Fans of Canadian comedy series Letterkenny have had plenty of reasons to look forward to Christmas in recent years, with a new season of the award-winning series premiering on December 25 the last three times around the sun. Season 10 of Letterkenny continued that trend with a Christmas Day 2021 premiere on the Crave streaming service in Canada and a debut on Hulu — which holds the U.S. distribution rights to the show — the following day.
The six-episode season had Wayne (series creator Jared Keeso) and the rest of the fictional Ontario town’s community haggling with car salespeople, competing to become video influencers, helping out the local Mennonites, and getting over their fear of prostate exams, among other adventures (and misadventures). Of course, that was all in addition to the usual donnybrooks (fights), dance-offs, and clever, rapid-fire dialogue that have made the series an international hit.
With season 10 of Letterkenny now available to stream and the next season already filmed, Digital Trends spoke to several members of the show’s cast about their favorite elements of the current season and the series as a whole, as well as what fans can look forward to in season 11.
A sensitive subject
Over the course of the show’s first nine seasons, Keeso and series director and co-writer Jacob Tierney (who also portrays the character Glen) developed a knack for filtering a wide range of complicated themes — from modern feminism and male allyship to the representation of indigenous cultures and toxic masculinity — through the show’s unique cast of colorful characters. Season 10 is no exception, and although it cast the usual wide net when it came to topics to riff on, it was one episode in particular that everyone seemed to love for various reasons.
The fourth episode of season 10, Prostate, has Wayne and several other men of Letterkenny ponder their aversion to having their prostate examined during an annual medical checkup.
Along with confronting the subconscious reasons why they’re avoiding the routine procedure, the men are reminded by the women in their lives (including local First Nation matriarch Tanis, played by Kaniehtiio Horn) exactly how easy they have it when it comes to medical exams. The episode offers up a great reminder of how well Keeso, Tierney, and the show’s cast can find the humor in any topic, no matter how sensitive (literally and figuratively).
“I was really excited about Prostate,” laughed Tierney. “If you can do something, and be funny, and hopefully be a bit informative, too, what a pleasure to be able to do that.”
Michelle Mylett — who plays Wayne’s sister, Katy, in the series — had similar praise for the Prostate episode — an episode she doesn’t play a major role in, but enjoyed simply as a fan.
“For me, [the episode] was the funniest episode on the page, and then getting to see it, I was like, ‘Yeah, they nailed it,'” she told Digital Trends.
“The prostate exam episode was my favorite, too, but specifically the scene where Jared and I are talking in front of the produce stand about why Daryl skipped out on his exam and what that entailed,” laughed Nathan Dales, who plays one of Wayne’s best friends, Daryl, in the series. “That was hilarious. It was particularly fun to film with Jared, because it’s always fun doing one-on-one scenes, which we don’t get a lot of because it’s such an ensemble piece. We had a whole bunch of laughs and it was close to the end of shooting, so it was just a giggle fest.”
Letterkenny (2016)
8.7/10Strong women, strong world
That well-established dynamic between the men and women of Letterkenny continues to be one of the show’s standout elements in season 10, too, and Mylett indicated that the series continues to offer a refreshing alternative to the typical sitcom roles for women.
“Yeah, it’s unfortunate that it has to be refreshing, right? But yeah, Jared and Jacob really have set us up for success, so to speak,” explained Mylett. “It’s all on the page. I knew from very early on what they wanted Katy to be, too. She’s scantily clad, and maybe from the outside looking in, you might create some opinions about her, but once you get to know the character, you realize she’s someone of substance and she knows who she is. She’s kind, and at the same time, she’s not cruel to other women. She hasn’t been put into that trope.”
“I just feel lucky they wrote a character like that, as well as all the other female characters,” she added. “And the actresses who play those characters have really brought that to light. They’re all really strong women themselves. It’s a really nice group to be a part of.”
Actress Lisa Codrington, who plays bar owner Gail in Letterkenny, had similar compliments for the show’s female cast members and the characters they portray — including her own character, whose backstory she was more than happy to embellish, much to Tierney’s surprise.
“Gail is a business owner. She had her bar burn down, and she built another bar,” she said of her character. “That one burned down and she built another bar. You know, she’s just —”
“Wait, are you saying Gail built those bars?” interjected Tierney.
“Of course! That’s Gail’s backstory now. She built the bar herself!” laughed Codrington. “She’s a businesswoman! She does a lot of work. … But all the women in Letterkenny are really strong. They’re running things.”
That progressive sentiment extends to the male characters, too, with fan-favorite character Squirrelly Dan often providing the sort of open-minded perspective on the world that’s rarely depicted in shows featuring close-knit rural communities.
“Dan being an ally and a feminist and all that is an organic evolution of the character,” explained K. Trevor Wilson, who plays Dan in the series. “It’s been great to see it played out, and over the course of these 10 seasons, Dan has grown into a very rare and important character on television. He’s a Hetero-cis male who’s adamantly working towards being a better person, a better ally, being a feminist, and showing that you can balance sensitivity and toughness. You can be blue collar, work with your hands, a salt-of-the-Earth guy, and still embrace modern ideals, like everyone deserves the same rights.”
Pitter-patter, season 11
With fans likely to have binged their way through all six episodes of the new season at this point, it’s understandable that there’s plenty of anticipation for the next season of the series, which has yet to receive an official premiere date.
Unlike past seasons of the series, season 10 didn’t end with the usual cliffhanger, and instead featured Wayne and the gang heading off together to drink and do chores on the farm — a decidedly different, upbeat conclusion that diverged from the usual impending fight or romantic revelation that wrapped up prior seasons.
“The truth is, we made a decision to not do a cliffhanger this time,” Tierney said. “It can start to feel contrived, and we were just like, ‘We don’t have one. Why are we looking for one, when we can just end on a sweet note?'” And at this point, we don’t necessarily want to be a show that you have to watch in order to understand the storyline. We’re a pretty classic sitcom in that way. So if it feels organic and feels right, we’ll do a cliffhanger. But in this case, we couldn’t really find one, so we decided to stop looking.”
Still, even without a cliffhanger clue about where things are headed, Mylett and Dales offered some general, spoiler-free suggestions about what’s in store for the residents of Letterkenny in season 11.
“[Season 11] is a classic Letterkenny season, with jokes, fights, things like that, but I think the camaraderie between the different groups in the town starts to get even stronger,” teased Mylett. “I can’t say much more than that, but it’s nice to see the connections get stronger as they move along.”
“Without giving anything away, the connections and camaraderie between the different groups getting stronger is great, because it’s so much fun to have not so much infighting and stuff like that, and I think people like to see that, too,” added Dales. “There’s still some bickering and whatnot that goes on, but [season 11] is going to be a lot of the stuff people love about Letterkenny. Lots of fights, lots of drinking, lots of cursing, and tons of good storylines and jokes like a motherfucker. You know what I mean?”
All 10 seasons of Letterkenny are available to stream on Hulu.
