“Aquarius” Ends After Two Seasons: Cancelled Too Early?

The experimental drama series about the murders of Charles Manson had a very interesting start when NBC made available the entire 12 episodes of its first season online before its official airing on summer of 2015. The David Duchnovy vehicle was met with mediocre ratings during its pilot due to the episode's availability online way before the premiere. Factoring in however, the DVR viewing numbers, the show's rating grew a mere percentage before moving from its original Thursday to Saturday schedule where it ran the rest of the show's first season episodes.

Surprisingly, despite the disappointing performance, NBC decided to pick-up Aquarius for a second season where it struggled again with ratings.The gimicky ad-free two-hour season two premiere met a disappointing 0.4 rating among adults 18-49. Fast forward to the season finale, a rating of 0.2 ended the show with a whimper.

Originally envisioned by John McNamara, the show's executive producer, to run for six seasons, "Aquarius" being hit by the cancellation bear was not a surprise to anyone and was long due even during its first season. The show already had mixed reviews from critics earning a score of 58 in Metacritic and a rotten 56% rating in RottenTomatoes.

While this news is typically a bad one for stars Grey Damon and Gethin Anthony (who played Charles Manson), David Duchnovy on the other hand will have more freedom to do the anticipated season 11 of "The X-Files" reboot, which recently got a warm welcome this year over at Fox. David, along with co-star Gillian Anderson, expressed interest in doing the show when he tweeted the actress during her birthday saying "If you see Dana, tell her Fox says she might wanna polish up the ol' badge soon-ish."

This cancellation however bears no harm to the peacock station which recently enjoyed a huge premiere with neophyte shows "The Good Place" starring Ted Danson and Kriten Bell and the highest-rated TV show premiere this fall "This Is Us", that stars 2016 Emmy Awards winner Sterling K. Brown and Mandy Moore, in her huge TV comeback among others.