Defiance, Syfy’s experimental TV show set in a much-changed future St. Louis, will not go past a third season.
Syfy is cancelling the show, which is named for St. Louis’ new identity on a post-apocalyptic Earth where battles rage among seven alien races. When a wanderer enters the city in the series’ two-hour pilot, he looks up at the Gateway Arch, an important symbol throughout the show, and asks, “That arch, is this St. Louis?”
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“It was,” the sheriff explains. “Now we call it Defiance.”
Defiance never caught on, not even in St. Louis, a city that loves to see itself represented on national TV. As we wrote in 2013 when the show first aired, “Even if it’s derivative, it’s about us, and whenever St. Louis is spotlighted on a national stage, we get a rise out of it.”
(Maybe if Syfy had followed our suggestion of adding a post-apocalyptic Ted Drewes staffed by cyborg teenagers, Defiance would have lived to see a fourth season.)
Viewership for Defiance, which centers around seven alien races battling on a post-apocalyptic Earth, dropped sharply after its first season, with just under two million viewers tuning into the second season finale, according to Variety, which broke the bad news for science fiction fans Friday. Syfy designed the show as a multi-platform experience, with some of the story playing out in the Defiance video game. Though the show is halted, the video game will continue.
Here’s what Syfy had to say about the cancellation:
“Defiance was a truly groundbreaking series, delivering an immersive, cross-platform experience that transcended the television screen in a way that viewers had never seen before. We are incredibly proud of the work of the extraordinary cast, writers, artists and designers—and especially showrunner Kevin Murphy—who together brought the rich world of Defiance to life over its three season arc.”
Contact Lindsay Toler by an email at [email protected] or on Twitter @StLouisLindsay. For more from St. Louis Magazine, subscribe or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
