Does The Love Hypothesis Set Up a Sequel?
The Love Hypothesis started off as a Star Wars fanfiction featuring sequel trilogy villain Kylo Ren and the protagonist Rey. Since then, the book has become a BookTok hit, a New York Times Bestseller, and a successful rom-com movie which, in a deliciously ironic twist, cast the real-life husband of Rey actor Daisy Ridley as the male lead.
The Love Hypothesis follows PhD student Olive Smith. As she prepares to continue her research into pancreatic cancer, she discovers her best friend is giving up her chance of happiness after rejecting the man of her dreams because Olive has a crush on him.
This causes Olive to do something drastic: she tells her best friend that she’s actually seeing someone already, and in order to make the ruse believable, she impulsively kisses the first man she finds — who just so happens to be Adam Carlsen, a hard-nosed professor with a bad reputation. When the pair discover they both benefit from the fake-dating arrangement, they decide to stick to it, but unexpectedly, they fall in love in the process.
A lot happens in The Love Hypothesis, and while some may argue that the ending is predictable, the real question is this: does it set up a sequel? Obviously, if you haven’t seen The Love Hypothesis yet, please be advised that there are spoilers ahead.
Does The Love Hypothesis Set Up a Sequel?
By the end of The Love Hypothesis, Adam and Olive decide to give their fake romance a very real shot, with Olive staying in Stanford to continue her research after Adam’s friend at Harvard turned out to be a total creep. We then get a time jump to see Adam and Olive some time later, with Olive now an equally terrifying doctor at Stanford and the pair’s relationship appearing rock solid.
While the epilogue is nice, it doesn’t really set up anything concrete that can be explored in a sequel. It all ends rather neatly.
But now, that’s all changed...
A Love Hypothesis Sequel Is Coming
Objectively, The Love Hypothesis movie does not set up a sequel. But that doesn’t matter, as one is coming anyway. In early October 2026, book author Ali Hazelwood announced that a sequel book entitled ‘The Two Body Problem’ will be released in 2027.
“‘I wrote a sequel to The Love Hypothesis’ is not a sentence I thought I’d say a year or so ago, but now I weirdly can’t imagine a world in which The Two-Body Problem doesn’t exist,” Hazelwood said in a lengthy Instagram post.
“I’m really eager to talk more about this book and how it came about in the next few months. For now, let me just say that The Love Hypothesis movie and its cast made me fall for Adam and Olive all over again, and that revisiting them was an absolute pleasure.”
In this post, Hazelwood also teased a movie sequel, adding, “Nothing is guaranteed, but MRC is developing a film based on the The Two-Body Problem for Amazon MGM Studios.”
In terms of what the sequel will be about, here’s the book’s official logline: “Olive Smith finally has her PhD, and she's living her happy ever after. Well, not quite her ever after, since post-doctoral fellowships are temporary by nature, but she doesn't mind: she has her friends, her research, and best of all, she has Dr. Adam Carlsen. Intense, brilliant, endlessly undaunted by the chaos Olive has smuggled into their shared house, Adam is determined to spend his future by her side...”
“And yet,” the synopsis continues, “there are no fairy tales in academia. Being in love with another researcher means navigating the hard reality of clashing schedules, an increasingly grim and ultra-competitive job market, and Olive's desire to be seen as a formidable scientist in her own right. Being with Adam is the most real thing Olive has ever known. As the pressure tightens and the stakes rise, she'll have to set all confounding variables aside and learn to trust her heart.”
So, there’s plenty of juicy conflict and angst to come with this sequel, and with a movie adaptation on the way, it won’t be long until we see ‘Dr Evil’ and ‘Dr Smite’ back in action. Only this time, they're truly united.
