EXCLUSIVE: Nothing is written on stone tablets yet, but a third season of American Gods looks to be a divine certainty. “We didn’t make Season 2 of American Gods not to make a Season 3,” a source close to the production told Deadline of the Starz series based on Neil Gaiman’s award-winning 2001 novel. “It’s a big book.”

With that top of mind, the premium cabler is searching to find a showrunner for a third season, I hear. With some top-tier candidates in the mix and in talks, that quest is centered in many ways on securing someone who can bring the ensemble series led by Ricky Whittle and Ian McShane in on budget and on time.

Starz declined comment on the status of a possible Season 3 of American Gods when contacted by Deadline today.

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The No. 1 concern for any third season of the FremantleMedia North America-produced show, we hear, is a near overwhelming issue of timing. No one involved wants to see a repeat of the nearly two-year gap between the Bryan Fuller- and Michael Green-run series premiere and Season 2’s March 10 debut. To that end, sources say whoever makes the final list must have a “rock solid blueprint in place” before a official greenlight will be given.

Almost from the beginning, American Gods has been envisioned as a five or six season show, I’m told.

Season 2 of the Toronto-shot Gods saw Gaiman take on a more hands-on role with the now-departed Jesse Alexander in the showrunner seat. Having just stewarded the second season to its conclusion, it remains unclear what exact role Gaiman would take in any possible third season.

In his new career as a TV producer, the author has been deep in the TV trenches of late on both Gods and Amazon’s upcoming limited-series adaptation of his and Terry Pratchett’s satirical 1990 end-of-the-world novel Good Omens. The series, starring Michael Sheen, David Tennant and Jon Hamm is set to launch later this year as part of Gaiman’s overall deal with Amazon Studios inked last year,

Tracking the ground covered in the first two seasons, a potential third season of American Gods on Starz would likely center on the chilling Lakeside portion of Gaiman’s book, I’m told.

Starting in Chapter Nine of the novel, Shadow Moon, played by Whittle in the series, finds himself hiding out from the New Gods in a sub-zero Wisconsin town where mystical forces and the body count both seem to be rising. Icy Lakeside and its mysteries return poignantly later in the book as the war between the Odin-led Old Gods and the Mr. World-fronted New Gods heats up.

Besides Whittle and McShane, American Gods stars Emily Browning, Pablo Schreiber, Crispin Glover, Orlando Jones, Yetide Badaki, Bruce Langley, Mousa Kraish, Omid Abtahi and Demore Barnes among others. Joining that sprawling cast for the second season are Kahyun Kim, Devery Jacobs, Sakina Jaffrey and Dean Winters.

Gaiman, Alexander and McShane serve as EPs with Craig Cegielski, Scott Hornbacher, Stefanie Berk, Christopher J. Byrne and Padraic McKinley.