CANCELED in 2022: Westworld and 14 other genre shows we’ll miss

Raised By Wolves

Raised by Wolves was an HBO Max sci-fi show executive produced by none other than Alien director Ridley Scott. The show was wildly ambitious. It followed a couple of androids raising a group of human children after their home world was destroyed by a brutal religious wars. Throw in robot snake babies, oceans of acid, and a lot of religious imagery, you have a series that felt original if nothing else.

It might have been a tad too original for general audiences. Critics more or less liked Raised by Wolves, but while it attracted a passionate fanbase of devotees, it never caught on with the wider public. Maybe they’d never heard of it, or maybe they had heard of it and couldn’t figure out what the hell was going on. Either way, HBO Max canned the show after two seasons.

The Nevers

The Nevers, a drama about a super-powered group of women living in Victorian England, was created by since-disgraced television auteur Joss Whedon, the guy behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the first couple Avengers movies. HBO aired a suite of episodes back in 2021. They were zippy and imaginative, if a little twee at times.

But producers didn’t get to make a full season on account of the pandemic interrupting production. And then Joss Whedon left the production under a cloud of scandal. And the show wasn’t a huge hit to begin with.

That brings us to now. HBO has made several more episodes of The Nevers, but the show itself has been taken off HBO Max. It will now air on FAST (Free ad-supported streaming television) networks. Presumably, the final episodes will be burned off there, rather than aired on HBO proper.

It’s possible that HBO could continue the show after that, if the new episodes end up being a big hit or something, but those are extremely long odds.

The Expanse

Here’s another show that’s over…but maybe not forever? The Expanse ended its six-season run early this year on Amazon Prime Video. And this was after the first three seasons aired on SyFy. This sci-fi show is used to getting tossed around.

Writing under the pen names James S.A. Corey, Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck wrote nine books in their Expanse series. The show got to adapt six. Might we eventually see the final three? Franck isn’t ruling anything out. “We have what we think is a very natural pause point for the story after season 6,” Franck said around the time of the finale. “It’ll feel like a satisfying end to the story we’ve been building over the first five seasons. I think one of the things that is sort of an outmoded idea is the idea of being canceled.”

According to Franck, producer Alcon Television Group is “very committed to the IP.” So although it is technically canceled, of all the shows on this list, The Expanse may have the best chance of coming back one day.

Will you miss any of these shows in particular, or are we better rid of them? Any series we left off?

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