This review was made possible by screeners of The Righteous Gemstones Season 3. The Righteous Gemstones Season 3 premieres on HBO on June 18th, 2023. New episodes are released every Sunday.
You know them, you love them, and you also might hate them. The Righteous Gemstones are back for a third season, and redneck Succession has never been spicier. It honestly may shock you how similar this season is to the recent final run of Succession, another HBO hit that wrapped just a week ago. Like always, the Gemstones have something to fight about, but with Patriarch Eli Gemstone stepping back and leaving the church to his three numbskull children, Jesse, Judy, and Kelvin must find a way to work things out and live up to the legacy of their mother and father.
Glory Be To The Three
Let’s cut to the chase. Danny McBride, Edi Patterson, and Adam Devine are the best parts of The Righteous Gemstones. Their wildly different natures bring such a chaotic dynamic to this show and how each of them in their own way represents misgivings of the church by not living by the word of god, and letting their pride and egos interfere will what really matters, the family. Danny McBride is hilarious, he is all in on Jesse Gemstone. I believe this character may be a part of him for a long time, even after the show ends.
Edi Patterson is so wonderfully awkward, playing Judy as if she never grew out of middle school and selling the absolute hell out of it, every season she finds a brand new way to make it work. Throughout the series, Kelvin (Adam DeVine) has been one of the more lacking siblings. It’s felt like they’ve never been clear on where they’ve wanted to take him and if they wanted to commit to certain aspects of his character but this season they help him find himself.
The Sins of ‘The Righteous Gemstones’
While the three siblings are sharing the spotlight in more than one way this season as they work through the difficulties of building back better than before, that, unfortunately, means quite a few characters take the backseat this season. While of course Jesse, Judy, and Kelvin are the leads for them to work as well as they can other characters and their stories act as the moving part that pushes them forward but they’re lacking quite a bit this season.
When we kick off this time around we’re introduced to multiple plotlines for characters like Gideon and Pontius Gemstone. Gideon having been injured onset doing stunts, comes home to recover. However, Gideon just doesn’t really need to be there with how little he is given to do besides driving his grandfather Eli around.
Pontious, Jesse’s second eldest child, is given a bit of a bad boy phase this season but not much is really done with it besides a couple of scenes here and there showing his newfound rebelous nature. I understand what they were trying to do there, using these outbursts as ways to stack more ontop of Jesse’s pile and up the stakes, but it unfortunately doesn’t work as well as I think they intended.
In the first episode, we’re introduced to what looks to be a reverse version of the sibling trio, from a rival church, led by Stephen Dorff, a newcomer to this season. What looks to be setting up an intense rivalry fizzles out quickly before being picked up again in the final episode. It felt like this was a plotline that the writers forgot about and decided to tie off this loose end quickly. While it’s not bad necessarily, it felt like a lazy way to do it when they could’ve done more with the dynamic between the two trios.
Walking The Righteous Path
This season homes in on the Gemstone family as well as the radical side of religion, with the most intense antagonist yet for the series. Steven Zahn and Kristen Johnson join this season as the Gemstones kids’ aunt and uncle, with Johnson playing Eli’s sister. Steve Zahn’s great performance shines through his terrible wig as the leader of a well-put-together religious militia that believes the Gemstones have lost their way. Pete wants to show them his way of doing things, what true devotion is, through more explosive means.
The Gemstones have always been super materialistic people who’ve put their wealth before their faith, while some things may never change, they must learn to stand on their own. The kids must find ways out of the shadow of their mother and father’s legacy and learn how to run the church and keep it on the right path.
‘The Righteous Gemstones’ Season 3 – Final Thoughts
Season 3 of The Righteous Gemstones holds onto its charm with its incredible leads, but struggles with some of its side characters and their storylines. It’s unclear how much longer they intend to keep this show going, but getting at least one more season out of this merry band of televangelists seems like a fitting end.
Check out the trailer for Season 3 of The Righteous Gemstones below:
The Review
'The Righteous Gemstones' Season 3
Season 3 of The Righteous Gemstones holds onto its charm with its incredible leads, but struggles with some of its side characters and their storylines. It's unclear how much longer they intend to keep this show going, but getting at least one more season out of this merry band of televangelists seems like a fitting end.
