What To Know
- Ponies has been canceled after a single season on Peacock.
- Previously, the cocreators detailed what they expected would come in a second season.
Bad news for fans of Peacock’s new spy dramedyPonies: The streamer has canceled the series after a single season.
Variety reports that the series, which boasted Emilia Clarke and Haley Lu Richardson as coleads, will not return to the streamer for Season 2.
The news comes after the series enjoyed critical praise and left on a cliffhanger that the executive producers intended to follow up on. Cocreators David Iserson and Susanna Fogel spoke to TV Insider about the eight-episode first season and what they anticipated would still be to come in Season 2 and revealed a lot of hints about what might’ve been ahead.
For one thing, Iserson said that he fully intended to incorporate more historical anecdotes like the Elton John concert in Moscow that became a backdrop for the sleuthing action, saying, “Our hope is that we can do this show for many more years. So, we have a lot of things in our back pocket that we didn’t yet explore, but that we would be excited to explore…. in researching what the American Embassy in Moscow dealt with in this time period, there are just some great, true things that really excited us that we weren’t able to get going but is widely available, and lots of books that exist about this time period in Moscow.”
Iserson also said that after Clarke’s character, Bea, discovered that her husband was still alive in the Season 1 finale, that would’ve been a turning point for her.
“I think where we are setting her up for Season 2, and knowing that Chris is alive, and knowing that that information is going to come back towards her, one way or the other, and how she is going to grapple with it, she is a much different person than she was when the show began, where the hope that Chris is alive and the information that Chris is alive would be something that would be the wish that she tells herself come true,” Iserson told us. “And I think the person that she is at the end, when that information comes, she has kind of lived a lot more life, and that is information that she is going to receive in a much more complicated way.”
Fogel also said that the power dynamics between the women and their nemesis Andrei would be a big factor in Season 2 as well, explaining, “I feel like playing with who has the power in what situation, and who can blackmail whom, and what each of them wants moment to moment, it’s really complicated in Season 2 in a way that I think is in a world where we’re still sort of drawn to the chemistry that they have, in spite of everything we’ve seen. It’s going to feel, hopefully, exciting to watch those little moves, and it’s not clear who has power in that situation, just based on the cards that each of them holds. And we want to keep that really complicated and, episode to episode, be exploring the ways that each of them can sort of control the other.”
Iserson also pointed to the KGB’s blackmail organization storyline as one that could be explored in more detail, as well as what Dane was dealing with: “He’s suffering with mental illness and suicidal ideation, and also a lot of that guilt built up, and Chris being dead, but then he finds out that Chris is alive, and [we have to see] how that affects him, and how that makes him vulnerable,” he explained.
The pair also confirmed that they intended to keep the center of the action in Moscow, as in Season 1. Alas.
Ponies, Streaming Now, Peacock