Prodigal Son Creators Reveal Plans For Season 3 Before Cancellation, Including Michael Sheen

Tom Payne as Malcolm Bright and Michael Sheen as Martin Whitly in Prodigal Son.

Spoilers ahead for the Season 2 finale of Prodigal Son, “The Last Weekend.”

The finale of Fox’s Prodigal Son aired Tuesday night and, just as the promo promised, it had a killer ending. While the series was sadly cancelled by the network due to low ratings, the show’s creators are now revealing the plans they had for a potential third season.

The final minutes of Prodigal Son's Season 2 finale included Tom Payne’s Malcolm Bright and his serial killer father, Martin Whitly (Michael Sheen), in a father-son standoff in the woods after finding a missing woman. Martin ran away once again but, when Malcolm caught up to his father, he realized his endgame: Martin was going to kill him. Before he had a chance to stab his son though, Malcolm turned the knife on Martin and stabbed him instead. Co-creator Sam Sklaver told TVLine that the aftermath of this event was going to be a massive storyline, and it would tackle how each character and their relationships would have fared following the event:

No, we have a really fun Season 3 pitch. We don’t want to give too much of it away because we’re still hopeful of being able to tell that story. But Bright stabbing Martin at the end wasn’t going to make anyone’s life easier, and I think our show flourishes when all of our characters face adversity. Bright and Dani just kissed, but they’re not going to be able to get past this. Gil and Jessica are in a good place. There’s so many places that we could jump off from the ending of this season, and that’s what’s so exciting for us.

Martin’s death was just the beginning of what could have been in Season 3. Although fan-favorite actor Michael Sheen was not featured as much in Season 2 due to him having COVID-19 and recovering from it, co-creator Chris Fedak revealed a surprising detail about the third season that gives fans something more to think about after the finale:

And on a technical level, our plan was to include Michael Sheen in Season 3, so that gives you a little bit of insight into where we were going. He was definitely going to be a part of the show.

By the sounds of it, it seems Season 3 would have upped the stakes even higher. Despite Fox cancelling the series, fans and the cast have stopped at nothing to get the show picked up by a different network, or even streaming service. Maybe it’ll get the Brooklyn Nine-Nine treatment and head to a different network. Or better yet, it could get the Lucifer treatment, in which a streaming platform like Netflix or HBO Max will pick it up so fans can see what happens next.

While you theorize all the possible Season 3 ideas, you can stream Season 1 of Prodigal Son on HBO Max and check out Season 2 on Hulu.

Megan Behnke
Freelance TV News Writer

Passionate writer. Obsessed with anything and everything entertainment, specifically movies and television. Can get easily attached to fictional characters.