Fantasy Drama Series Canceled After Cliffhanger Season Finale
The historical fantasy drama Britannia is ending without resolving its Season 3 cliffhanger. U.K. broadcaster Sky canceled the series on Tuesday. The show, which starred David Morrissey and Kelly Reilly, was originally co-produced with Amazon Studios, with the first two seasons available to stream on Prime Video in the U.S. Britannia moved to Epix (now MGM+) in the U.S. for Season 3.
Britannia was created by Jez Butterworth, Tom Butterworth, and James Richardson. It was set in 43 AD when the Romans invaded Britain. Morrissey (The Walking Dead) starred as General Aulus Plautius and Hugo Speer (Shadow and Bone) as his second-in-command, Lucius, as they try to succeed where Julius Caesar failed. The show tired in fantasy elements through the Druids. Reilly (Yellowstone) starred as Kerra, a member of the Cantii tribe, in the first season.
Season 3 ended with Cait (Eleanor Worthington Cox) finding herself in Rome after her mentor, who apparently married Aulus, betrayed her, notes Deadline. Fans now will not get to see how that storyline plays out. The Season 3 finale aired back on October 2021.
Britannia was produced by Neal Street Productions and Vertigo Films with Sky Studios. Amazon was a co-producer on the first season, which was released in 2018. The second season was released between November 2019 and January 2020. Rick McCallum, famous for his work with George Lucas on the Star Wars prequels, was a producer on the series. Sky has not commented on the show's cancellation.
Jez Butterworth developed the project out of a series of ideas Richardson had that weren't working, he told Indiewire in 2020. "He was at an impasse," Jez said. "The last thing you want to do is come in on something you haven't come up with. But this was too good to miss out on. I had lots of ideas. He gave me the guarantee I could start from scratch."
He then threw out previous scripts, kept the old concept, and brainstormed new ideas with his brother Tom and Richardson. Jez was fascinated by Rome's invasion of Britannia since it centered more on trying to control people's beliefs than brutally conquering the island. They came up with a fictional narrative about two belief systems clashing.
"One pantheon is ushered off stage, and a whole new one brought in," Jez explained. "It's a dramatic time. It seems to go back to the beginning when wars between gods were hugely dramatic. People suddenly change, everything they believe in is slightly different. Christianity was one of a dozen (if not hundreds) of competing cults that were trying to occupy the space left by Rome. I liked the idea of inventing one of these death cults and putting it up against the Celtic cult of a messiah, having things all occur in the shadow of what the audience knows."