Exclusive

‘Adults’: What’s Next for Anton and Paul Baker? Stars & Bosses Tease Season 3

Anton (Owen Thiele) and Paul Baker’s (Jack Innanen) relationship is just beginning at the end of Adults Season 2. The slow-burn between them has come to a close, but cocreators Ben Kronengold and Rebecca Shaw have plenty of ideas about where the couple’s romance should go next in a potential Season 3. (Warning: Spoilers for Adults Season 2 ahead.)

Like Season 1, the FX sitcom’s sophomore season ends with a kiss, but in a very different context. Legal husbands Anton and Paul Baker spend all of Season 2 trying to ignore the romantic tension between them, until the finale sees Issa (Amita Rao) realize how deeply Anton’s feelings run for her now-ex-boyfriend. Anton’s ensuing confession to Issa is accidentally broadcast on live TV — long story — which Paul Baker is watching. Anton runs home to Paul Baker, and they share a sweet kiss.

First things first, Thiele and Innanen have some items on their Anton and Paul Baker Season 3 wishlist. Thiele’s is simple: “I hope they don’t shy away from their feelings anymore. And I hope they have a lot of sex!!!!!” he told Swooon, using exactly that many exclamation marks in his email.

His wish may come true because Kronengold expressed a similar sentiment. “I’m curious about their relationship to intimacy because I think they’re very, very different, and I think Anton, the deeper you get into his romantic life and his private life, he is very guarded,” the showrunner said in a separate interview. “And I think Paul Baker is a very sexual guy. So I’m curious about how those two different perspectives, how those two different sides of them would clash or gel pretty magically and transform each other. I think that’s a very fun thing to explore.”

In their interview for Swooon’s Adults digital cover story, Thiele and Innanen agreed that “way too much PDA” would be fun. “It’d be hilarious to open with them being an obnoxious couple,” Innanen said, while Thiele suggested Anton wears an apron to cook for Paul Baker. (Anton was on MasterChef Junior, after all.) It would flip the script because Paul Baker does that for Anton throughout Season 2.

FX

Shaw also wants to see the new couple do new couple things, like going on a double date. “That kind of thing is so fun to watch in a new couple,” she said. She’s also interested in having their romance placed next to Billie (Lucy Freyer) and Samir (Malik Elassal). “On the other side of this, having a couple who maybe is a little less sure of who they are or aren’t a couple at all, [who] are trying to backtrack and pretend it didn’t happen… There’s just so much fun dynamic to be had with both of them.”

In a potential Season 3, Kronengold also wants to dive into what happened behind the closed door of Billie and Samir’s night and also the “big and dramatic consequences to a lot of the different choices that the housemates made on election night” overall, so don’t expect a major time jump. Kronengold said, “I think we’re really curious to see the pretty immediate results of [that] because our eye was on one ball, right? Our eye was on Paul Baker and Anton, but meanwhile, something pretty explosive happened upstairs that’s going to have consequences for everyone.”

Related

‘Adults' Recap: Where All Relationships Stand Before Season 2

Beyond that, Shaw wants to put Anton and Paul Baker in more situations like “Annabelle” — in Season 1, they became quasi-parents to a rude teen who traveled to New York for an abortion — going forward. “I think those two are so fun when they’re on the same team trying to solve a problem together,” she said. “Just because Anton and Paul Baker are so different than each other.”

She continued, “I think that as a dynamic in their relationship is so fun to play with. How do they both think they’re going to solve it? And how does it totally get swapped over the course of something? I want to see them as a duo trying to tackle ridiculous problems.”

Adults, Season 2, Streaming Now, Prime Video