Netflix has yet to renew The Midnight Gospel for Season 2, according to series co-creator Duncan Trussell. His strange, emotionally-raw cartoon briefly took over the streaming service this spring, with eight episodes featuring art from his co-creator Pendleton Ward of Adventure Time. Now, Trussell is calling on Netflix to order another season and asking fans to help.
Trussell gave an interview with Deadline about The Midnight Gospel and its unique success with adult cartoon audiences. He was not shy about admitting that he is hopeful for a renewal, but he has not heard much yet. He appealed straight to the audience, saying: “If you have any kind of magical powers, or even better, some connection to Netflix, give us a second season! Please, I want to make more. There’s so many more stories to tell about The Chromatic Ribbon.”
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Trussell — a comedian and podcast host with a penchant for colorful, poetic language — admitted that waiting for word in either direction is hard on him. He said that he takes solace in what the show accomplished so far, reminding himself that a single season on Netflix is an accomplishment on its own.
“Obviously, there’s a writhing part of me that is deeply in suspense, waiting for a decision to be made, one way or the other, and if I said that wasn’t there, everybody would know I was a horrible liar,” he said. “But that being said, they let us make this crazy thing! To me, it’s just the wildest thing to imagine that any network would let me and Pendleton roll with this wild idea — and now, it’s living on Netflix forever.”
Still, Trussell tried to hint at where a hypothetical second season of The Midnight Gospel might go without giving too much away. He made the case that the show is a rich fictional world with lots of untapped potential.
“You know, we mapped out that world, and we barely, barely got into that world. But nothing you’re seeing in that show — not a single word, not a single moment — was unintentional. It all connects to a really big history, and a very deep story,” he said.
The Midnight Gospel takes Ward’s signature sublime animation even further than his previous creations did, following Clancy (Trussell) through multidimensional adventures in his “universe simulator.” The conversations he has there are adapted right from Trussell’s podcast, The Duncan Trussell Family Hour, but they are discussed between supernatural beings. It covers everything from drug use to religion and death, with a few light-hearted stops in between. The Midnight Gospel Season 1 is streaming now on Netflix.