Will Netflix Pick Up The Mist for Season 2?

The Mist is a Stephen King adaptation that was aired in 2017. The story was originally made into a movie and then into this TV series that aired on Spike and is now showing on Netflix. The news that The Mist was canned after a single season was news to nobody but is it the end? Will Netflix pick up The Mist for season 2? Will anyone?

Stephen King is having another golden era right now. After the first, with his books and the second with movies during the 1980s, it is now about movies and TV. With IT, The Dark Tower, Mr. Mercedes and the recent Under The Dome, the Carrie remake and likely others in production, it’s a good time to be Mr. King right now.

The Mist is another adaptation of one of his books. It centers around a strange mist that envelops the small town of Bridgeville, Maine. The town is surrounded by the thick mist and cannot see out. The mist doesn’t just subdue sound and light, it also contains monsters of all shapes and sizes that look to prey on the townsfolk.

It’s a typical Stephen King book. A character-led situation that brings out the worst and the best in people. That forces characters to examine themselves and sometimes find themselves wanting and either rise to the challenge or give in to their base desires. It is no less a story for being typical though. The book has the usual mix of small town characters, some with secrets, some with none and a situation that changes their view of the world and of each other.

The Mist TV show

The Mist follows most of the original book and the movies from 2007. Townsfolk are picked off in the mist whenever they go out so hole up in the local supermarket. Here the TV show diverts from the book by splitting the cast into three that stay in the mall, the police station and the church.

A core family are the main characters with supporting characters adding balance and interest. Morgan Spector plays Kevin Copeland, Alyssa Sutherland plays Eve Copeland and Gus Birney plays daughter Alex Cunningham. The supporting cast include Danica Curcic as Mia Lambert, Okezie Morro as Bryan Hunt and Luke Cosgrove as Jay Heisel. The case it large and varied but that family unit are where The Mist concentrates.

Also a departure is how The Mist handles the monsters. Rather than having just physical monsters as the enemy, there is a mixture of external and internal monsters to deal with. Each character has their own demons and their own issues and the show also tries to tackle wider social issues as it goes. Unfortunately, this approach isn’t universally successful.

It seems some characters are bipolar and will suddenly change for no explicable reason. We expect extreme circumstances to bring our different aspects of our personality but some of the changes in the town seem disjointed or unlikely to say the least. The adaptation is often clumsy and doesn’t handle certain aspects of the storyline very well at all. The Mist as the perfect opportunity to tackle current social challenges and doesn’t pull them off. Fortunately, these don’t detract too much from the storyline.

Will Netflix make The Mist season 2?

Spike didn’t want to make another season of The Mist and despite a Change.org petition, it doesn’t seem like anyone else does either. While the original story is worthy of a continuing series, it might just be better to let this version fade away and begin again in a few years’ time.

The cast is strong and features some good performances but the script, the production quality and the overall impression of The Mist isn’t great. It watches as a low budget show created for cable with half an eye on cost rather than quality. For those reasons I don’t think Netflix will want anything to do with it as it is.

There is a real appetite for character-driven stories right now and Stephen King is the master of these. He has written enough books to be adapted for the large or small screen without flogging a dead horse, which I think The Mist is. It’s a shame as I liked the cast and thought some of their acting was excellent. I think they were let down by the writing and the directing though.

I may be completely wrong. At the time of writing, there are no plans or hints of plans to continue The Mist into a second season. Not on Netflix or anywhere. It’s a shame but not entirely surprising once you sit through a couple of episodes of season one which is currently running on Netflix.

What did you think of The Mist? Should there be a season 2 or should it be left to fade into its own mist? Tell us your thoughts below.