Prodigal Son, the short-lived crime drama that aired on Fox for two seasons, is no longer available on Hulu. Instead, fans of the Michael Sheen-starring series will have to turn to HBO Max to watch the 33 episodes produced over two years. Although the show earned good reviews and had a devoted fan base, the show was canceled in May and no outlet came in to save the day.
The series was created by Chris Fedak and Sam Sklaver. Tom Payne starred as Malcolm Bright, a former FBI profiler working for the New York Police Department and struggling to suppress the same sociopathic tendencies of his father, serial killer Martin “The Surgeon” Whitly (Sheen). Lou Diamond Phillips starred as NYPD Lt. Gil Arroyo, while Halston Sage played Malcolm’s sister Ainsley. Aurora Perrineau, Frank Harts, Keiko Agena, and Bellamy Young rounded out the main cast.
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Since the show was co-produced by Warner Bros. Television and distributed by Warner Bros. Television, there was some hope HBO Max could sweep in and save the day. However, on May 20, Deadline confirmed that HBO Max passed on the show. The show’s creators said WBTV was shopping the project to several possible outlets, but none was ever found.
Fans were particularly hurt by the cancelation news since it ended with a cliffhanger. Fedak and Sklaver told TVLine the last episode was not written as a possible season finale. “We were approaching it as, ‘What’s the most exciting way to end Season 2?’” Fedak explained. “We also feel, like you do, that it is not a series finale that doesn’t work because we’ve been cancelled. It still does work… This isn’t like ALF being captured by the government before they were cancelled. It’s still a good and exciting story.”
Sklaver noted that they did write episodes of Season 2 as possible season-enders, since they had no idea if the COVID pandemic would get in the way of finishing the show. Even though they did not want to stop telling their story, Sklaver said he was happy about how it all ended. “The finale really feels like we’ve earned everything that happens in that moment, but it’s pretty crazy to know, in 13 episodes, we were able to tell this story,” Sklaver told TVLine. “We found it very satisfying. We have a whole Season 3 story locked and loaded, and we don’t want to stop telling this story. But we’re feeling good about how this ended on Fox.”
