Netflix's Fan-Favorite Comedy Series to End After Season 2

Netflix's short-form comedy series Special is coming to an end, its creator and star Ryan O'Connell announced on Wednesday. The upcoming Special Season 2 will be the last, but it will also come with more content than the previous installments. The last batch of episodes will be 30 minutes each, O'Connell explained.

"After two seasons, Special is sadly coming to an end," O'Connell said in a public statement published by The Wrap on Wednesday. "Thank you to the fans and Netflix for allowing me to make exactly the show I wanted to make and for giving me 30-minute episodes to finish the story. Creating this show has been the highlight of my g—damn life." O'Connell writes and stars in Special, which is about a gay man with cerebral palsy trying to change his life. The second and now final season premieres on Thursday, May 20 on Netflix.

Special Season 1 is comprised of eight episodes, which are 15 minutes long each. In a 2019 interview with The Playlist, O'Connell admitted that he chaffed against the short format more and more as the writing process went on. He wished for more time to intertwine A, B and C plots, noting that in a shortened episode "every line needs to count for something and you can't do anything somewhere else."

Expanding the second season to 30-minute episodes will undoubtedly help with this problem, and play to O'Connell's strengths as a more conventional TV writer. O'Connell found work as a blogger right out of college, and soon found his way into writing TV from there. He wrote on MTV's Awkward and the BH90210 reboot while working on his show.

Special is based loosely on O'Connell's own experiences, and on his memoir, I'm Special: And Other Lies We Tell Ourselves. O'Connell was born with a mild form of cerebral palsy, which causes him to walk with a slight limp. However, at the age of 20, he was hit by a car, which required several surgeries and left one of his hands slightly impaired as well. From then on, O'Connell chose not to correct people who assumed his limp was a result of his car accident.

The hero in his show is much the same. Special follows a young man named Ryan working as an intern and allowing his co-workers to believe he was permanently injured in a car accident while he actually has cerebral palsy. The show was lauded for making strides in representation — both for disabled viewers and the LGBTQ+ community.

Special Season 1 is streaming now on Netflix. Season 2 premieres on Thursday, May 20.