It’s a piece of fiction after all
, the cast confirmed that the season three scripts were finalized before the pandemic took hold, and that creator Jesse Armstrong saw no reason to incorporate it into the scripts afterward. “These are really wealthy people,” Sarah Snook, who plays Shiv, told the magazine. “And unfortunately, none of the world’s really wealthy people were going to be affected by the pandemic.” This isn’t entirely true, but their response to the situation would be predictable enough.
Besides, the show is already in the middle of what seems like a tightly scripted storyline, and we aren’t necessarily curious enough to see how the pandemic would impact it. , so let it play out in its own fictional universe. It’s a mirror to society, but it doesn’t have to be a perfectly angled one. The show is clearly inspired by the culture that led up to Donald Trump being elected in our universe, but Trump isn’t actually President in the Roy’s universe .
Television series have had mixed approaches to incorporating the pandemic. A few have incorporated it fully. Others have given brief nods to the reality, often to surreal effect . Many have just ignored it, which is fine. We already lived it. We don’t need to see how every last one of our TV friends would have dealt with it, especially if it just gets in the way of the wider storyline we’re watching that show for in the first place.