A&E Network Cancels ‘Damien’ After Only One Season
A&E Network has just announced the cancellation of their new series, Damien, after only one season. The TV series is the latest venture in the Damien franchise that has seen one great movie, a not so great remake, and three bad sequels to the original movie, The Omen.
Damien’s writer and co-creator, Glen Mazzara (of The Walking Dead fame) took to Twitter to break the news.
This hurts to say but #Damien will not be getting a second season. Thank you from all of us to our amazing fans.
— Glen Mazzara (@glenmazzara) May 20, 2016
According to Variety, Damien averaged only a “0.32 rating in adults 18-49 and 817,000 viewers in Nielsen’s “live plus-3? estimates.” Added to this was the fact Season 1 of Damien opened with 1.1 million viewers but had fallen to 705,000 viewers by the Season 1 finale.
When Damien was announced by the A&E Network, the show was confirmed as heading straight to a scripted series. A&E even added an extra four episodes to the original six planned for Season 1. However, many critics voiced their displeasure with the pilot episode when it first aired. IGN thought the pilot episode of Damien was “burdened with the seeds of a by-the-numbers supernatural conspiracy.” They were concerned that, for people who hadn’t already seen The Omen – which Damien is based on – there wouldn’t be enough of a hook in that first episode to grab and keep an audience. And, for fans of The Omen, Damien tended to dwell on the obvious for them.
TV.com were scathing in their assessment of the pilot episode, as they suggested the only reason the show existed was because some TV executives decided to milk The Omen one more time. Although, while Den of Geek described Damien as “too glum to be fun, too silly to be taken seriously and apparently has no self-awareness whatsoever,” they went on to exclaim that in spite of that, they actually liked the first episode.
And yet Glen Mazzara was still looking forward to Season 2 of Damien. When ShowBizJunkies asked Mazzara about Season 2 after the Season 1 finale, he was already planning ahead. “I have very specific thoughts about a season two. I know how it starts, I know it ends, I know specific episodes in the middle.” Although, perhaps he already knew Damien in danger of being cancelled as he expanded further. “This is just me thinking about it when I’m driving around. I haven’t even started working on it with writers. I really hope I get the chance.”
And now it looks like Damien will be yet another show cancelled after the season has been filmed. This means, for fans who actually enjoyed the show, they will never know just what the outcome of Episode 10 (entitled “Ave Satani”) will be. As Geeks of Doom pointed out, now fans will never know where Simone’s loyalty will lie, if Greta and Amani are alive or not, and whether Shay has truly lost it completely.
“Damien follows the adult life of Damien Thorn, the mysterious child from the 1976 motion picture who has grown up seemingly unaware of the satanic forces around him. Haunted by his past, Damien must now come to terms with his true destiny — that he is the Antichrist. Barbara Hershey stars as Ann Rutledge, the world’s most powerful woman who has been tasked with making sure Damien fulfills his destiny. Omid Abtahi portrays Amani Golkar, a close colleague of Damien’s whose fierce loyalty will be tested when he realizes who his brother-in-arms actually is. Meganlyn Echikunwoke plays Simone Baptiste, a woman whose life is thrown into turmoil when tragedy unexpectedly strikes.”
Are you sad to see the A&E Network has cancelled Damien after only one season? Let us know by commenting below!
[Image via Jan Thijs/A&E Network]
