Swamp Thing has been universally praised since its premiere episode last week, with a 92 percent fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes. On the day before the second episode dropped on DC Universe, however, news broke that Season 1 would be the end and DC had cancelled Swamp Thing.
This came as a shock, but there might be two reasons that Swamp Thing will end after a single season. One of them may disappoint fans of the DC Universe streaming service.
Is DC Universe ending?
The biggest rumor is that DC Universe might be coming to an end, not even a year after debuting.
AT&T and Time Warner merged recently and Warner Bros. owns DC. According to Deadline, AT&T is reevaluating all their properties after the merger and DC Universe streaming is one of those properties.
WarnerMedia, the new overarching conglomerate that sits at the top of the table wants to have its own streaming platform, similar to Disney, who will start its Disney+ later this year.
Deadline’s Nellie Andreeva reported that there are questions about where DC Universe fits into the plans for the WarnerMedia streaming platform, although no sources were revealed.
This would be a huge blow, as DC Universe offered viewers a chance to save money by subscribing to a yearly plan and if WarnerMedia starts to ax shows now, the service is less worth the money despite the classic DC TV shows and movies offered.
DC Universe also offers a digital comic book library similar to Marvel Unlimited and just added a ton of issues so there might be a chance it morphs from a digital movie and TV service into just a digital comic book platform.
Swamp Thing cut short for Season 1
While there are fears that WarnerMedia might be wanting to shut down DC Universe — or at least not pay to create any more original content — there is one other thing to take into account.
The first season of Swamp Thing was supposed to be 14 episodes but midway through the shoot, the production was shut down and only 10 episodes were created. The Playlist reports that the showrunners were allowed to refigure the end of the season to tie things up satisfactorily.
This did not make people happy, as former Academy Award-nominee actress Virginia Madsen took to Instagram to bash the studio for cutting the show down in the middle of production. Here is a look at her now-deleted Instagram post:
While the reasons were not given, it sounds like the production costs on the show were too high for the possible return from the 10-month-old DC Universe streaming service.
With that said, there are still eight more episodes of Swamp Thing to enjoy before the end of Season 1 and there is always a chance something happens to bring it back somewhere else down the line.
Swamp Thing releases new episodes every Friday on DC Universe.