Why You Can Trust CNET Silicon Valley season 6 on HBO: Release date, trailers, cast and more
The scrappy but lovable Pied Piper gang will be back for a final season later this Sunday. Here's what to expect.
- Third place film critic, 2021 LA Press Club National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Awards
They're back for season 6, this time in a giant workspace.
It's been a long, turbulent road for software engineer Richard Hendricks and his file compression algorithm, but at the end of Silicon Valley's fifth season, things were, thankfully, looking solid for him and his scrappy cohorts at startup Pied Piper. Their cryptocurrency PiedPiperCoin finally picked up some market traction and the gang toured the massive, multilevel digs where the expanding team will continue work on their decentralized internet. Will PiperNet really be the game changer Pied Piper promised? Will it even live to score another user? And what will happen to our oft-embattled heroes?
We'll find out when the sixth and final season of HBO's Emmy-nominated comedy about flawed but lovable Northern California techies starts up in October.
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Here's what we know about season 6 so far.
When's the release date?
After production delays, Silicon Valley returns to HBO on Sunday, Oct. 27.
How many episodes will there be?
The final season will be the shortest of the series. Season 6 will have just seven episodes in total compared with eight to 10 in previous seasons. Episodes will be available one per week.
Do we have trailers?
Yup. A trailer released Monday shows Richard (Thomas Middleditch) grappling with the compromises that can come with (really, really) big money. "Money perverts everything," he says.
We also see Jared (Zach Woods) saying Pied Piper is no longer the company he signed up for and letting loose with a profanity-laced invective as he chases Richard with a rifle. And Richard trying to make a deal with Gavin Belson (Matt Ross) that Gavin's quick to reject.
Another trailer released in August shows footage of Richard testifying before Congress about the security of user data and looking even more awkward doing it than when Mark Zuckerberg did it in 2018.
"He looks like a child in a messy custody hearing," snarks Richard's employee Gilfoyle (Martin Starr).
Returning cast
- Thomas Middleditch as Richard Hendricks
- Kumail Nanjiani as Dinesh Chugtai
- Martin Starr as Bertram Gilfoyle
- Zach Woods as Donald "Jared" Dunn
- Jimmy O. Yang as Jian Yang
- Matt Ross as Gavin Belson
- Chris Williams as Hoover
- Amanda Crew as Monica
- Suzanne Cryer as Laurie Bream
- Bernard White as Denpok
T.J. Miller starred as entrepreneur and incubator wrangler Erlich Bachman until his highly publicized exit from the show after season 4. We last saw him reclining in the Tibetan opium den where Gavin Belson left him, and there's been no word on whether he might make a cameo in the final season.
What we know about the plot
We know Pied Piper's internet "of the people, by the people and for the people" is influential enough to get Hendricks a seat before Congress and that Jian Yang is back, as straight-faced as ever. We know the team's been offered big money, that comes with some ethical tradeoffs. And we know Jared is having a tough time as Richard ascends from low-level programmer to high-profile CEO and seems to need his loyal adviser less than usual.
"Jared's having to learn how to tolerate distance from Richard as the company grows," Woods told me.
If the show sticks with its usual patterns, the Pied Piper team will face more obstacles on its way to success, but will likely triumph in the end, probably due to some unforeseen, last-minute maneuvering.
"It ends with something unexpected and still very satisfying, at least for us," Starr, who plays Bertram Gilfoyle, told me.
How can I watch?
To watch the final season, you'll need a subscription to HBO (or a friend with one), but if you don't have cable, you can pay for HBO Now, a streaming subscription version of HBO that doesn't require a regular cable subscription (or even a TV). Not sure you'll like it? You can stream HBO Now free for 30 days. And you can catch up on past seasons via HBO, Amazon Prime, iTunes and Hulu. In the UK, Silicon Valley is usually shown on Sky and Now TV.
What's next for the creative team?
HBO has ordered two new comedies from Mike Judge, who also created Beavis and Butt-head and co-created King of the Hill. QualityLand, an adaptation of German writer Marc-Uwe Kling's satirical dystopian novel, unravels the story of "humanity's struggle against the tyranny of convenience -- but funny." Judge will serve as executive producer and co-writer of the show, which is set in the near future.
Judge's second upcoming project for HBO, titled A5, is a limited live-action series about a bioengineer who discovers the gene responsible for turning people into assholes. The protagonist will attempt to "answer the questions nagging at all of us: Why do assholes exist? Why have they come to dominate our culture? And can they be cured?"
Alec Berg, meanwhile, will continue to work on critically acclaimed HBO dark comedy Barry, which he co-created with Bill Hader and executive produces.
This story originally published Sept. 4 and will be updated frequently as news of season 6 comes out.