Two weeks ago HBO made the call to cancel Lovecraft Country after one season. The question, though, was why? The show had debuted to great reviews. Ratings-wise, it struggled to gain steam in the same way as, say, Mare of Easttown, but it typically out-performed other HBO titles like Succession and The Nevers (both of which earned renewals). Lovecraft Country’s cancellation only became more perplexing when the show received 18 Emmy nominations this week, more than any other HBO or HBO Max program. So the show was not only ground-breaking, but critically-acclaimed, and poised to gain a larger audience in a second season. So why did HBO cancel Lovecraft Country?
That’s the question that might dog HBO and its parent company for years to come. Lovecraft Country had all the ingredients of a great HBO tentpole series. It was created by an up-and-coming producer brimming with talent and potential, featured a cast of rising stars, and subverted genre expectations at every turn. It had lavish action set pieces, gorgeous costumes and set design, and wild twists and turns. The artists who made Lovecraft Country will continue to be on the vanguard of the industry and the show itself is likely to inspire generations of showrunners to come.
So, what went wrong with Lovecraft Country?
Lovecraft Country was meant to be HBO’s next major genre show after the conclusion of Game of Thrones in 2019. The series was based on a bestselling book, carried with it prestigious producers like J.J. Abrams and Jordan Peele, and combined mythology and horror with the dark history of racism in America. HBO gave the show a massive budget and showrunner Misha Green seemingly free range to take huge creative swings. Some of those swings, as in Episodes like “I Am” and “Jig-a-Bobo,” paid off. Others, like the show’s overstuffed finale, did not.
Creatively-speaking, Green wrapped up Lovecraft Country with both a cliffhanger and a dead end. While she’s made it clear through tweets that she had ample material to kick start a whole new saga for Lovecraft Country, HBO might have been wary of the fact that she, uh, killed off her main character, Atticus Freeman (Jonathan Majors). And that she was seemingly embarking on a whole new story featuring a whole new cast of characters.
But HBO has never been averse to creative risk. So again, we have to ask: why was Lovecraft Country cancelled? Could it be that executives thought that the ratings didn’t justify the show’s huge budget? Lovecraft Country‘s Season 1 finale was seen by a combined 1.5 million viewers, a peak for the show. That was more than Succession‘s Season 2 finale and close to the 1.6 million people who watched Watchmen‘s finale. At the time, Variety also noted that Lovecraft Country was the #1 show on HBO Max, where nearly 10 million people had watched the premiere. So the numbers for Lovecraft Country were solid, if not extraordinary.
Ultimately that means the decision to cancel Lovecraft Country came down to HBO’s executives, including current HBO President and Chief Content Officer Casey Bloys. Last month he told Decider that when looking at programming he starts with the writing. “Is the writing special? Is it something we haven’t seen before? [Are] there roles for interesting talent? You evaluate it show by show so it’s less about fulfilling that particular genre and just looking for a really good show that we think will resonate.” Clearly something about Green’s story bible for Lovecraft Country Season 2 didn’t resonate this time around.
But then again, Bloys wasn’t the HBO programming chief who championed Lovecraft Country from the start. Jordan Peele and J.J. Abrams’s Bad Robot brought showrunner Misha Green’s project to HBO all the way back in 2017, before the AT&T merger, meaning it began its creative gestation under the watchful eye of former HBO head Richard Plepler. He was the man who famously believed in Game of Thrones so much he let creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss re-write and reshoot the expensive disaster of a pilot. In 2018, Yann Demange filmed the Lovecraft Country pilot (which back then starred Elizabeth Debicki as Christina Braithwhite, not Abbey Lee). By February 2019, Plepler had announced he was leaving HBO, meaning that the bulk of Lovecraft Country‘s first season would be shot after his departure.
Of course, one man isn’t responsible for the success or failure of a show and we could be reading too much into Plepler’s involvement in Lovecraft Country’s journey to the screen. Except that last week, after HBO passed on Lovecraft Country Season 2, Misha Green inked an overall deal with Apple TV+. That’s where Plepler landed after leaving HBO. (And where the execs who oversaw Green’s first hit series, Underground, now work).
So maybe it’s not wild to suggest that had Plepler stayed at HBO, Lovecraft Country Season 2 would have happened. Perhaps he would have seen more potential in the show to grow over additional seasons of storytelling.
As it is, Lovecraft Country‘s first and only season will undoubtedly be remembered fondly. Already the show has earned 18 Emmy nominations, including nods for Outstanding Drama Series, Outstanding Writing for Misha Green, and acting honors for stars Jurnee Smollett, Jonathan Majors, Michael K. Williams, and Aunjanue Ellis. Majors just made his debut in the MCU, playing “He Who Remains” in Loki, with a cheeky promise to show up in future shows and films. His Loki co-star? Lovecraft Country‘s Wunmi Mosaku. Misha Green has been hired to write and direct the upcoming Tomb Raider sequel as she develops new projects under her Apple deal. Chances are high that whatever Green does next, her best friend and muse Jurnee Smollett will be along for the ride.
The young talent that Lovecraft Country assembled will continue to flourish in Hollywood and Lovecraft Country will likely inspire future generations of Black creatives breaking into the business. Its audacious take on both history and horror was one of a kind.
Obviously cancelling Lovecraft Country isn’t going to wreck HBO. The network took home 130 Emmy nominations this week and is still producing mega hits like Mare of Easttown. HBO Max is thriving and a new Game of Thrones spin-off is in production. But HBO might regret not working harder to make a second season work. Lovecraft County is one hundred percent the sort of show that would have been championed before the AT&T merger. It’s weird, wild, controversial, and thrumming with bright, young talent. Maybe Season 2 would have been a massive creative flop — I mean, we’ve only seen carefully curated pages of Green’s show bible! — but it would have been an imaginative one.
Lovecraft Country‘s biggest issue came down to timing. Green’s genius is still developing and her ideas might be deemed too “progressive” for some viewers. Elsewhere, the goals of HBO as a network (and streaming service) have shifted slightly under new leadership. Now HBO can’t take wanton risks for the heck of it. They have to duke it out in the streaming wars with competitors like Netflix, Amazon, and Apple. Lovecraft Country probably would have lasted another season on an earlier version of HBO, and in the future, we’re likely to appreciate the era during which it was developed and produced even more.
Where to stream Lovecraft Country