Fresh details on ‘Big Little Lies’ Season 3 emerge as Moriarty's sequel novel hits shelves

Few HBO dramas have tested fans' patience quite like Big Little Lies, with years passing between word that a third season was in the works and any real sense of where the story might go next.

As has been the case throughout the show's run, its next chapter continues to lean heavily on the source material of author Liane Moriarty, whose novels have guided the Monterey Five's story from the beginning.

With Season 3 still without a confirmed release date — or even an official greenlight from HBO — fans have had little to go on beyond scattered details, making Moriarty's latest contribution to the franchise feel like a genuine event.

That contribution, Big Little Truths, is a sequel novel set a decade after the events of the original Big Little Lies, and is expected to form the basis for the show's third season.

The novel follows the group of mothers — Madeline, Celeste, Jane, Renata and Bonnie — as they navigate a new set of dramas years on from the fallout that first bound them together, with their children now teenagers.

Moriarty has said the book builds toward a single explosive event referred to as “D-Day”, triggered after the local school principal receives a severed finger in the post.

Moriarty, who has described herself in the past as “an interested bystander” to the television adaptation, has said producers have already read the new book and that Season 3 is in “active, enthusiastic development” — though she has stopped short of confirming a filming start date, citing the busy schedules of the show's starry cast, which includes Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Laura Dern, Shailene Woodley and Zoë Kravitz.