Fox has been busy with both firing actors and canceling shows, lately. And unfortunately for horror fans, one of the many casualties is The Exorcist. Season 2 of the series dropped in the ratings quite a bit, averaging 1.32 million viewers, and though it’s plausible that the pending FOX and Disney merger played a significant role in the show’s demise as well, the writing has been on the wall here for a while now.
Creator and writer on The Exorcist, Jeremy Slater, had mapped out a story arc with series co-producer Sean Crouch that would have spanned seven seasons. While the first outing was not as successful as Fox had hoped it would be, even with Geena Davis’ star power, the show still managed to pass for a second. A cult following had since been established within the horror community as well, with fans having willingly adapted to each new character and situation.
The idea was to introduce new families every season, while still following Marcus, Tomas and Mouse. For the next run, we would’ve picked up where things left off, with Marcus trying to find Tomas. He’s spent about thirty years exorcising people, but his mistrust of the church would have made it potentially harder for him to find Father Ortega – if wasn’t already too late, of course.
It sounds like it would have made for some intense horror drama and while it’s always possible the show will find a home elsewhere, it’s most likely fans of The Exorcist won’t get any answers to the questions that December’s finale has left us with now.
Despite this, Slater urged viewers not to be angry, stating on Twitter that there are “no bad guys here.”
“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.”
Tell us, do you believe Fox made a mistake cancelling The Exorcist? Or were you never a fan of the show in the first place?