Cancellation Watch: Status updates for the sci fi and fantasy shows on the broadcast networks, cable channels, and streaming services as well as breaking news on the currently airing, returning, and upcoming genre entries. 

Status Updates

Arcane (Netflix, Status: Renewed): The animated fantasy series Arcane will be ending with its upcoming second season which will arrive in November 2024. According to co-creator Christian Linke, that was the plan all along and this is just the first of “many stories to tell” in the League of Legends universe. The first season of Arcane performed well in viewership when it premiered in November 2021 and perhaps some of the characters could crossover into other entries of the franchise the streamer is creating.

Evil (Paramount+, Status: Cancelled): This supernatural drama improved to Number 2 in the Nielsen Streaming Rankings with an estimated 788 minutes of viewing. Last week I indicated that this viewership was related to its fourth season premiere, but this is actually pre-premiere build-up as Nielsen is a few weeks behind and only has viewership through May 12th so far (the Season 4 premiere was on May 23rd). This is driven also by the encore run of Seasons 1 and 2 on Netflix, but it proves the show is quite popular and perhaps Paramount+ should reconsider its decision to bring this one to an end. Fans should definitely take this as an opportunity to make some noise on the social networks in support of the show.

Doctor Who (Disney+, Status: Renewal Possible): This series did not make it into the Nielsen Streaming Rankings for the week of its premiere on Disney+. That streamer is now partnering with the BBC on the show and the highly anticipated premiere of the current season which brings the arrival of the new Doctor played by Ncuti Gatwa was on May 10th. I will watch how this one tracks in the coming weeks, but if the show does not draw sufficient viewership Disney may lose interest in backing the property.

Sweet Tooth (Netflix, Status: Ending): This post-apocalyptic fantasy series had its third season debut last week and it arrived in the Netflix Top 10 at Number 5 with 34.3 million hours viewed across 5.4 million accounts. It has performed well for the streamer since it first debuted and its third season was announced in advance as its last, giving it a typical run for a streaming original.

You can see the status of all the shows from the current season at our Cancellation Watch Page.

Go to r/SciFiTV to join the discussion on sci fi and fantasy television and to keep up with the latest news, trailers, schedule announcements and more

Cancellation/Renewal Score:

The final season announcement for Arcane will impact the 2024-25 season as that show does not return until November. In addition, the final season announcement for The Boys will impact a future season since it already counts as renewed for the current season. So the Cancellation/Renewal Score remains the same at 26 renewed sci fi and fantasy entries (39% of shows tracked) vs. 15 cancelled and ending (23%). Below are this season’s numbers, and you can see the list of shows and keep up with the score throughout the week at our Cancellation Watch Page.

Be sure to follow the Cancelled Sci Fi Twitter Site  for breaking news and updates. And for the latest news and discussions on sci fi and fantasy television, follow r/SciFiTV

Follow our Sci Fi TV Schedule for all the currently airing and upcoming sci fi and fantasy television shows, and you can see the premieres for all the upcoming genre entries at this link.

The post Cancellation Watch: Arcane Will End With 2nd Season on Netflix, Evil Rises in the Nielsen Rankings, and More appeared first on Cancelled Sci Fi.

The first two episodes of Doctor Who season 14, with Ncuti Gatwa as the Doctor, were released on May 12, and rather than the Doctor himself, everyone is talking about one character—Maestro. They're one hell of a villain, but where have you seen that face before?

It seems that no matter where you look currently, you simply can’t avoid the face of Maestro. The musically talented villain is the undeniable star of The Devil’s Chord, the most recent episode of this season of Doctor Who so far, and they’re actually a pretty familiar face to some people. 

In the show, Maestro is hell-bent on their mission to rid the world of music and keep it for themselves, but in real life, the actor who plays them is as opposed to this idea as it gets. 

Jinkx Monsoon is an American drag queen, singer, songwriter, actress and comedian. It’s safe to say that she’s got a serious amount of talent and is noted for her ability to perform off-the-cuff impersonations of celebrities. To date, she has released two studio albums (The Inevitable Album in 2014 and The Ginger Snapped in 2018), so if anyone was perfect for the role of Maestro, it would be her. 

However, familiarity with Jinkx is more likely to come from her roles on television. While she doesn’t have an extensive acting career behind her, she was one of the featured drag queens on season five of Ru Paul’s Drag Race back in 2013, winning the season. She came back to the show in 2022, when she took part in season seven of Ru Paul’s Drag Race All Stars, going on to win that too and earning the title “The Queen of Queens”. 

