Editorials
“Penny Dreadful” Was Meant to End After Three Seasons? I’m Not Buying It.
As many of you may have heard, Showtime’s fantastic horror series The Eva Green Variety Hour Penny Dreadful was cancelled earlier this week. Well, cancelled may not be the appropriate word. According to series creator John Logan, he realized during Season 2 that the series and Vanessa Ives’ (Eva Green) arc would come to an end simultaneously. Logan said the following in a statement:
“I created ‘Penny Dreadful’ to tell the story of a woman grappling with her faith, and with the demons inside her. For me the character of Vanessa Ives is the heart of this series. From the beginning, I imagined her story would unfold over a three-season arc, ending with Vanessa finally — and triumphantly — finding peace as she returns to her faith.”
You can read Entertainment Weekly’s interview with Logan and Showtime CEO David Nevins here for more insight onto how the series final came to fruition.
***SPOILERS for the series finale of Penny Dreadful to follow.***
Forgive me for being crass, but I call bullshit. Showtime told Logan that they were going to cancel it and he was forced to end his series. Penny Dreadful was never a ratings winner. It was never able to match the series high of 872,000 viewers for the pilot episode in 2014, and even that is about half the viewers of a normal episode of Shameless. Penny Dreadful is also a ridiculously expensive series to produce (which explains how the much more cost-effective Masters of Sex secured a fourth season renewal last year). The money shows in the gorgeous set design, but apparently budget cuts were out of the question.
I would argue that the series was never solely about Vanessa’s arc. It was called Penny Dreadful, not Vanessa Ives. The series served as a more serious version of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen that saw literatures famous horror characters brought to life through Logan’s eyes. It was always about the ensemble, even if Vanessa Ives was the most interesting facet of that ensemble. Vanessa grew to become the emotional center of the series, but just because her life is over doesn’t mean the series has to be over as well. No, dwindling ratings and an expensive budget brought Penny Dreadful to an end. Showtime knew it and had to break the news to Logan, thus creating their “mutual agreement” to end the series.
But could Penny Dreadful function without Eva Green? For three seasons, she has been the heart and soul of the show. Does her death merit ending the series? Is it alright to cut the other characters’ stories short so long as Vanessa’s receives closure? That is up to you to decide. There were several loose ends tied up. Vanessa’s arc was the main one, of course. Malcolm received some closure over Mina’s death. Ethan accepted his role in Vanessa’s fate. The Creature was able to bury his son. That’s the extent of finality with “The Blessed Dark.”
What hurts the most is knowing all of the storylines that we’ll never get to see, especially after all of the Easter Eggs that were planted this season. We will never see Dr. Jekyll become Mr. Hyde. Well, not Robert Louis Stevenson’s version of him anyway, as Jekyll did earn his father’s title of Lord Hyde in his final scene (maybe that was the point all along). The introduction of characters like Jekyll, Dr. Seward (a superb Patti LuPone) and Catriona Hartdegen seems superfluous if this was truly meant to be the final season. Why waste time on these new characters if that was the case (not that I’m complaining, as both characters were welcome additions that I desperately wanted to see more of)? Leave them out and focus on the characters you already have established. Hartdegen seemed poised to be a Vanessa Ives stand-in following her death, so maybe Showtime realized that that would have been a fruitless effort. You can’t simply replace Eva Green and call it a day.
Where will Lily go from here? Are they just going to let Dracula go? Will anyone ever find out that Victor brings people back from the dead? Will Dorian’s painting ever be discovered? And what about that Season 4 tease with Ferdinand Lyle going to Cairo to see Imhotep’s tomb? If the plan was to always end this season, Lyle’s casual mention of Imhotep just seems like a cruel taunting from Logan, as opposed to a fun Easter Egg.
Some other plot threads that were left dangling (courtesy of our own Daniel Baldwin during a lengthy Facebook conversation we had last night):
– Malcolm, Ethan, and Lyle (who was VASTLY underused this season) still don’t know about Victor’s experiments.
– Ethan is still totally unaware that Victor murdered and resurrected Brona as Lily.
– Kaetenay aside, no one else in the group knows that Ethan is a werewolf or that he killed Sembene.
– Vanessa is dead, but the battle isn’t over. She was explicitly told last season that if she died, the “Mother of Evil” curse would simply pass to another.
– The Creature hasn’t met anyone else in the group beyond Victor.
I’m not saying I need everything wrapped up in a neat little bow, but this is just silly. There was so much material to mine stories from in a fourth season, and I truly think that Logan wanted to continue these characters’ stories. Sadly, we will never get to see them.
Of course, I could be totally wrong. Maybe John Logan did always intend for Penny Dreadful to be the story of Vanessa’s journey. Maybe this article is just the ramblings of a person distraught with grief because a show he loved was taken from him too soon. I sincerely hope that’s the case, but I have my doubts. At the very least, we got 27 episodes of this wonderful under-watched series. Like many deaths, you don’t always realize how much you loved it until its gone. I’m sorry Penny Dreadful. I took you for granted. Consider it a lesson learned. You’ll live on in Blu-Ray form next to my copies of NBC’s Hannibal. R.I.P.
