It may not have gained the largest audience in Netflix history, but it had its fair share of loyal viewers. You could even say it had a cult following. So why was Mindhunter canceled? We may finally have the answer after years of rumors and speculation.
Led by showrunner David Fincher (House of Cards, Fight Club), Mindhunter debuted on Netflix in 2017 and ran for just two seasons. The show is inspired by the true story of special agent John Douglas and his work with the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit (BSU). This esteemed criminal profiler began studying serial killers—a term, in fact, coined by him, if the show is to be believed—in the late 1970s. The show starred the young, renegade agent Holden Ford (Broadway star Jonathan Groff) and Bill Tench (Holt McCallany) as the older, seasoned agent as they interviewed perpetrators of violent crime in an attempt to understand what background or childhood experiences could lead them to commit such atrocious acts. Visually, the show was slick in its cinematography and confronting in its content. It was definitely one of the more premium-looking shows Netflix had released. Here’s why Mindhunter was canceled and whether it will be back for a third season.
Why was Mindhunter canceled?
Why was Mindhunter canceled? After much speculation and cagey responses, David Fincher finally gave a definitive reason and he said it’s because the show was too costly for Netflix.
In an interview with French publication Le Journal du Dimanche, the acclaimed director explained: “I’m very proud of the first two seasons. But it’s a very expensive show and, in the eyes of Netflix, we didn’t attract enough of an audience to justify such an investment [for Season 3],” he said.
Jonathan Groff, Holt McCallany, Mindhunter. Courtesy of Netflix
“I don’t blame them, they took risks to get the show off the ground, gave me the means to do Mank [his black and white film about 1930s Hollywood] the way I wanted to do it, and they allowed me to venture down new paths with The Killer. It’s a blessing to be able to work with people who are capable of boldness. The day our desires are not the same, we have to be honest about parting ways.” Fincher didn’t sound at all bitter and noted that his relationship with Netflix continues.
As mentioned, he’s working on The Killer—a neo-noir action thriller based on the French graphic novel of the same name—which will be out on November 10, 2023 on Netflix. It will star the likes of Michael Fassbender and Tilda Swinton, so, good news for fans of slick crime thrillers, there. As for whether there’ll ever be a season three of Mindhunter, it seems unlikely unless Mindhunter gets picked up by another network or streamer.
In an interview with Collider in April 2022, Mindhunter director Andrew Dominik revealed what they had planned for the third season if it was to take place, with Holden Ford and Bill Tench headed for California: “What they were going to do with Season 3 was they were going to go [to] Hollywood. So one of them was going to be hooking up with [filmmaker] Jonathan Demme and the other one was going to be hooking up with [another filmmaker] Michael Mann. And it was all going to be about profiling making it into the sort of zeitgeist, the public consciousness. It would’ve been… That was the season everyone was really waiting for to do, with when they sort of get out of the basement and start.” Devastating.
Season one of Mindhunter takes place between 1977 to 1980. We’re introduced to agents Tench and Ford as they embark on a significant study to understand and hopefully catch serial killers by studying their damaged psyches. All the while, a killer whom we presume is BTK goes uncaught. In season two, from 1980 to 1981, more interviews with more killers are conducted and the study expands, but about halfway through, Tench and Ford are called in to assist the FBI and local police investigate the Atlanta child murders, which included at least 28 deaths of Black children between 1979 and 1981. Wayne Williams was charged and convicted of the murder of two adult men but was never tried for the killing of any teens or children. This caused mass outrage and the cases are cold to this day.
“One of the conclusions the BSU has drawn is that serial killers rarely cross racial lines, and so Holden firmly believes that this killer is Black,” Groff told The Hollywood Reporter in August 2019. “A lot of other people think it’s the Ku Klux Klan, some people think it’s a child pornography ring, there’s a bunch of different theories. But Holden is there to help catch what he believes is a serial killer, in order to help the city of Atlanta and also to prove his theory right, to prove that this method of profiling works.”
What made Mindhunter so great was also the performances of all the actors who played these infamous criminals. Cameron Britton was impeccable and bone-chilling as the “Co-Ed Killer” Ed Kemper—a man who murdered 10 people including his mother with most murders involving necrophilia. Britton is just four inches shy of Kemper’s imposing 6’ 9” stature and is almost hypnotic to witness on screen.
Speaking with Variety in June 2018, Britton said: “I was lucky enough early in the process to not want to make an imitation and that’s something that David did not want either. So it allowed me, when watching interviews with him, to capture his essence and then just let everything else come organically and instinctually to me. So you sort of get a mix of what Ed Kemper was like and then the artistic expression that I found.”
Cameron Britton, Jonathan Groff, Mindhunter. Courtesy of Netflix
He continued: “Sometimes Ed just lingers. It’s hard to get out of that energy. That’s the hard part—with many characters I’ve done, sometimes I feel them sprout up when I’m driving and I want to do them, but with Ed I ignore those impulses because if you just have dark thoughts all day, they become habitual. But that being said, I very much enjoy that headspace because, creepy as it is, there’s a control and a power that comes from being this monster.”
Damon Herriman took on the role of Charles Manson in season two; a person he’s played twice having played the notorious cult leader in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time In Hollywood. “It does make you question a few things about yourself,” he told Variety in July 2020 on being asked to play the head of the Manson Family. “As an actor, you almost never get the opportunity to transform in such a dramatic way. And getting to look at myself in the mirror, become Charles Manson, was really invaluable. It was an extraordinary experience to sit in a chair for a few hours watching yourself transform like that.”
Mindhunter is available to stream on Netflix.
Mindhunter. Amazon
Discover the classic, behind-the-scenes chronicle of John E. Douglas’ 25-year career in the FBI Investigative Support Unit, where he used psychological profiling to delve into the minds of the country’s most notorious serial killers and criminals. In chilling detail, the legendary Mindhunter takes us behind the scenes of some of his most gruesome, fascinating, and challenging cases—and into the darkest recesses of our worst nightmares.
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