Hulu has been the streaming place to be for murder mysteries ever since the premiere of Only Murders in the Building back in 2021, but the 2024 TV premiere schedule delivered a new kind of murder mystery to keep viewers on their toes. Death and Other Details arrived for Hulu subscribers in January with Mandy Patinkin and Violett Beane in the lead roles. Now that the finale has released, the question is: what about Season 2? Showrunners Mike Weiss and Heidi Cole McAdams spoke with CinemaBlend about that very topic!
The final two episodes of Death and Other Details' first round debuted on March 5, at a time when Hulu has been on a bit of a cancellation spree. At the time of writing, the show has not yet been renewed or cancelled. I spoke with creators/showrunners/writers Mike Weiss and Heidi Cole McAdams at SCAD TVfest in February, and McAdams weighed in on whether they were planning a future beyond the first season:
We have lots of ideas. We'd love to be able to make a second season, but people have to watch for that to happen. Week by week!
While it remains to be seen if enough people watched while the show was releasing, fans can take heart that the showrunners already had "lots of ideas" to continue the story beyond how the final credits rolled on Season 1. Plus, it surely can't hurt to rewatch any episodes now, or even recommend it to others to try out!
Both showrunners came to Death and Other Details with multi-season runs on other hit shows, including Chicago P.D. (available streaming via Peacock Premium subscription) for Mike Weiss and The 100 (available streaming via Netflix subscription) for Heidi Cole McAdams, before both worked on ABC's Stumptown.
When I asked if working on multi-season shows helped them to plan ahead beyond Season 1, McAdams explained:
From the beginning, we wanted to create a show that was able to go five, six, seven seasons, if they would let us. So we built that into the DNA.
If Only Murders in the Building is any indication, there's a market for ongoing murder mysteries on Hulu! That show – although more comedic than Death and Other Details – has run for three full seasons so far and a fourth is on the way with the Only Murders in the Building cast filling out. As for Death and Other Details, Mike Weiss agreed with his co-creator and elaborated:
For sure. That's how you build characters, too. Hopefully you're building characters that the audience gets to know really well, but who are deep enough and interesting enough that there's more to unpack in their lives as you go forward in future seasons.
Of course, releasing on streaming is very different from releasing on broadcast network television. For Death and Other Details, that has meant debuting new episodes at 12:01 a.m. PT on Tuesdays. Hulu embraced the weekly release model as opposed to Netflix's binge model of dropping a full season at once, and Heidi Cole McAdams explained why weekly is the best fit for this drama:
I think because with a murder mystery, it allows you to kind of give yourself time to think about your theories. You watch it all at once, it would just be gone in a whiff, but week by week, every episode ends with some version of cliffhanger but it also gives you a lot more information into what really happened.
Whether that weekly release model for the murder mystery is enough of a hit with viewers to earn a Season 2 is anybody's guess at this point. Still, I noted to the showrunners that the weekly release for a murder mystery made for more fun discussion about the show, and Mike Weiss shared:
We've heard a lot of theories, some of which are maybe even more creative and clever than ones that we came up with. It's tough being jealous of someone's random theory. [laughs] But no, it's been really fun, and one of the other exciting things is that we've had very few people correctly guess what's really going on in the ship.
So, how satisfying is it for Weiss and McAdams as writers, showrunners, and creators that they're able to befuddle viewers? Weiss answered that very question, saying:
Unbelievably! We just hope that they love the twist as much as we do once they get to the last episode or two.
For now, we can only wait and see if Hulu decides to order a second season of Death and Other Details. If you want to revisit the first season for fun (or to show Hulu that there's ongoing interest), you can find all ten episodes of Season 1 streaming now.
Shows like The Great and How I Met Your Father getting the axe doesn't necessarily mean that every Hulu show is doomed, so there may well be a future for Death and Other Details beyond the first season finale.
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