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!
I first heard about The Mandela Catalogue through a couple of nephews who were obsessed with the ARG’s sinister mythology. It was only after watching Wendigoon’s in-depth analysis of the series that I realized just how deep this rabbit hole goes.
In fact, I’d already been exposed to the nightmarish visuals of Alex Kister’s YouTube creation for years at that point without even realizing that it was the origin of several viral “cursed images” and spooky memes that had leaked into the wider internet – with this viral element actually being a part of the Catalogue’s overarching narrative.
Flash-forward to 2026 and the unprecedented success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms has led to Hollywood betting on horrific internet properties with existing fanbases, which means that Kister’s unique hybrid of both religious and analog horror is finally headed to the big screen with a script written by Kister himself alongside Tyler Clifton.
While this news shouldn’t be too surprising if you’ve been keeping up with the ongoing success of The Mandela Catalogue (both myself and Wendigoon having previously predicted that the series would inevitably make the jump to theaters one day), plenty of horror fans are likely confused as to why so many folks are excited for what appears to be a Hollywood adaptation of a series of creepy .jpeg images under a VHS filter.
With that in mind, today I’d like to invite fellow readers to accompany me as I explore the origins of Alex Kister’s viral hit and attempt to explain exactly why we should all be excited about the Mandela Catalogue adaptation!
From High School Writing Project to Internet Horror Phenomenon
The first seeds of The Mandela Catalogue were sown when Kister was still in high school and developed a writing project subverting religious tropes in a world where biblical history had been altered by demonic forces. A little while later, Kister came across an analog horror contest on Reddit and decided to adapt his ideas into a standalone video where he would edit a religious kids’ cartoon –The Beginner’s Bible: The Nativity, to be specific- into something far creepier. This is how the iconic Overthrone video was born, with this viral short film taking on a life of its own as fans demanded more eerie content from Kister.
Though the video was originally meant to be a one-and-done sort of affair, with Kister actually regretting some of its primitive visuals and considering the editing amateurish and “YouTube-Poop-like” when compared to his current standards, fan reaction and free time during the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged the (then) seventeen-year-old filmmaker to continue producing content set in this same world. The Mandela Catalogue name was inspired by the Mandela Effect conspiracy theory, as the series would slowly begin to explore the subtle horror of alternate histories.
Inspired by existential dread brought on by extended periods of quarantine as well as a personal crisis of faith, Kister continued to expand his alternate timeline where the rise of Christianity had been prevented by what was presumably the Devil disguised as the Archangel Gabriel. This alternate course of fictional events led to the existence of certain paranormal anomalies that had come to be accepted as “normal” by the 1990s, which is why most of the series’ supernatural horror is presented in such a matter-of-fact manner.
Most of this background information and religious lore is delivered by increasingly cryptic broadcasts and in-universe PSAs, as well as the occasional found footage video, that often have to be decoded by clever viewers. Of course, it’s the consistently disturbing imagery that made the series so popular – much of which was originally created by Kister on a smartphone!
The Alternates: Horror’s Most Unsettling Modern Monsters
The show’s early episodes mostly take place within the fictional Mandela County in Wisconsin and depict life in a world where demonic entities are capable of using media to enter our reality. This process usually involves scaring victims into killing themselves and then repurposing their bodies as horrific doppelgangers referred to as “Alternates”. This terrifying phenomenon has become so common that local police already have specialized procedures in place to deal with the issue, though this usually consists of simply ignoring calls for help so as to avoid spreading so-called “Metaphysical Awareness Disorder” any further.
Over time, Kister would expand this mythology and incorporate different kinds of Alternates into the mix, though the story never stopped deconstructing religious concepts. The series’ second volume exponentially increased both video quality and the overall narrative scope as we began to follow the lives of characters who had already grown up in this dystopian hellscape where the government is forced to prohibit religion, television, and even mirrors in the hopes of mitigating the damage done by the ongoing invasion of otherworldly entities.
The really interesting part comes into play when you realize exactly how the Alternates make use of scary media in order to spread their demonic influence, with the analog horror of it all being a diegetic part of the story and something of a memetic trap orchestrated by the false Gabriel.
I particularly appreciate how some characters begin to suspect that there’s something wrong with their version of reality and that things weren’t meant to play out this way, especially when Mark utters the haunting line “who have I been praying to all this time?” That’s why I think The Mandela Catalogue is an effective piece of religious horror even if you don’t subscribe to the Christian worldview, as the mere idea of a world where evil has already won is a universally terrifying concept in and of itself. Not only that, but the series’ uncanny analog imagery alone is already worth the price of admission, as you’ve likely already noticed by looking at the pictures accompanying this article.
Why The Feature Adaptation Could Be Horror’s Next Big Success
It’s actually been a whole year since Kister first announced that he had been working on a feature-length screenplay for a Mandela Catalogue movie since 2022, with his proposed story following an ensemble of high-school graduates who uncover a supernatural conspiracy after the mysterious disappearance of a fellow student. This premise sounds similar to narrative elements present in the series’ second volume, but I’m pretty sure that Kister is going to go the Kane Parsons route and make the movie more of a spin-off than a re-imagining of its source material.
While notable Hollywood producers like Aaron B. Koontz, Scott Stuber, and Steven Spielberg himself are backing the upcoming project, I feel like there’s no one better to adapt this deeply personal exploration of faith and the dark side of communication than the person who first came up with it. That’s why I can’t wait to see Kister’s work on the big screen, as I have a feeling that this young filmmaker is the next one on the list about to make cinematic history – especially since this is clearly a passion project that has been in the works for years at this point!
That being said, there’s always a chance that the film could end up unleashing a fresh wave of Alternate incursions, but I guess that’s just a risk we’ll have to take.
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