House of the Dragon and 6 other genre shows that won’t be back in 2023
By Daniel Roman
2. Stranger Things
Over its first three seasons, Netflix’s paranormal ’80s science fiction show Stranger Things earned a passionate audience dedicated to its lovable characters, creepy monsters, and ’80s references. Season 4 premiered this year, and it brought the Hawkins hype to a whole new level. From the introduction of new villains and heroes like Vecna and Eddie Munson to the it introduced new generations of viewers to the music of Kate Bush and Metallica to the massive hours-long episodes, there was a lot to talk about this season of Stranger Things.
Stranger Things 4 ended with the reveal that Vecna had succeeded in his evil plan to fracture the boundary between Hawkins and the nether dimension known as the Upside Down. Now monsters are creeping into our world, and our group of scrappy heroes are facing a threat bigger than anything they’ve faced before.
Considering how big the scale of Stranger Things has become, it shouldn’t be a surprise to hear that we won’t be returning to Hawkins in 2023. “I think we’ll [shoot] next year. They’re finishing writing it this year, and they need to prep and stuff, so hopefully it’ll be this year. But I think that’s the plan. So it’d probably come out mid-2024, based on our track record,” Jim Hopper actor David Harbour told GQ.
Season 5 is slated to start filming in May 2023. This is a show that requires a ton of work even after the cameras are done rolling. Here’s hoping that the show hits Harbour’s mid-2024 projection.
3. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power
Another enormous series that debuted this year was Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Based on the appendices of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings books, this new series is set millennia before the story we all know and love, during the Second Age of Middle-earth. Galadriel is a warrior scouring the evil for evil, Elrond is a young diplomat trying to strengthen ties between the elves and dwarves, and Sauron is in hiding while he plans his comeback.
The Rings of Power received a somewhat mixed reception, but people were definitely talking about it. New adaptations of Tolkien’s work don’t come around all that often, and the Second Age has never been depicted onscreen outside of the opening minutes of Peter Jackson’s The Fellowship of the Ring. Amazon spent a mind-numbing amount of money on this thing, and The Rings of Power was one of those shows you had to watch even just to see how it all turned out.
Despite any missteps, the first season won the show plenty of fans. Amazon is interested in making at least five seasons of The Lord of the Rings, and work on season 2 is already well on the way. Filming started in the fall off 2022. But with a show as enormous as The Rings of Power, it’ll take a while to put it all together.
No release date has yet been announced for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season 2, but given everything we know about it, it’s pretty much guaranteed that it won’t be here in 2023.