Season 4 of The Morning Show lands with the same mix of glossy melodrama and topical urgency that has defined it from the beginning, but this time the story feels even bigger, louder, and more tangled. The season opens about two years after the chaos of season 3, and UBA has been folded into its former rival NBN, rebranded as UBN. What sounds like just another corporate merger quickly turns into the perfect storm of power grabs, hidden agendas, and uneasy alliances. Alex Levy, still at the center of it all, is grappling with the choices she made in season 3 while also trying to prove she can thrive in this new structure. Bradley Jackson, who barely survived the scandal involving her brother and January 6, is back on air but more haunted than ever, struggling to find moral footing in a newsroom where truth is constantly up for debate.
The big hook this season is artificial intelligence, and the show goes all in. UBN experiments with AI anchors, digital avatars, and machine-generated coverage of events like the Olympics, throwing its newsroom into panic over what counts as real and what counts as news. Deepfakes and misinformation hover like ghosts over every storyline, forcing Alex, Bradley, and the rest of the team to confront how easily the truth can be rewritten when ratings and corporate interests take priority. Jon Hamm’s Paul Marks still lingers on the edges of the story, his tech empire feeding these questions of innovation versus ethics, while Stella Bak and Mia Jordan fight tooth and nail inside the network to make space for integrity in a system built on compromise. Laura Peterson is barely mentioned in passing this season, which is a shame as she made an excellent foil for both Alex and Bradley in previous seasons. Maggie Brener is not even mentioned.
The cast of regulars remains strong, but the new additions add a sharper edge to the drama. Marion Cotillard plays Celine Dumont, UBN’s calculating board president whose every move reshapes the network’s future, while Jeremy Irons steps in as Alex’s father, giving her story a more personal undercurrent of reckoning. Boyd Holbrook shows up as “Bro” Harman, an irreverent podcaster and streaming star who forces the anchors to see how fractured the media landscape has become, and William Jackson Harper appears as UBN’s head of sports, caught in the AI debate as Olympic broadcasts become battlegrounds for authenticity. While these new characters are great, it gives less screentime for our current cast.
The season is relentless in its pacing. One moment the anchors are in front of the cameras, fending off ratings pressure, and the next they’re behind closed doors uncovering cover-ups and political interference. Episodes swing from explosive boardroom showdowns to messy personal entanglements, with Alex and Bradley constantly forced to decide whether they’re serving the story or protecting themselves. It’s a soap opera in the best sense, layered with cliffhangers and betrayals, but also sharp commentary on how fragile the line is between journalism and propaganda in a hyperpolarized, tech-driven world.
The season often tries to do too much at once, piling on themes of AI, misinformation, climate change, and corporate corruption until it risks drowning in its own ambition. Some arcs, especially Bradley’s, feel muddled, as if the writers can’t quite decide where to land her. But the performances keep the show anchored, particularly Jennifer Aniston’s steady command as Alex, Reese Witherspoon’s intensity as Bradley, and scene-stealing turns from Greta Lee, Karen Pittman, and Nicole Beharie. Even when the plot tips into overdrive, the cast sells it with conviction. We need more focus on the women, less on Cory, Chip, Paul and Bro. Cory doesn't even need to be here anymore, really. It's quite sad to see Bradley and Cory finally get together after he misused his power over her and outed her relationship with Laura. She can do much better.
Season 4 is messy, but in a way that feels true to its DNA. It’s a show about a chaotic industry, full of people who want power, recognition, redemption, or simply to survive, and it mirrors that chaos in both plot and tone. The Morning Show has always thrived on being both high drama and cultural critique, and this season doubles down on both. It might not always be subtle, but it’s rarely boring, and its willingness to wrestle with questions of truth in an age of AI makes it feel startlingly of the moment.
The Morning Show airs Wednesdays on AppleTV+.
