Comic-Con Renewal Announcements: #WynonnaEarp And #IronFist
Amidst all the activity at San Diego Comic-Con this last weekend (see a rundown of early announcements here and of trailers here), we received two sci fi TV renewal announcements.
The Season 3 renewal for Syfy’s Wynonna Earp was definitely not a sure thing because the show’s ratings have remained low in its second season, though not too much lower than its first year. But that show does have a very loyal fanbase that has remained active on the social networks, which was noted by IDW Entertainment president David Ozer (the series is based on one of that company’s comics) when he announced the renewal at Comic-Con:
Syfy recognized that passion and when coupled with superior writing, acting, directing and production values, saw that ‘Wynonna Earp’ was more than just a distinctly unique television series.
The Space Channel also came onboard as an international partner for that show this year, which helps to keep costs down for Syfy. Wynonna Earp is currently airing its second season on Fridays at 10 PM EST.
The Season 2 renewal of Iron Fist was pretty much expected, it was just a matter of when it would happen. That show debuted back in March and it has been the most binge-watched drama on Netflix so far this year, but it did not receive good reviews from fans or critics. There had been no word on the show since then, but I assumed that they would work in a second season of this Defenders solo entry at some point. Apparently the streaming service decided to go ahead and announce those plans at Comic-Con and they will be bringing in Sleepy’s Hollow‘s Raven Metzner as showrunner for the second year. Expect Season 2 of Iron Fist to arrive late 2018 or early 2019.
Comic-Con Announcement: #TheOriginals Is Headed Into Its Final Season
The CW’s The Originals had been renewed in May for a fifth season as expected, and word broke at Comic-Con that it will be the show’s final year. That comes as no surprise and I have been predicting that pretty much since its fourth season began airing in Spring. Even though its ratings were pretty low this year, The CW rarely outright cancels one of its shows that has made it into its third season or beyond. I figured that they would give the show the final season to wrap up its storylines and also get past the 88 episode threshold that the syndication market prefers. The Originals will then likely join its parent series Vampire Diaries (which ran for eight seasons) in a combined syndication package. The final season of The Originals will debut in Spring 2018.
Ratings Results Of Interest: ‘Salvation’ Holds, ‘Zoo’ Drops
On Wednesday last week, the new CBS pre-apocalypse series Salvation held steady for its second episode with a 0.7 rating based on the overnights for the 18-49 demographic, though it did drop in total viewers to 4.3 million (older-skewing CBS pays more attention to that metric than the other broadcast nets do). That show has a streaming partnership with Amazon, so it may be able to survive if it does not drop much further. On Thursday, Zoo slipped back down to a 0.5 rating with 2.8 million total viewers after seeing a slight gain the prior week. The preliminaries had that show at a 0.6 and I was thinking of moving it to Bubble status, but I am keeping that one at Cancellation Likely for now since the numbers remain down.
On Syfy on Wednesday, Blood Drive slipped slightly to a 0.13 rating with 436K total viewers as that one seems to be stuck in second gear. On Spike on Thursday, The Mistheld at a 0.16 rating with 538K total viewers and that one may still have a shot at a second season. On Friday, Syfy’s Dark Matter slipped to a 0.11 rating with 502K total viewers as that one continues to struggle to maintain its audience in its third season.Wynonna Earp also slipped for the week, to a 0.10 rating with 397K total viewers, but that show was just renewed for a third season (see above). Killjoys remained even with the prior week and continues to be Syfy’s highest rated Summer show.
On Sunday, HBO’s Game of Thrones slipped to a 4.3 rating with 9.3 million total viewers, but that one remains the top-rated scripted show on television this Summer. Over on FX, The Strain slipped from its rather decent Season 4 premiere by 42% to a 0.3 rating with 913K total viewers. That show is in its final season.
Scorecard: ‘Zoo’, ‘Dark Matter’, ‘The Strain’ Drop
A few shows dropped in the Cancellation Watch Scorecard this week due to sinking ratings. Zoo slipped three slots from Number 32 to Number 35, though that was partially a correction from last week’s jump. Blood Drive slipped three slots from Number 30 to Number 33. Dark Matter slipped five slots from Number 40 to Number 45. The Straindropped the furthest, from Number 26 to Number 48, as its numbers slipped from last week’s season premiere. Most of the rest of the shows remained mostly stable and you can see the full Scorecard results here.
Be sure to follow the Cancelled Sci-Fi TV Twitter for daily ratings results as well as breaking news and updates.
