Immediately after the American thriller drama TV series “The Following” was cancelled by Fox after its Season 3 finale in May last year, fans and viewers of the show started a petition at Change.org to push for the rescue of the show in another network or possibly a streaming service.
In the petition, fans admitted that they were sure that the show will not be coming back on Fox and that they were actually pushing that the TV series make it to Netflix instead, the way the streaming service has rescued other cancelled TV series in the past including “Arrested Development,” “The Killing,” “Longmire” and a few others.
However, the viewers were also not pushing for a full fourth season of “The Following” as they shall apparently be contented with a semi-Season 4 or a mini-series.
They cited that an awesome title like “The Following Reborn” really sounds great and they will be more than happy to have six hour-long episodes on a cool little mini-series so that the showrunners can give the show a satisfying conclusion.
The petitioners asked fans and viewers of “The Following” to sign the petition and share it on Twitter and Facebook.
Unfortunately, up until this day, the petition did not even generate enough numbers for any network or Netflix to show interest in rescuing the show from cancellation.
Moving on to more FBI agent roles
Season 4 of “The Following” has long been cancelled by Fox but its lead star, Kevin Bacon, has already landed two FBI agent roles in two movies since, including an upcoming one about the 2013 Boston Massacre, titled “Patriots Day.”
The “Footloose” actor has played the role of FBI agent Ryan Hardy during the three seasons on the air of “The Following.” While Season 3 ended with a huge cliffhanger, the show was not fortunate enough to receive a renewal order from Fox for a fourth season.
Some of the avid fans of the show were simply not convinced that “The Following” had to go down without a fight.
That’s when they decided to initiate an online petition among the loyal viewers of the show and make their signature campaign a tool for the show producers to either convince Fox to reconsider its decision of cancelling “The Following” or use it as a marketing tool to have another network or a streaming service pick up the show and rescue it from cancellation.
Unfortunately, the online petition lost steam even before it hit the targeted 25,000 fan signatures so that the producers of “The Following” will have something to show to Fox, the other networks, or the streaming services, as regards the marketability potentials of the TV series.
Fox decided to cancel the show after three seasons because of declining ratings and it seems that the aborted online petition also indicated the same pattern for the airing of the show. When the online petition was started in July 2015, it came out very strong. However, after a few days, it has lost steam and managed to churn out only 13,000 signatures from the very conservative target of 25,000.
While many attributed the cancellation of the TV series to poor ratings that started to show beginning in its second season, critics think that “The Following,” just like many other shows before it, has fallen victim to lazy writing.
Based on its two-hour Season 3 finale, “The Following” actually reflected how it squandered its assets, with the end coming two years and many dozens of killings later, which was a bit too late.
The mind games between Kevin Bacon’s Ryan Hardy and James Purefoy’s Joe Caroll may have been the lifeblood of the show, “The Following” overstayed its welcome among many of its viewers and had a grim streak beginning in Season 2 all the way to Season 3.
The series should have ended with the cat-and-mouse game between Hardy and Caroll but the show’s modest first season success necessitated a new season and new wrinkles as well, thus unleashing several rival sets of psychopaths to sustain the TV series in the next two seasons.