The following story contains light spoilers for Season 2 of Mrs. Davis.
2023 HAS already been a good year for TV. If you wanted a post-apocalyptic drama, The Last of Us was right there for you. If you wanted a brutal mystery with some ’90s nostalgia and just a taste of cannibalism, Yellowjackets was ready with Season 2. Daisy Jones and the Six was there if anyone wanted a rock ‘n’ roll story, mysteries-of-the-week had a moment with Poker Face, and HBO closed out two modern classics with the returns of Succession and Barry. And that’s just to start. But you couldn’t possibly fit a show like Peacock’s Mrs. Davis into one sentence like that.
If you were looking for some kind of mystery show, Mrs. Davis was surely it. If you were looking for sci-fi, Mrs. Davis was surely it. If you were looking for absurdist, at-times satirical humor, Mrs. Davis was surely it. If you were looking for a show centered on a nun (who is literally married to Jesus Christ) and her wealthy cowboy ex-boyfriend tracking down the Holy Grail (which was, at one point, hidden in a commercial for a pair of sneakers) at the behest of a possibly-evil-but-also-possibly-not AI algorithm named Mrs. Davis, well, there’s only one Mrs. Davis.
And, as it turns out, we may only get one go-around with Mrs. Davis, both the all-knowing AI character and the Damon Lindelof/Tara Hernandez-created show itself. At the conclusion of the show’s first season, things mostly seem wrapped up—and so the first season could wind up the final season as well.
Will there be a Season 2 of Peacock’s Mrs. Davis?
There hasn’t been news one way or the other, but according to The Wrap, Mrs. Davis will be submitting itself for Emmy consideration in the Limited Series categories, which historically have been for single-season shows with a finite ending. This is where shows like The Dropout and The Staircase have competed in the past and where shows like Love & Death will compete this year.
However, that doesn’t mean that Mrs. Davis will for sure be a one-and-done. Shows like Big Little Lies and The White Lotus have appeared in the Limited Series category before, only to later return for second seasons. The Wrap‘s story says that it was “always intended for Season 1 of the genre-bending series to have a “conclusive and satisfying ending”,” per a source, but that “while discussions on a potential second installment have not started, nothing is off the table.”
Which, in essence, makes things sound like things could go three different ways: Mrs. Davis could be done for good after only a single season, Mrs. Davis could continue a story in its same world but with a (mostly) different cast, a la The White Lotus, or Mrs. Davis could find a way to just continue (like Big Little Lies).
We will have to see in the coming months.
Damon Lindelof’s shows have historically not run long—by design.
Part of the reason why it’s believable that Mrs. Davis could just be a single-season spectacular is that creator Damon Lindelof has historically been in favor of his shows ending when an ending is appropriate, rather than trying to squeeze as much out of them as possible.
Lindelof’s major television breakthrough was as the showrunner and co-creator of Lost, which he’s said in the past was never intended to go on as long as it did, and that he regrets the show not ending after only four seasons.
His shows since—HBO’s exceptional The Leftovers and Watchmen—both had comparatively limited runs. Leftovers ran for three seasons (going past the story of the book upon which it’s based), and Watchmen, a widely-heralded sequel to Alan Moore’s acclaimed graphic novel, concluded its story in only nine episodes.
If the decision is made that Mrs. Davis has told all the nun vs. cowboy vs AI story that it can, there will be no hesitation to call it a day.
Evan is the culture editor for Men’s Health, with bylines in The New York Times, MTV News, Brooklyn Magazine, and VICE. He loves weird movies, watches too much TV, and listens to music more often than he doesn’t.
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