How To With John Wilson: Why HBO's Quirky Docuseries Is Ending After Season 3
If you're familiar with "How To with John Wilson," you know that it's an often weird, always funny, and strangely moving portrait of the world through host and creator Wilson's eyes, following him as he talks to people from all walks of life and tries to learn lessons he wouldn't on his own. It's also ending after its upcoming third season, and according to Wilson, it's thanks to the fact that filming Season 2 of "How To" was so stressful that he thought it would be a good call to close up shop after just one more round.
Wilson, a quiet and seemingly sweet man, really delves into people's psyches for the show, and this showed in Season 2, where he tried to learn to be "spontaneous" or how to remember dreams. "As we were premiering Season 2 and I started to write Season 3, I started to conceive of this as the last season," Wilson told the New York Times. "I really wanted to end on a strong note, and there was a lot of psychologically and emotionally stressful stuff that happened in Season 2 and also in Season 3."
Plus? He just really likes trilogies. "There are only three seasons of 'Jackass,'" he told the NYT at the start at the interview.
What is How To with John Wilson about?
Since "How To with John Wilson" premiered in the fall of 2020, stranger shows have definitely made waves — including "The Rehearsal," which is also part of the HBO family and which is created by Nathan Fielder, an executive producer who works alongside Wilson. In the first season, Wilson went on deep dives that became entirely new things — we genuinely can't describe the episode about furniture covers on this fine, family-friendly site — and closed out Season 1 with an unexpectedly heartfelt portrait about the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Wilson never mocks his interviewees but treats them with genuine respect and approaches them with real curiosity, turning a study that could skew cruel into something oddly sweet.
For Wilson's part, he's still amazed that anybody wanted to make the show. Reminded by the NYT that he said it was a "miracle" that his series got made, Wilson said, "One thing that [executive producer and comedian] Nathan Fielder said when we were in the meeting with HBO initially was like, when I watch John's stuff, I start to see the world in that way. The perspective of the show was something I took a lifetime to develop, through watching films and watching people and being bored. I think boredom is one of my great ways of inspiring myself."
What will John Wilson do when his eponymous show ends?
So what are the next steps for Wilson, a talented and innovative creator with an HBO series under his belt? As Wilson told the NYT, his projects might stay personal as he keeps creating, but he also wants to try new things — which makes sense, considering that "How To with John Wilson" centers around Wilson himself, and he's done that already.
"It's not that I won't make personal things in the future. I just think the work is going to mutate in a way as it moves forward. I want to keep making more stuff that I want to see in the world that doesn't exist yet. I made one book of things I found on Craigslist, and I'm now making a Volume 2."
So what's the wildest thing that Wilson's found thus far? "A listing for two sets of closet doors. The seller claims they're from a Kips Bay apartment once rented by a pre-fame Heidi Klum." According to Wilson, they're also free.
The third and final season of "How To with John Wilson" started airing on July 28. It airs every Friday on HBO at 11 PM EST and is available to stream afterwards.