Why The Society will never be picked up by another network

Although fans have pleaded for The Society to come back, rebooting the show at this point will realistically be too much effort for any other network.

There are many different reasons why streaming services sometimes decide to cancel some of their original shows, even when they are quite popular.

In The Society’s case, it has now been so long since the first season of the series came out; it is extremely unlikely that another network will want to pick it up for a reboot.

Why Netflix cancels so much of its original content

Streaming services like Netflix are always pushing to have the best quality and highest quantity of content on offer. As a result, these services have even started producing shows and movies of their own.

Netflix released more than 890 Netflix Originals in 2022. But just because these streaming services are always on the hunt for new titles to add to their line-ups, it does not mean that they do not fall victim to some of the same old television production pitfalls which have been plaguing the industry for years.

Limited budgets, high production costs, complicated filming schedules, and even tight timeframes are all to blame for the early cancellation of several Netflix Originals in the past.

Why The Society will never be picked up by another network

There is really no accurate way to predict which way streaming services like Netflix will lean when a new season rolls around, and in the case of Netflix’s The Society, it seems like even an officially announced renewal is not always enough.

Although Netflix officially announced that The Society would be returning for a second season in July 2019, all such plans were halted just a year later. the streaming service  then decided to cancel the series instead on August 21, 2020.

Of course, fans of the show (and even its creator, Christopher Keyser) were distraught from the news that The Society was stopped dead in its tracks.

But as of yet, no other network has heard the pleas to pick up the series for another season – and for good reason.

The Society may seem like a prime choice for another network to pick up on the surface, given that the show already has an established fan-base and apparently even a script for the next season.

But it has now been more than four years since the show’s first season started airing.

This means that most of the cast members (who were playing characters who were much younger than their real ages, anyway) have now aged out of their roles completely and have moved on to new projects.

As a result, any network that does pick up the series will either have to undergo extensive contact negotiations with the old cast, or hire a completely new cast – at which point, the show may no longer even resemble its former self and rebooting it could really be considered a lost cause.

Why did Netflix cancel The Society?

It is always difficult to accept when a streaming service decides to cancel one of its most popular shows.

However, networks and streaming services have to consider more than just ratings, and Netflix ultimately ended up cancelling the series despite its lingering popularity “due to circumstances created by COVID”.

Keyser later clarified that the production delays resulted in an unforeseen “rise in the budget” which is what ultimately convinced Netflix to kill the series so abruptly.

Even The Society’s creator has moved on to other things

Although Keyser was fairly open about holding out hope that another network would pick up The Society after its cancellation, he did not exactly keep his schedule open.

Keyser signed on as the executive producer for “Julia,” an HBO Max (now just Max) dramedy which is based on the life of Julia Child, just a few months after The Society’s cancellation became official.

What could have happened in The Society

According to Keyser, by the time that The Society’s unexpected cancellation was announced, the show’s writing and production team had already “spent the last bunch of months getting ready to go back again.” Thus, they likely had the majority of the second season planned already.

And although fans will likely never get to see this planned second season play out as imagined, the show’s creator has revealed some details as to what could have been.

This includes the establishment of what Keyser refers to as an “outpost” on the outskirts of New Ham and, of course “more clues about how the group got into an alternate reality” which would have hopefully answered some of the lingering questions which remained after the first season’s finale.