FX Canceled Kindred Ahead Of A Potential Season 2

Though Kindred’s first season largely took place in the past, series creator and showrunner Branden Jacobs-Jenkins was always looking to the future. His plans for a second season of the FX streaming series, which Hulu exclusively debuted in its entirety in December 2022, were thwarted, however, when the network canceled Kindred the following month, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The eight-episode drama was adapted from Octavia E. Butler’s sci-fi novel of the same name and centered on a young Black woman and aspiring writer named Dana James (Mallori Johnson), who uprooted her life and relocated to Los Angeles. Before she could even settle into her new home, Dana was violently pulled back and forth between present-day California and a 19th-century plantation linked to her family’s history.

In addition to leaving several unanswered questions, Season 1 ended on a cliffhanger for a reason: Jacobs-Jenkins had already been plotting out the narrative well past a second installment. “In this first season, we cover only about a third of the material of the book,” the writer explained on The Hollywood Reporter’s TV’s Top 5 podcast in December. “And I think part of the attack on the book is to see if we can kind of expand the universe and occupy these rooms that are quite small in the book.”

Even if he strictly stuck to the source material for potential future seasons, Jacobs-Jenkins said that Butler’s book could have yielded “about three to four seasons” alone. “But I think we’re working really hard to kind of lay in some kind of engine that actually might take us beyond that and put some kind of pressure on what’s there,” he added. “That’s the dream.”

During his THR interview, Jacobs-Jenkins added that while developing the series, he read Butler’s personal papers and old drafts, noting that the author felt she “never cracked” Kindred. “I was like, well, it would be nice to kind of think about what she felt she didn’t crack about it. Could we do that reparative work in series now that we have a bigger canvas?”

In addition to Johnson’s starring role, Jacobs-Jenkins’ Season 1 cast also included: Micah Stock (Kevin Franklin), Ryan Kwanten (Thomas Weylin), Gayle Rankin (Margaret Weylin), Austin Smith (Luke), David Alexander Kaplan (Rufus Weylin), Sophina Brown (Sarah), and Sheria Irving (Olivia).

Because the first season closes about the same time the book’s third chapter, “The Fall,” ends, Season 2 would have likely focused on Chapter 4, “The Fight,” based on the showrunner’s comments about wanting to split the book into three or four parts. In that portion of the book, Dana left Kevin behind in 1815 for eight days in the modern world; five years already passed in his timeline when she returns to the plantation.

Despite the cancellation news, curious fans can still pick up Butler’s book to find out what might have happened in future seasons of the series.