Will Netflix or Amazon pick up Quantico Season 4?

Quantico was a pretty good thriller that ran on ABC from 2015 until this year. It ran for three seasons and is currently being screened on Netflix. If you’re a fan of the show, you will also know that it was axed after series three with little chance of being resurrected on ABC. But what about other platforms? Will Netflix pick up Quantico? Will Amazon or someone else?

If you didn’t see Quantico, it was pretty good. More than your usual procedural cop show where amazingly complicated cases are solved by a misfit team in less than forty minutes. It had good characters, a decent script, some good set pieces and all the ingredients that should have made it a hit. Plus it had Priyanka Chopra.

Quantico TV show

Quantico began well. The storyline for series one began with a classic whodunnit and on paper should have worked much better than it did. A terror attack on New York, Grand Central destroyed and the pool of suspects whittled down to a class of FBI wannabes at Quantico.

To begin with, Priyanka Chopra’s character Alex Parrish is the prime suspect. However from the viewer’s eye, we know it’s her job to find out who did it and the series’ episodes allow the story and the conspiracy to unfold.

Series two Quantico sees another terrorism storyline. This time at the G20 in New York and a hostage situation rather than a bomb. Now undercover and apparently fired by the FBI, Alex Parrish and Ryan Booth have to infiltrate a shadowy organization that is within the FBI. The series unfolds as the two develop their undercover personas and gradually figure out the people behind the group known as Collaborators.

Series three was shorter at only thirteen episodes but tied everything up into a neat package. It seems the writers must have known the end was coming as this series is mainly about rounding the story out and tying up loose ends so everything makes sense. The premise of the final series is that now Alex Parrish has served time in the CIA and is living in Italy. Ryan needs her help rescuing his best friend Shelby.

Cue the cat and mouse between the two and an arms dealer called The Widow. This time we get to see a little more of the world as the two cross countries after The Widow and visit the US, Italy, Europe and Ireland before ending the series for good in a showdown that ties everything very tidily indeed.

So what went wrong?

Why did Quantico end?

Despite some very avid fans, Quantico did not resonate very well with mass audiences. We have seen the terrorism thing done already. We have also had lots of TV shows trying to convince us there are shadowy organizations within other organizations with nefarious goals. Plus, using New York as a backdrop for a terrorist attack was not a good call. Even many years after 9/11, people are still very sensitive to that kind of plotline.

The characters also seemed to fail to make an impact. Priyanka Chopra and the rest of the cast are good actors but if you look at Alex Parrish and Ryan Booth in the first series and again in the last, they hadn’t developed at all. They have experienced lots and have gone through things that would have broken most of us but the characters themselves are still where they were when we first met them.

I think this lack of originality and character development saw the end for Quantico. There are dozens of TV shows about terrorists, dozens more about the FBI and CIA and even more about conspiracies and shadowy organizations. Our appetite is well and truly sated right now it seems. Had Quantico been shown another time when our screens weren’t full of very similar shows, I think it would have done much better.

Likelihood of Netflix picking up Quantico?

I liked the series and wish Netflix would pick it up but I don’t think they will. While some of the shows Netflix have picked up seem dubious, they all have two things in common. There was an existing fanbase who would potentially subscribe to Netflix for their favorite show and there was somewhere to take the show.

Where would Quantico go from here? In the end it wasn’t about Quantico any more. It was about Alex Parrish and Ryan Booth. Unless they go back to Quantico as instructors, there is nowhere for the show to go and nothing new for it to tell us. So unfortunately, in my humble opinion, I don’t think Netflix will pick up Quantico. I doubt other services will either unfortunately.

What do you think? Should Netflix pick up Quantico? Where would you take the story next if it did?