'Masters of Sex' lifts off in exclusive season 3 teaser: 'We are the sexual revolution'

Oh, how things have changed for Bill Masters and Virginia Johnson. What was once an underground sex study conducted in the back of a brothel is about to become the steamiest story of 1966 when Bill and Ginny finally go public… with their research, at least.

When Showtime’s Masters of Sex returns for its third season on July 12, big things are in store for the famous sexologists. After a time leap from season 2 that brings the proceedings to the eve of 1966, their seminal journal, Human Sexual Response, is finally published. It’s an event that launches the pair and their controversial work into the stratosphere, which is precisely the metaphor you’ll hear in this exclusive first look at season 3.

“We start with the book, and we’re going to chronicle all the different kinds of reactions they got,” showrunner Michelle Ashford tells EW. “What does that do to people who have been so private up until this point hiding this work? A lot of the stuff we’re doing this season is about this emergence from the underground out into the light, and it’s really fun because what was going on in the world at the time was the same thing. Things were going crazy.”

The teaser also hints at the “bizarre, melded family” that Bill, Virginia, and Libby Masters (Caitlin FitzGerald) have created. “You get to see how this whole weird three-way marriage works,” says Ashford. “In the last season, Libby was clear-eyed about what this was, and she’s made a peace in an odd way.”

Watch Bill (Michael Sheen) and Virginia (Lizzy Caplan) take on the presses—and the skies—in the teaser below: