The new year is almost here, and there are at least 41 reasons to get excited. However, there’s also cause to be apprehensive. The year 2024 will bring us much in the way of new sci-fi and fantasy shows, but there are also beloved programs on the chopping block. Let’s go over a few of the TV shows in danger of getting canceled over the next months, and evaluate whether they deserve to stick around.
1. Warrior season 3 (Max)
Warrior, a historical martian arts drama based on an idea from Bruce Lee, has had a long journey. It started life on Cinemax, where it thrilled dozens of people with its multi-layered tale of gang warfare among Chinese tongs in San Francisco in the late 1870s. Our hero is Ah Sahm (Andrew Koji), a martial arts prodigy who crosss the Atlantic to search for his sister but soon finds himself drawn into a complicated web of post-Civil War politics involving drugs, immigration and so many spectacular battle scenes that I feel like I’ve gone on a marathon run at the end of every episode. At its best, Warrior is breathlessly entertaining show.
And that’s why it pains me that we still haven’t heard about a renewal. Before the third and most recent season aired on Max earlier this year, Koji said he had a “gut feeling” that “we got a very good chance” at season 4. But we’ve heard practically nothing since, and I am scared, because I think Warrior is one of the best shows to come out on Cinemax, Max or any other network in the past several years. If there’s one show from this list that I could wave a magic wand and get renewed, it would be this one.
If you’re in the same boat as me, feel free to sign this petition in the hope that someone at Warner Bros. Discovery will see it. And if you don’t see what all the fuss is about, check our the first three seasons of Warrior on Max. You may just become a convert.
So what other shows are in danger of cancellation? Let’s look next at another historical series:
2. The Winter King season 2 (MGM+)
This year, MGM+ aired the first season of The Winter King, an adaptation of author Bernard Cornwell’s Warlord Chronicles trilogy. Those books tell the well-known story of King Arthur, but with a grittier, “this-is-how-it-might-actually-have-happened-in-real-history” kind of perspective. The books are longtime favorites of mine, so I was looking forward to watching the series.
Well…it could have been worse, but not that much worse. While the first season improved as it went on, the show gutted a lot of what I found interested about the books, including the subtle way Cornwell treats the intersection between pagan belief and magical phenomenon, and the character of Merlin has been substantially changed for the worse.
Maybe that’s just me. Maybe if you haven’t read the books this show worked really well for you. If it did, I’m happy. But I can’t say I’m too psyched about the prospect of a second season, which the producers would clearly like to make since the first season ended with several plot threads left dangling.
Thus far, we haven’t heard anything official about whether The Winter King will return for season 2. The show didn’t get a lot of buzz when it was on, and those who did watch it didn’t walk away impressed…or at least I didn’t. For a show with a decent-sized budget, that could spell trouble ahead. Come sometime next year, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that MGM+ opted not to renew The Winter King.
That was a bit of a vibe killer. Let’s talk about another show I would like to see come back, although it’s balancing on the edge of death:
3. The Orville season 4 (Hulu)
It is hard to parse out the fate of The Orville, Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane’s affectionate tribute to Star Trek. The show started way back on Fox in 2018. After season 2, Fox did what Fox does best and cancelled the show, but The Orville found a new home on Hulu. Now subtitled New Horizons, the third season of the show was streaming-only, and it was better and more confident than every before.
It also took three years to get to the screen. Season 2 aired in 2019 and New Horizons premiered in 2022. The show still hasn’t been renewed for a fourth season, so if it ever does return, fans are in for another long wait.
But will it? That is tricky to figure out, in part because different cast and crew members have given difference signals. Early in 2023, MacFarlane said he was “cautiously optimistic” that there was good news around the corner. However, more recently, star Adrianne Palicki (Kelly Grayson) talked about how the show could be a “horrible” experience to make, in part because actors were left hanging so long between seasons waiting to hear if they still had jobs. If she was on the fence about returning before, this new extended wait won’t help.
But then, even more recently, star J. Lee (John LaMarr) hinted that there was more story yet to tell on The Orville. So it’s been like ping-pong. The temperature of the room has changed depending on when you check it.
Personally, I’d love it if The Orville returned. It’s a bold, earnest, fun and funny science fiction series that engages directly with big questions about politics, religion, war, family and technology in ways that recall sci-fi shows of old. The Orville definitely has passionate fans (sign this petition if you’re one of them), but whether passion will be enough to convince Disney to renew the show is an open question.
