#The Outsider Canceled at HBO, But There’s Hope

There will be no second season of The Outsider at HBO. 

The premium cabler has canceled the series, which is based on Stephen King’s novel. 

Despite exhausting the source material during The Outsider Season 1, work had already begun on scripts for a second season, but HBO is not moving forward with it. 

Deadline confirmed that HBO is not pursuing a second season, but there is a glimmer of hope. 

The Outsider production company MRC is shopping the series to other outlets, meaning that it could pop up somewhere else down the line. 

“We enjoyed our collaboration with [executive producers] Richard [Price], Jason [Bateman], Andrew [Bernstein] and the MRC team, and we wish them well in continuing the world created by the brilliant Stephen King,” HBO said in a statement to Deadline.

Added MRC Television President Elise Henderson, “We thank HBO for a great partnership in the first season, and for helping to bring in a massive audience who fell in love with The Outsider. We are looking forward to finding a new home for this remarkable series.”

It garnered good reviews and decent ratings, so it’s hard to imagine the series not returning in some capacity. 

It followed a detecive, who teams up with an eccentric private investigator in the pursuit of a killer. 

Despite all evidence pointing to a local football coach, it soon emerges that there is more than meets the eye with the cast.

It was a spooky series that delved deep into the occult, and given that the now-series finale wrapped with ambiguity, it seemed like the story could continue. 

King said recently in an interview with Entertainment Weekly that he’d read scripts, and gave some hints about them. 

The Outsider Season 1 averaged 914,000 viewers and a 0.25 rating among adults 18-49. 

The series actually built from 724,000 and a 0.18 rating for its series premiere, all the way to 1.36 million viewers and a 0.39 for its series finale. 

The miniseries starred Ben Mendelsohn as Det. Ralph Anderson, Bill Camp as Howard Salomon, Jeremy Bobb as Alec Pelley, Julianne Nicholson as Glory Maitland, Mare Winningham as Jeannie Anderson, Paddy Considine as Claude Bolton, Yul Vazquez as Yunis Sablo, Jason Bateman as Terry Maitland, Marc Menchaca as Jack Hoskins, and Cynthia Erivo as Holly Gibney.

What are your thoughts on the news?

Hit the comments below. 

Paul Dailly is the Associate Editor for TV Fanatic. Follow him on Twitter.