Chuck season 3: starting later this month?

The third season of Chuck was set to begin next March. But could it now, suddenly, be returning a whole lot sooner than that?

Over in the States, NBC hasn't had the best of starts to its latest season of programmes. Heroes continues to battle on, and one of its shows, Southland, has already bought the bullet. And all this means that NBC may need to call for reinforcements a little earlier than planned.

And this could well be where Chuck comes in. The third season of Chuck, which is currently only 13 episodes long and being made to a lower budget than the second, wasn't due to start broadcasting until March, once the Winter Olympics have been cleared from the TV schedules. But according to The Ausiello Files over at Entertainment Weekly, Chuck's return may be moved right forward to help plug the gap in the NBC schedules.

So just how soon could we potentially see the third season of Chuck starting? Ausiello reckons it could be as soon as the end of October, just a couple of weeks away. And if that's true, then that also means that there's a chance that NBC might order more episodes. Should the show perform okay, then NBC may order the back nine episodes required for a full 22-week season.

None of this has been confirmed at the moment, but when you consider that Chuck was assumed finished earlier in the year, it's something of a turnaround. Were Chuck to return in the next few weeks, we'd expect the formal confirmation very soon indeed. Here's hoping, eh?