Image via Team Coco/HBO
Published Aug 14, 2026, 12:00 PM EDT
Tania Hussain is an Executive Editor at Collider responsible for creative, editorial, and managerial duties. In addition to leading content ideation and development, she works to generate innovative and compelling ideas for feature articles and reviews with her editorial team across Features, Lists, Reviews, and Interviews. She also serves as the primary editor overseeing Collider’s Signature Series profiles, spotlighting some of the most influential voices in film and television. Tania has helped cover and ideate content for major events for Collider, including the Toronto International Film Festival. She has also conducted more than 100 interviews since her start in the business more than 15 years ago. Some favorites include Joel McHale, Charlie Cox, Jennifer Garner, Tina Fey, Kate Winslet, Bob Odenkirk, Andy Richter, Jordan Schlansky, Jamie Dornan, Yeardley Smith, Rafe Spall, Esther Smith, and a reasonable toss-up between Cookie Monster and Kermit the Frog. She has covered set visits, in-person junkets, and red carpets for several films and TV shows, including most recently, The Sheep Detectives, Masterchef, and Star Trek: Starfleet Academy.
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Having watched Conan O’Brien for a good chunk of my life, I know exactly what to expect from him by now. His self-deprecating nature makes him the butt of every joke, but he's also the type to commit to a gag long after any reasonable person would know to stop. From there, he is known to make things much worse at the expense of his own well-being. Yet, the 63-year-old still finds a way to catch just about everyone off guard. It’s that unpredictability that has always been part of his charm, and remains the beating heart of Conan O’Brien Must Go as it heads into Season 3 on HBO.
Returning with four episodes this season, the laugh-out-loud travel series sends its lanky host to India, the Netherlands, Morocco, and the Philippines for another round of cultural detours while meeting fans from his podcast Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend. Though there are some misses this season, few people on television can make being deeply uncomfortable in another country look this fun. Across these impressive travelogues, O’Brien plays cricket with children who think he’s 92, refuses to drop an unhinged Vincent van Gogh impression even when security gets involved, tries to bury his longtime assistant Sona Movsesian in the Sahara, and considers eating balut, only to be confronted by a talking duck — yes, you read that right.
But underneath all that foolishness is the same curiosity that has always made O’Brien such a joy to watch and laugh with. While Season 3 gets carried away with a few elaborate bits at times, O’Brien always finds someone willing to meet his strange energy — or, even better, knock him down a few pegs.
What Is ‘Conan O’Brien Must Go’ Season 3 About?
Having visited 11 countries across three seasons, it’s safe to say O’Brien’s approach to international travel hasn’t matured in the slightest. Whether he’s attempting to learn cricket from a child in India, only for one explanation to somehow turn into four people gathered around him trying to dumb it down, or he’s strutting through the Netherlands while dressed in head-to-toe orange, O’Brien is evidently happiest when he has no idea what he’s doing. But even better is watching how quickly the people around him realize just how strange this very tall American standing in front of them actually is.
While India kicks off the season, it’s surprisingly also the episode that shouldn’t have been the season premiere. This is not to say it isn’t funny, but for a country O’Brien explicitly calls the “crown jewel of any travel show,” the episode feels oddly limited in how much we actually experience. Of course, it’s hard to break down a country of 1.4 billion people, but there’s little exploration of food, nightlife, historical monuments like the Taj Mahal, or even venturing into the villages of its many cultures. Sure, a claustrophobic train ride offers a glimpse into India’s everyday life, but there’s something almost surface-level about the travel, as if O’Brien and the crew didn’t venture too far in. But the episode does embrace some of that larger-than-life spirit when Ali Fazal and Richa Chadha help O’Brien chase his dreams of becoming a Bollywood star, complete with an elaborate musical number that’d make even Shah Rukh Khan jealous.
Thankfully, the next three episodes feel much more confident in how they use their locations. The Netherlands makes the most of everything, from the orange-covered chaos of King’s Day and Amsterdam’s obsession with bikes to its tulip fields, wooden shoes, and art history. In the Philippines, O’Brien learns about the country’s famous “jeepneys,” wears a traditional barong and lets his history-buff side loose inside General Douglas MacArthur’s former suite — only for the conversation to somehow drift toward whether the general was a Boo Berry guy.
But Morocco might be the most visually striking of the four, taking O’Brien from the Sahara Desert to Marrakech as he learns how to traditionally pour Moroccan tea, spends time with an Amazigh community, visits markets with Movsesian, and eventually helps her track down the argan oil that inspired this trip in the first place. It’s these moments where Conan O’Brien Must Go feels most like a travel show without ever really behaving like one.
