It’s that time of year where FOX are making the call on whether to renew or cancel certain shows, and sadly two genre favourites have been scrapped by the network.
As announced by FOX, Lucifer and The Exorcist are not being renewed. Where Lucifer is concerned, many are a tad surprised to see the Tom Ellis-starrer canned after three seasons due to said Season 3 still managing to pull in relatively strong ratings. For The Exorcist, that’s a blow that will likely hit even harder for many a genre fan, for that has been a fascinating, terrifying piece of genre television for the past two years. Unfortunately, while those who’ve seen The Exorcist have been wowed by it, the brutal fact of the matter is that not enough people actually tuned in to check this one out. If you remember back, The Exorcist was nearly scrapped after just one season before FOX decided to take a chance on the series for another year.
On the Lucifer news, star Tom Ellis has taken to his Twitter page:
It has been the most amazing experience over the past 3 years playing Lucifer and falling in love with you, the fans. It fills me with great sadness to confirm the rumours that some of you have been asking. Fox has indeed cancelled #lucifer I’m so sorry guys. #gutted
— tom ellis (@tomellis17) May 11, 2018
Similarly, The Exorcist creator Jeremy Slater took to his social media channels:
I know it’s easy to get angry at Fox, but the reality is that we were the lowest-rated drama on any network and they still brought us back for a second season, because they loved the show. There are no bad guys in this scenario.
— Jeremy Slater (@jerslater) May 11, 2018
There had been plenty of speculation on The Exorcist’s future over the past several months, so it ultimately comes as no surprise to hear that the show has been canned – even if it is hugely disappointing to hear the news we’d all likely been expected. Given that the viewing figures of just shy of 2 million viewers a week was deemed disappointing for the series’ debut season, the drop to as low as 1.15 million for the second season meant that the writing was sadly on the wall. For Lucifer, that show had hovered around the 3 million viewers mark for its third year, although the season premiere actually got 4 million viewers tuning in. As alluded to, that’s why Lucifer’s cancelling is a tad more surprising than The Exorcist.
Already, Lucifer fans are rallying around and have launched a petition that’s being supported by some pretty huge names. The aim, of course, is to get the show picked up elsewhere, much like what has recently happened with Brooklyn 99. That series was cancelled by FOX but shortly picked up by NBC due to fan demand. Even over this past weekend, #SAVELUCIFER was the top trending Twitter topic in certain territories – so maybe there could be a future for Lucifer Morningstar after all.
One show that has been renewed by FOX is Gotham, with more on that series’ fifth season coming shortly.