Vida creator: "I went through all the stages of grief" after learning Season 3 would be the final season

Vulture

Tanya Saracho says Starz gave her a head's up, suggesting she should approach Season 3 as if it was the final season. "It was tough," she tells Vulture as Vida returns for its final season on Sunday. "I went through all the stages of grief while also being grateful we were getting six more. I was hoping we could maybe change their minds if we produced six masterpieces (laughs), but I think this is it. I wanted to tell a love story between two sisters and it’s very satisfying to be able to do that. Starz was fantastic about letting the episodes be what they needed to be, length-wise. They were really respectful and supportive of making this a special season." Saracho says Season 3 was also difficult because of its reduced budget. "The technical part was more challenging," she says. "We had half a day less to shoot each episode. We had to tighten the belt. People had to be at their best all the time. It’s a lot of pressure. We would (normally) do more handheld shots, shaky cameras, and now we had to do more medium and close-ups. Hopefully you are not able to tell from watching it that we had to tighten our belts, but technically that’s what we did."

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• Tanya Saracho had to reduce her overabundance of Season 3 material into "six masterpieces": “We could’ve done three seasons with the stuff we had, but then we whittled it down, and it was really easy to write the six episodes — and joyous, almost,” she says. “Every moment was economized and precious.”
• Mishel Prada: "You never forget your first. This was my first TV show"
• Melissa Barrera: "I feel very grateful that I got to be a part of this amazing show that made such an impact in not only the industry but also people that needed to see their stories told"
• Vida's final season feels like a reset of the entire series: "Vida's six-part farewell season ... feels gangly, its ambitions outstripping its execution," says Inkoo Kang. "I'm only being as hard on the show as I am because, for most of its run, it's been a triumph of personal vision and uncompromising complexity. Season 3 is absolutely fine by the standards of most television, but for the swan song of a series this special and unique, I wanted, probably unfairly, unblemished magnificence. Though the third season is set just a few days after the events of the second, it's in many ways a reset of the series."