel teases how Jimmy's dating life is going.

By Ashley Boucher

Ashley Boucher is a senior TV editor at **. She has been working at EW for four years.

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December 19, 2025 10:00 a.m. ET

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Lukita Maxwell and Jason Segel on 'Shrinking'. Credit:

Courtesy of Apple

It’s time to leave the nest.

After two seasons watching therapist Jimmy (Jason Segel) and his daughter Alice (Lukita Maxwell) struggle through the aftermath of their wife/mother’s death in a car crash, the season 2 finale found both of them forgiving Louis (Brett Goldstein), the drunk driver who caused the fatal accident.

“A lot got taken care of by Jimmy forgiving Louis at the end of season 2. Now, we're on the other side of that,” Segel, a co-creator and executive producer of the show, says. When *Shrinking* returns for season 3 in January, Jimmy and Alice, along with Paul (Harrison Ford), Gaby (Jessica Williams), Sean (Luke Tennie), Liz (Christa Miller), Derek (Ted McGinley), and Brian (Michael Urie), will be looking ahead to the next chapters of their lives.

Christa Miller, Jason Segel, Ted McGinley, Jessica Williams, Luke Tennie, Harrison Ford, Damon Wayans Jr., Michael Urie, and Wendie Malick in "Shrinking" season 3.

Courtesy of Apple

“Every season we pick a true north, a word for what the season is gonna be about,” Segel explains. “Season 1 was about grief, season 2 was about forgiveness, and season 3 is about moving forward. So we did a lot of work in seasons 1 and 2 of getting Jimmy and some of our other characters just to zero, just back to back to even on the ledger. And now it's about, okay, what does it look like to try on the next part of our lives, to varying degrees of success and failure?”

For Maxwell’s Alice, the next chapter is one most teenagers look forward to: leaving home for college. Though there might be a snag in her readiness to leave.

“We see Alice getting really excited to go to college. She wants to go to the East Coast, she has a dream school, she wants to play on the soccer team,” Maxwell says. “And then when she meets her coach, her coach asks her about this community, this family around Alice, and she realizes that she has such a strong scaffolding of support and gets nervous to leave. And that's where we start season 3.”

Lukita Maxwell in "Shrinking" season 3.

Courtesy of Apple

Alice isn’t the only one worried about the big change. “Jimmy's having a hard time letting her go, but he ultimately knows it's the best for both of them,” Maxwell adds.

Segel, noting Jimmy’s failures as a parent in season 1, says that “Jimmy will spend the rest of his life atoning for the fact that he did not step up when the worst thing happened.” But following the “repair work” the father-daughter pair did in season 2, “it's the two of them versus the world,” Segel says.

“There's a lot of change in front of both of them and they're hesitant to move on,” Maxwell says. “I think that when you've experienced something so painful and so difficult and so hard and gotten your strength back, there is this moment of reprieve that you have. And I think they're both wanting to sit in that moment of peace, but life keeps going and they have to keep going.”

For Alice, that means finding the bravery to leave her community for college, and for Jimmy, that means dipping his toes into the dating pool again.

Segel confirms that season 3 will explore Jimmy trying to date, though he describes it as “not very pretty.

Jason Segel, Lukita Maxwell, and Luke Tennie in "Shrinking" season 3.

Courtesy of Apple

“But I think that we have a very beautiful resolution,” he says. “Sometimes we try to avoid the thing that we think is gonna be the most real. So yeah, you'll get to see me flounder a bit.”

Viewers saw the early seeds of a potential romantic relationship for Jimmy in season 2 with the introduction of Sofi, played by Segel’s former *How I Met Your Mother* costar Cobie Smulders.

“She will be back in season 3,” Segel confirms, adding that “it was the best thing in the world reuniting with her.”

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“We've known each other for 20 years, and I think the magic trick of the show of that chemistry between Jimmy and Sofi is that while they have just met on the show, they seem like they've known each other for 20 years,” he adds. “So it really does feel like love at first sight. I didn't expect that it would come across that way, but I think it really does.”

As for how that relationship plays out, Segel adds, “we'll get to see Jimmy try his best.”

Alice, meanwhile, is all in on her dad dating again, Maxwell says. “Alice is very supportive of her dad finding love and finding support and connection from other people, especially because she knows she's about to leave. She's empathetic to the fact that there will be an unfillable gap when she leaves to college, but she just wants him to be happy.”

*Shrinking* season 3 premieres Jan. 28 on Apple TV+.

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