‘The Empress’: Trailer For Season 3 Finds Sisi Stuck Between Royal Duties & Her Heart’s Desires

The Empress is putting on her royal dress for the final time.

A trailer for the final season of Netflix‘s Austrian period drama has dropped, with the gates of Schönbrunn Palace opening one last time. It finds Sisi struggling with her role and her desires, as she is told, “The life you dream of will never come true.”

The trailer shows Elisabeth, the Empress of Austria (Devrim Lingnau Islamoğlu), fighting for her heart, health and voice, as the Viennese court constrains her. Dealing with the rejection and unfaithful behavior of Emperor Franz (Philip Froissant), who has returned traumatized from the Sardinian War, Elisabeth, known as Sisi, decides to leave Vienna and set off to a distant island to recover her health and distance herself from the courts and her shaken marriage.

By chance, she meets the leader of the Hungarian revolution, Count Andrássy (Dejan Bućin) and they immediately share a strong physical and emotional attraction. At the same time, Franz’s brother, Maximillian (Johannes Mussbaum) sets off on an adventure with his wife (Josephine Thiesen) to ascend to the imperial throne in Mexico. Sisi is forced to decide whether to follow her heart or remain a sincere empress to her people.

The Empress has been one of Netflix’s biggest non-English-language drama series. The first two seasons of The Empress has amassed well over 65 million streams since Netflix first started publishing views in What We Watched reports from July 2023. The International Emmy-winning Season 1 stayed in the global Netflix Top 10 of non-English shows for five straight weeks in 2022, while Season 2 made its way into the Netflix Top 10 in 84 countries in 2024, according to the streamer.

The final six-part season drops on November 12, just under two years after Season 2 debuted in 2024.

Katharina Eyssen once again serves as showrunner for the third season, sharing creative responsibility with executive producer Robert Eyssen. Sommerhaus Serien is producing. Scarlett Lacey returns as executive producer, and Lars Gmehling is co-executive producer. Florian Cossen and Julia Langhof are the directors. Filming took place in Bavaria, the Czech Republic and Spain.