For starters, you can safely change your "was" to an "is": "Taboo" is returning for a second season.

That's the news I have. The news I don't have is when it will return.

Most estimates (and estimates are all that's available at the moment) put the return in early 2019. That makes a gap of two years between seasons, as the first ended in February 2017. That's a heck of a long time, but, according to executive producer Ridley Scott, that's the price you pay to get Tom Hardy.

During an interview with the British Association of Film and Television that was ostensibly about his own career, the legendary director and producer called Hardy "probably one of the finest actors we've got." He said he'd love the chance to work with him more often, but "he's never available."

He said this in the same breath in which he said that filming of the second season of "Taboo" won't start until September, which means an early 2019 release at the earliest. Put these two facts together and it points to the fact that working around Hardy's schedule may be the source of at least some of the delay. 

The other bit of news that has come in the year and a half since the first season ended is that there will also likely be a third season, if co-creator Steven Knight has his way. He said he sees the series as working in three acts. "The first was 'the escape.' The second will be 'the journey,' the third will be 'the arrival,' and that'll be it," he told the Huffington Post.

The first season was, indeed, very much an escape narrative. So this also gives a bit of a hint for what's to come in season 2, and in season 3, provided it gets one (and provided everyone involved hasn't died of old age by then).

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