Starz has officially renewed American Gods for a second season. Since premiering late last month, Bryan Fuller’s adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s award winning novel has captivated fans and critics with its unique premise, style and powerful acting from notable stars like Ian McShane, Gillian Anderson and Peter Stormare. If that’s not enough, American Gods thematic elements have led some fans and critics to call it a timely show, perfectly fitting into today’s political climate - whether it was the show’s original intent to do so or not.
Regardless of all that, American Gods premiered to fairy sturdy ratings for Starz, opening to right around 975,000 viewers and a 0.4 rating among adults aged 18-49. While that may not sound like a lot, Starz is a premium network that doesn’t rely on high ratings like a standard network and the number is still higher than season averages of other Starz shows, excluding Power. Combined with episode two’s still pretty-strong ratings of just over 700,000 viewers and it’s clear that Starz believes it has another hit on their hands, so ordering a season 2 this early on isn’t exactly a surprising move.
The second season of American Gods was confirmed by Deadline, which reports that the season is scheduled to premiere in mid-2018, placing it right around the time that the first season debuted, this year. While an exact episode number for the second season has not been confirmed as of yet, the rumor is that it will at least contain 8 episodes, just like the first season.
This is certainly great news for the many fans who are already flocking to American Gods, as well as the fans of the novel who’ve been waiting for this adaptation. It will also certainly give Fuller and company more breathing room when it comes to narrative choices and introducing new beloved Gods from the source material. With the novel clocking in at nearly 500 pages, there’s definitely a lot of material left for the show to mine in a second season, especially with American Gods so faithfully adhering to its source work thus far.
Either way, some fans may be concerned that American Gods has a short shelf life, given that there’s really only one novel to draw the story from. While a valid concern, Gaiman has crafted other stories inside this particular universe that Fuller could easily pull material from. It’s also worth noting that this isn’t the first time that Fuller has adapted novels to the small screen, with his previous show Hannibal proving to be popular amongst fans and critics, even if it never quite found a big enough audience.
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American Gods continues Sunday @9pm on Starz with ‘Head Full of Snow’.
Source: Deadline