She did have some acting under her belt before becoming the star of The Devil’s Chord. She voice acted in an episode of Steven Universe, playing the main antagonist of the episode “ Lars of the Stars”, Emerald. She was also in an episode of Blue Bloods, playing Tallulah, as well as providing her voice as Normulon and Lemongrab in the gender-swapping Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake.

The post Who plays Maestro in Doctor Who? appeared first on Destructoid.

The first two proper episodes (discounting the Christmas special) of Doctor Who season 14, starring Ncuti Gatwa as the Doctor, have reached Disney Plus and BBC iPlayer, meaning that viewers are now able to dig deep and overanalyze everything for clues about what’s to come. 

If there’s one thing that Whovians do really well, it’s looking beneath the surface to find foreshadowing. This week, there’s one thing that’s got a few fans talking—The One Who Waits. This as-yet-unknown character was mentioned during The Giggle, which aired back in December, but the moniker comes back up during this week's second released episode, The Devil’s Chord.

I’m going to hedge my bets and say that The One Who Waits is not a confirmation that Amy and Rory (the Doctor’s companions from the time of the Eleventh Doctor, portrayed by Matt Smith) are about to return. Yes, Rory was known as “the boy who waited”, which is a very similar moniker, but not quite the same. 

Now that’s out of the way, there is a theory floating around Twitter and other corners of the internet about the identity of The One Who Waits. Buckle in because this one is a bit of a ride. 

During The Devil’s Chord, during a discussion with Ruby on a London rooftop, the Doctor talks of his Granddaughter Susan, who he says is currently living with a previous version of himself on the other side of the city. He also admits to Ruby that he currently doesn’t know what became of Susan after the Genocide, which took the lives of all Time Lords except himself. 

At the end of The Devil’s Chord, before we’re assaulted by a slightly out-of-place song and dance number, the Doctor breaks the fourth wall and winks at the camera after saying, “There’s always a twist at the end.” Still with me? Good.

Now, if you dig a little deeper into the casting of this series, you’ll find that there is actually an actress called Susan Twist in the cast, and this is where things start to get really interesting. Susan Twist has had a very short cameo appearance in every single one of Ncuti’s episodes so far, one of the 60th Anniversary Specials with David Tennant, and, according to the sneak peek clip that is available for the next episode, Boom, she’s in that one too.

I’ve raked through all of the episodes so far and pinpointed her character in all of them:

• Wild Blue Yonder 
  • Twist plays Mrs Merridew, who speaks to Isaac Newton before he heads down to the apple tree 

• The Church on Ruby Road 
  • She appears in the crowd at the pub where Ruby is playing the keyboard, saying, “give it some welly!” before asking for Gaudete, a Christmas carol from the 16th century, which would make sense if she was around at the time of Isaac Newton.

• Space Babies
  • She plays Comms Officer Gina Scalzi, who appears on the monitor inside the room where Jocelyn is hiding

• The Devil’s Chord
  • Twist appears as one of the tea ladies in EMI Studios, which would later become Abbey Road Studios. She says she wishes she could be “Margaret Lockwood”. What a woman, indeed.

According to the cast list for Boom, which is written by Steven Moffat, Twist will appear again, though her role is simply called “Ambulance”.

There are unconfirmed rumors that Twist will play a bigger part in the future of the series, taking the also unconfirmed role of Susan Triad. She will be the head of a company named Triad, which has already been name-dropped during the 60th anniversary special, The Giggle when Mel Bush is attempting to align the satellites. Remember, this is an unconfirmed rumor, but I'm counting nothing out of possibility.

So what’s the theory here? Well, we know that The One Who Waits has some connection to both the Toymaker and Maestro, considering the apparent relation between the two and the fact that they both issue a warning to the Doctor about The One Who Waits. It’s also been revealed, though in the Doctor Who audiobooks rather than the TV show, that the Toymaker has a sister who goes by the name of Hecuba.

Hecuba, otherwise known as “The Queen of Time”, would be able to traverse through time in order to appear at any moment, which would explain why Twist’s characters never look as though they’ve aged, regardless of how many years in the past or future she appears. It would make sense, then, to assume that Hecuba, if that’s who this turns out to be, has been waiting a long time to confront the Doctor for whatever reason, likely in retaliation for what happened to her brother. 

Whether or not this theory turns out to be true remains to be seen, but it’s definitely interesting to dive deep into Doctor Who and find the connections or even just speculate. There’s no telling what could happen in the coming episodes, with Russell T Davies (who is responsible for writing the vast majority of this season's episodes) well known for putting twists and turns in his writing.

The post Doctor Who: Who could be ‘The One Who Waits’? appeared first on Destructoid.

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