4. Upload season 4 (Amazon Prime Video)
Upload is a sci-fi comedy about a programmer who dies prematurely and is then uploaded into a digital afterlife. It comes from the mind of Greg Daniels, an important creative voice behind shows like The Office, Parks and Recreation and King of the Hill. Those are some impressive comedy bona fides. And the show itself is fun, a combination of witty gags together with an examination of what it means to live in a world where our lives are increasingly digitized, whether are consciousness are uploaded to the cloud or not.
But does that guarantee this unique sitcom a renewal for season 4? It’s not clear. Season 3 ended in November and we haven’t heard anything official since. The closest thing we have is an interview Daniels gave to Collider just ahead of the season 3 premiere where he said he was hopeful Upload would come back and avoid a scenario where the show ends with “a really incomplete feeling.”
"We’re actually the number one most-viewed half-hour show on Prime Video, so it’s kind of cool. They’re supportive of the show, and I’m pretty optimistic that we’re starting up season four soon."
It’s cool that Amazon is supportive of the show, but ratings for the third season are the lowest yet, at least according to users on IMDb. And Amazon’s silence about the show a month out from the season 3 finale doesn’t bode particularly well. The sharks may be circling.
5. For All Mankind season 5 (Apple TV+)
The fourth season of Apple TV+’s alternate history show For All Mankind is airing right now, and it’s as solid as ever. What would the world be like, the show asks, if the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union never stopped? Well, apparently we’d have a colony on Mars by the early 2000s. See what we missed?
For All Mankind has been dependably chugging along for years now. It’s hard to know how popular it is, because streaming services don’t usually share their data, but I do know that the show isn’t widely talked about online. It absolutely has fans, but it’s not a household name.
I also know that it’s an expensive show to make; imagining and creating the surface of Mars and the shapeships it takes to get us there isn’t cheap, nor are the high-quality actors and crew members who bring these stories to life. Given that Apple TV+ has renewed For All Mankind every year despite relatively quiet buzz, there’s no concrete reasons to believe they won’t do it again for season 5…and yet I can’t help but wonder if Apple might finally decide the show is costing more than it pays out.
By and large, Apple TV+ has been committed to its TV series, renewing them regardless of whether they’re number one in the ratings. But I’ll rest easier when I have an official renewal announcement.
6. Severance season 2 (Apple TV+)
Speaking of Apple TV+, Severance was a big hit when it aired in 2022, a twisty sci-fi thriller with an intriguing premise: what if there was an office where the employees couldn’t remember what they’d done at work after they clocked out for the day, nor remember anything about their lives outside the office when were at work? The show mined this premise for all the moody mystery is was worth, and ended things on a cliffhanger that had fans salivating for more.
And they’ll very likely get it: Apple TV+ confirmed that Severance was renewed not long after the first season ended, and work began on season 2. However, there were problems. Puck reports that episodes went over-budget, there were problems with the scripts, and that showrunners Dan Erickson and Mark Friedman weren’t speaking to each other. All of this delayed production, and this was before the writers and actors strikes slowed things down even further.
I still think we’ll see another season of Severance — Apple TV+ has enough at stake here to push through — but given all of its issues, there’s an outside chance that it could collapse from the inside. We’ll hope for the best, for Severance and all the other shows on this list.
Good Omens season 3 (Amazon Prime Video) was renewed just this week
When I wrote this list, I originally included Good Omens, Amazon’s cheeky extension of the satirical fantasy book by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. And I thought I had good reason to. The second season of the show ended in July, while the writers and actors strikes were still going on, and we hadn’t heard anything official since. Plus we’d heard that co-showrunner Douglas Mackinnon had left the show. I still thought Good Omens would probably pull through — it generated a decent amount of buzz and season 2 ended on a cliffhanger — but I was nervous enough to include it.
Happily, we found out just the other day that Amazon was bringing back Good Omens for a third and final season, so we’ll get to see the resolution of the millennia-long partnership between the angel Aziraphale (Michael Sheen) and the demon Crowley (David Tennant). Will they mend fences and live happily ever after for all eternity? Or will another, more permanent apocalypse wipe out the Earth and their relationship along with it?
We don’t have a release date yet for Good Omens season 3, but if it can escape the jaws of cancelation, so can any of the shows on this list. If you’re worried about any of the shows on this list, make your support known! You never know who might be watching.
To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and sign up for our exclusive newsletter.
Get HBO, Starz, Showtime and MORE for FREE with a no-risk, 7-day free trial of Amazon Channels