The Funniest People on ‘Conan O’Brien Must Go’ Don’t Let Conan Win
Image via Team Coco/HBOAmong all the places O’Brien visits, the locations are rarely what make Conan O’Brien Must Go so memorable. At the end of the day, it’s always the people who understand his peculiar sense of humor and, most importantly, aren’t afraid to give it right back to him. In India, that person is Rusty, a longtime fan with spinal muscular atrophy who is initially stunned into near silence when O’Brien shows up at his home. But once that shock wears off, Rusty and his wonderfully funny family match O’Brien’s energy with an ease that immediately shifts the entire episode. The same is true in the Netherlands with Mika, a high-fashion model who agrees to help O’Brien become one himself, but not before asking about his insecurities. Naturally, he provides a long list noting everything from his beady eyes to a noticeable vein on the side of his face before strutting around like his farts don’t smell in a white suit that looks like someone from Miami Vice just won a pageant.
But for all the fans O’Brien meets, nobody is better equipped to handle him than Movsesian, whose trip with her longtime boss to Morocco plays out like two siblings forced on vacation together by their parents. It’s a very different dynamic from O’Brien’s famously combative exchanges with Jordan Schlansky, where half the fun comes from watching him try to crack someone who refuses to budge. Instead, Movsesian already knows every trick in the book. At one point, she happily talks about Heated Rivalry and Off Campus while O’Brien quietly walks away from her, getting smaller and smaller in the distance as she just keeps talking. Even being buried together under the hot Sahara sand becomes another opportunity for the pair to torment each other.
It’s that dynamic that gives the show its hilarity. A cheerful Dutch shoemaker’s business ethics prove unexpectedly difficult for O’Brien to understand, while hotel employees in the Philippines give him absolute power as a bellboy. Even an Indian textile merchant refuses to indulge O’Brien when he goes looking for something that might make his wife, Liza, “appreciate him more” with a wink-wink. These strangers don’t necessarily know what O’Brien is about to do, and that’s half the fun. He might arrive with the joke in mind, but the funniest version of it usually happens when someone else decides they aren’t going to let him have it entirely his way.
‘Conan O’Brien Must Go’ Knows Conan Is Its Secret Weapon
Image via Team Coco/HBOIf there’s one thing Season 3 makes clear, it’s that O’Brien doesn’t need much help being funny. Give him a normal situation, and he’ll find some way to make it weird, wildly inappropriate, or just vaguely perverted — usually at his own expense. The miracle is in how he can turn almost nothing into complete chaos. In the Netherlands, a visit to the Van Gogh Museum turns into an increasingly unhinged commitment to playing the famous painter, complete with an accent O’Brien never drops even after security gets involved. Fast-forward to the Philippines, and we see how a fake mustache that won’t stay on his face becomes half the joke while filming a local procedural. But it’s his trip to a local candy factory that would probably concern anyone unfamiliar with his work, as he makes “candy angels” and has a physical meltdown. Even Dr. Arroyo (José Arroyo) makes his questionable return, conveniently resurfacing in a country where he claims to have received his medical degree thanks to “a lot of unlocked doors.”
That’s why it’s somewhat frustrating when Season 3, in certain parts, tries too hard to build the comedy around him. India has an extended nature-documentary parody involving monkeys who steal cellphones (yes, you read this right). But the segment hangs around longer than the joke really needs. Later, O’Brien helps aspiring talk-show host Nikhil create his own series, and while there are laughs throughout the nearly eight-minute segment, much of it rests on O’Brien’s shoulders. The Netherlands runs into a similar problem with an elaborate international-court sketch that looks back at alleged crimes from his travels on the HBO series. It is funny, but spending that much time looking back this early in the show’s three-season run feels oddly unnecessary when adventures happening in front of him are already this funny.
O’Brien has spent decades proving that he can find comedy in almost anything, and Conan O’Brien Must Go works best when it trusts that instinct. Have him stroll down a King’s Day “garage sale,” pass him some questionable street food, or place him atop an open-air laundromat, and he’ll take care of the rest. Three seasons in, the series remains wonderfully silly without ever treating the cultures O’Brien visits that way. If anything, he makes sure the biggest fool in every country is the 6’4” redhead who just arrived.
For those watching O’Brien from the start, the strangest part is that none of this should surprise anyone anymore. This is a man who’s built a career committing to the dumbest ideas with the confidence of someone accepting a Nobel Peace Prize. Season 3 might stumble when it tries manufacturing chaos, but when Conan O’Brien Must Go simply lets Conan be Conan, it’s hard not to admire just how far he’ll go to make himself the joke. (Even if we now know far more about his aging body than we ever asked.)
Conan O'Brien Must Go Season 3 premieres August 21 on HBO.
Release Date April 18, 2024
Network HBO, Max
Directors Mike Sweeney
Pros & Cons
- Conan O'Brien remains a ridiculously reliable comedy machine, turning ordinary encounters into complete chaos.
- The locals who challenge Conan create Season 3's funniest, most spontaneous moments.
- Morocco, the Netherlands and the Philippines give the season its richest, most memorable travel sequences.
- The India premiere feels surprisingly surface-level for such a culturally rich destination.
- Season 3 occasionally manufactures comedy when Conan's natural improvisation is already more than enough.
English (US) ·