As an entertainment editor, I watch a lot of TV. I’m up to my ears in TV news. And over the last few months, one show just kept coming up as a series I needed to keep on my radar: The Boroughs on Netflix. Could all the buzz have been because it’s the first major TV follow-up attached to the Duffer Brothers since Stranger Things ended? Naturally. But now that I’ve binge-watched Season 1, I get the hype. I’m officially hooked, and like the rest of you who flew through the first installment, I have to know: Are we getting a Season 2?
Created by Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews and produced by Matt and Ross Duffer, Netflix’s new mystery-horror series follows a group of older residents living in a quirky New Mexico retirement community. As it turns out, the community is hiding some pretty unsettling secrets.
Season 1 ends with enough lingering questions (hello, can we talk about that glitch?!) to warrant more, and it sounds like that’s precisely what the creators want to give the show’s budding fandom. Sadly, we finally have official news on the fate of the series — and it’s not good, friends.
Has The Boroughs been renewed for Season 2?
No. On June 17, Deadline broke the exclusive that The Boroughs will be a “one-and-done” for Netflix, as the streamer has canceled the series after one season.
This is obviously not the news fans had hoped for, and they were quick to express their disappointment in the comments of Deadline’s Instagram post sharing the news.
“Why?!? This was excellent! Bring it back,” one fan wrote. “It was great fun and not another sappy love story. Not to mention the amazing cast. C’mon Netflix, listen to your PAYING fans.”
Another lamented, “You can’t give me Geena Davis and then take Geena Davis away, that’s illegal.”
It also sucks to know that the show creators were planning for a much larger story, telling several outlets they envisioned a multi-season arc. “We have a very specific three-season plan, and we think we know the last shot of the last scene of the last episode,” Addiss told IGN.
The creators also explained to IGN that Season 1 was intentionally designed to feel emotionally satisfying while still leaving bigger mysteries to unravel in the (hopeful) event that Netflix would say yes to additional seasons.
What would The Boroughs Season 2 have been about?
Warning: spoilers ahead!
I mean, take your pick, right? The finale left us with some major questions, like what exactly is Mother… and is she really gone? Why TF did Sam glitch in the final scene? Are we looking at some sort of time-travel scenario coming into play here? It definitely seems as though Mother doesn’t experience time linearly.
Addiss told Entertainment Weekly that the mystery surrounding Mother is “the arc of multiple seasons,” hinting, “We know what Mother is exactly… and we hope the audience gets to find out.”
Oh, and Sam glitching? Yep, that was a very deliberate tease as well, pointing toward “the next chapter of the adventure.” In fact, according to the showrunners, all of the recurring imagery involving television static, radio waves, transmissions, and (you guessed it) glitching is deeply important to the series’ mythology.
If the scene with Sam glitching felt familiar, that was by design too. Matthews confirmed to EW that it was “an affectionate nod to the end of the first season of Stranger Things,” where Will glitches in the bathroom mirror.
We can assume we would have seen more Easter eggs as the series progresses: to Stranger Things, and to inspiration like Cocoon and Salem’s Lot. And we almost certainly would have seen more exploration of bigger themes like grief and time.
“Grief is so unmooring, so discombobulating that you as an individual can be sort of a time traveler who can be stuck in two or more places at once — emotionally, physically,” says Matthews.
Alas, we won’t get to follow along as our older gang of Goonie-esque characters dives further into that duality.
Why didn’t The Boroughs Season 2 get picked up?
Your guess is as good as mine. Reports indicate it received strong reviews, but viewership was softer than the streamer hoped for from a Duffer Brothers series.
Potentially also a factor, this is a genre-heavy show with extensive visual effects and one with a true ensemble cast (Geena Davis! Alfred Molina! Alfre Woodard!)… both of which take longer to produce and can be harder to even coordinate due to cast schedules.
But one thing is very clear: The creators absolutely hoped to continue the story. And after that finale, fans sure as hell wish they got to.
source https://www.scarymommy.com/entertainment/the-boroughs-season-2-release-date-renewal-netflix
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