While the real-life Peter III died shortly after Catherine the Great took the throne, Elle Fanning's version of the empress has always had her husband by her side. That's not the case anymore, and while "The Great" still waits for a Season 4 renewal, future episodes will explore a new side of Catherine.
"For me, it's not an ending, it's a rebirth in a way for her as a character," Tony McNamara told Entertainment Weekly. "She hasn't ruled by herself yet and been without his ... everything, even the grief of him colored everything she did. So I guess for me, it's like now she's free of him and she's deeply damaged, what happens now? She's kind of cut loose in the way that [the real] Catherine the Great was once she was free of all that — she ruled in a quite crazy way."
While Catherine more or less went off the deep end after watching Peter die, Season 3 ends with her not only coming to terms with what happened but becoming a new version of herself, with an appropriate haircut symbolizing that. Fanning told TV Line that it's a new Catherine in the final scene of Season 3, agreeing with McNamara that, in a way, she's been reborn, becoming a different and much more experienced leader.
