As is well known, an unwritten film and series law says that if it succeeds, a sequel is almost inevitable, in the field of series, which are usually designed for several seasons anyway, even more than in movies. But even here there are always exceptions to this rule – and one of them is probably the current Netflix hit “The Watcher”.
Ryan Murphy, creator of American Horror Story, has landed another true crime hit for Netflix with The Watcher, right after his serial killer portrait Dahmer: Monster: The Story of Jeffrey Dahmer. Because his latest series is again based on a shocking real case and is extremely popular with the streaming service. In just the first four days alone, all Netflix subscribers had watched a whopping 125 million hours, thus ranking first in the most-streamed content on the platform a few days ahead of “Dahmer” (for comparison, the recently horror series “Goosebumps” at Midnight” had only 70 million hours watched in just over a week).
And while the end of Season 1 leaves the doors wide open for a possible sequel, there probably won’t be a second season of “The Watcher” — for two main reasons.
“The Watcher” is a miniseries
Reason #1: “The Watcher” was conceived by Ryan Murphy and his team as a so-called limited series or miniseries. Normally, this means that a completed story is told within one season, with no second season planned from the start. Again, there are exceptions, as productions that started as miniseries such as “Big Little Lies” and “The Sinner” were given extra seasons due to their great popularity.
However, we consider it unlikely that “The Watcher” will join these ranks. This is where the second and arguably most important reason comes into play…
“The Watcher” must remain unclear
Reason No. 2: The real Fall Watcher case, on which the series is loosely based, remains unsolved to this day. And while “The Watcher” takes a lot of liberties and adds a lot in addition to the contents of the first two threatening letters from the eponymous stranger, you didn’t suddenly want to conjure a statement out of a hat that doesn’t really exist.
That might be a bit unsatisfactory for a series – especially since many suspects were brought into play over the course of the series, and also the fate of the obscure main characters’ marriage would hold a lot of potential for a second season. In the end, though, it was more important for Murphy and Co., at least in the end, to draw the line back to reality. And with an accompanying fade-in at the very end of the series, once again emphasizing that the Watcher’s identity was never revealed, that also seems pretty definitive.
It’s not entirely impossible that the huge success of “The Watcher” will prompt Netflix to rethink and produce a second season. However, for the reasons above, that would surprise us enormously.