What were your thoughts on the series finale of Penny Dreadful? Are you buying the story that Showtime is selling or are you, like me, more skeptical? Let me know in the comments below!
Having grown up in a religious family, Christian movie night was something that happened a lot more often than I care to admit. However, back when I was a teenager, my parents showed up one night with an unusually cool-looking DVD of a movie that had been recommended to them by a church leader. Curious to see what new kind of evangelical propaganda my parents had rented this time, I proceeded to watch the film with them expecting a heavy-handed snoozefest.
To my surprise, I was a few minutes in when Denzel Washington proceeded to dismember a band of cannibal raiders when I realized that this was in fact a real movie. My mom was horrified by the flick’s extreme violence and dark subject matter, but I instantly became a fan of the Hughes Brothers’ faith-based 2010 thriller, The Book of Eli. And with the film’s atomic apocalypse having apparently taken place in 2024, I think this is the perfect time to dive into why this grim parable might also be entertaining for horror fans.
Originally penned by gaming journalist and The Walking Dead: The Game co-writer Gary Whitta, the spec script for The Book of Eli was already making waves back in 2007 when it appeared on the coveted Blacklist. It wasn’t long before Columbia and Warner Bros. snatched up the rights to the project, hiring From Hell directors Albert and Allen Hughes while also garnering attention from industry heavyweights like Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman.
After a series of revisions by Anthony Peckham meant to make the story more consumer-friendly, the picture was finally released in January of 2010, with the finished film following Denzel as a mysterious wanderer making his way across a post-apocalyptic America while protecting a sacred book. Along the way, he encounters a run-down settlement controlled by Bill Carnegie (Gary Oldman), a man desperate to get his hands on Eli’s book so he can motivate his underlings to expand his empire. Unwilling to let this power fall into the wrong hands, Eli embarks on a dangerous journey that will test the limits of his faith.
SO WHY IS IT WORTH WATCHING?
Judging by the film’s box-office success, mainstream audiences appear to have enjoyed the Hughes’ bleak vision of a future where everything went wrong, but critics were left divided by the flick’s trope-heavy narrative and unapologetic religious elements. And while I’ll be the first to admit that The Book of Eli isn’t particularly subtle or original, I appreciate the film’s earnest execution of familiar ideas.
For starters, I’d like to address the religious elephant in the room, as I understand the hesitation that some folks (myself included) might have about watching something that sounds like Christian propaganda. Faith does indeed play a huge part in the narrative here, but I’d argue that the film is more about the power of stories than a specific religion. The entire point of Oldman’s character is that he needs a unifying narrative that he can take advantage of in order to manipulate others, while Eli ultimately chooses to deliver his gift to a community of scholars. In fact, the movie even makes a point of placing the Bible in between equally culturally important books like the Torah and Quran, which I think is pretty poignant for a flick inspired by exploitation cinema.
Sure, the film has its fair share of logical inconsistencies (ranging from the extent of Eli’s Daredevil superpowers to his impossibly small Braille Bible), but I think the film more than makes up for these nitpicks with a genuine passion for classic post-apocalyptic cinema. Several critics accused the film of being a knockoff of superior productions, but I’d argue that both Whitta and the Hughes knowingly crafted a loving pastiche of genre influences like Mad Max and A Boy and His Dog.
Lastly, it’s no surprise that the cast here absolutely kicks ass. Denzel plays the title role of a stoic badass perfectly (going so far as to train with Bruce Lee’s protégée in order to perform his own stunts) while Oldman effortlessly assumes a surprisingly subdued yet incredibly intimidating persona. Even Mila Kunis is remarkably charming here, though I wish the script had taken the time to develop these secondary characters a little further. And hey, did I mention that Tom Waits is in this?
AND WHAT MAKES IT HORROR ADJACENT?
Denzel’s very first interaction with another human being in this movie results in a gory fight scene culminating in a face-off against a masked brute wielding a chainsaw (which he presumably uses to butcher travelers before eating them), so I think it’s safe to say that this dog-eat-dog vision of America will likely appeal to horror fans.
From diseased cannibals to hyper-violent motorcycle gangs roaming the wasteland, there’s plenty of disturbing R-rated material here – which is even more impressive when you remember that this story revolves around the bible. And while there are a few too many references to sexual assault for my taste, even if it does make sense in-universe, the flick does a great job of immersing you in this post-nuclear nightmare.
The excessively depressing color palette and obvious green screen effects may take some viewers out of the experience, but the beat-up and lived-in sets and costume design do their best to bring this dead world to life – which might just be the scariest part of the experience.
Ultimately, I believe your enjoyment of The Book of Eli will largely depend on how willing you are to overlook some ham-fisted biblical references in order to enjoy some brutal post-apocalyptic shenanigans. And while I can’t really blame folks who’d rather not deal with that, I think it would be a shame to miss out on a genuinely engaging thrill-ride because of one minor detail.
With that in mind, I’m incredibly curious to see what Whitta and the Hughes Brothers have planned for the upcoming prequel series starring John Boyega…
There’s no understating the importance of a balanced media diet, and since bloody and disgusting entertainment isn’t exclusive to the horror genre, we’ve come up with Horror Adjacent – a recurring column where we recommend non-horror movies that horror fans might enjoy.
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