AMC silences Orphan Black: Echoes after one season
Access to the Clone Club has now once again been rescinded: Deadline reports that AMC has announced that it’s not going forward with a second season of Orphan Black: Echoes, its BBC America-co-produced sequel series to the well-loved sci-fi show. Starring Krysten Ritter as a young woman with amnesia in 2052, and Keeley Hawes as the adult version of the child of one of Tatiana Maslany’s multiple characters on the original series, the show will now end after a single season.
Airing this past summer in the United States (after getting blorped down as a big blob of single-serving clone goo on Australian streaming service Stan the previous November), Echoes failed to catch the same fire as the original Orphan Black, which combined Maslany’s riveting multi-part performance with pulpy questions about the role science plays in an increasingly dystopian world, as well as a “fuck it,” go for broke approach to its plotting. Despite Ritter’s best efforts, and its own intriguing hook—clones grown from vats are so old-school; now we do “print-outs” who arrive instantly at whatever age you want them to be—the sequel show couldn’t match the original’s energy. (Or, to quote our own Saloni Gajjar, “Its biggest achievement is reminding audiences that Orphan Black was a truly great ride.”)
AMC appears to have agreed, pulling the plug on the series, which was developed for TV by showrunner Anna Fishko. In addition to Ritter and Hawes, the series also starred Amanda Fix, Avan Jogia, James Hiroyuki Liao, and Rya Kihlstedt. The entire series is available for streaming on AMC+—although so is the original Orphan Black, so, y’know, choose wisely.