Will There Be An ‘American Primeval’ Season 2?

Netflix has been moving into the Neo-Western game, and with the Australian Territory series, came closest to delivering a Yellowstone-like story for this streaming service. The Abandons is still due to arrive with tales of the harsh 1850s U.S. frontier, and American Primeval already arrived to cover a different angle from that same era.

American Primeval (which Netflix released on Jan. 9), while a Neo-Western, is no Yellowstone. The brutally violent survival thriller from creator Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights), screenwriter Mark L. Smith (The Revenant), and executive producer Eric Newman (Narcos) delivers a no-holds-barred account of the Old West with TV-MA touches blaring amid an ugly episode in U.S. history. The show was meant as a six-episode limited series, but just ask The White Lotus, Big Little Lies, and so many other shows how that categorization turned out.

Will There Be An American Primeval Season 2?

Maybe? These are still early days, and a majority of the characters did not make it out alive, but Decider broached the subject with Peter Berg, and he sounded open to the possibility: “You know, after we wrapped and I looked at all the actors – the ones that were still alive – I felt such affection for them. And I do think there are many ways that we could go.”

Still, Berg suggested that he would be more receptive to revisiting the series if the story could move out of the tundra-like mountain environment. He did add, “If [Indigenous Consultant] Julie [O’Keefe] will come back, I’d be up for discussing it,” to which O’Keefe echoed his sentiment: “As long as I don’t have to have ice cleats again, I definitely will come back.”

If renewed, a second season could catch up with Sara (Betty Gilpin) and Two Moons (Shawnee Pourier) along with real-life figures Brigham Young (Kim Coates) and frontiersman Jim Bridger (Shea Whigham), all of whom audiences have enjoyed watching the mayhem unfold from toasty-warm living rooms. From the first season synopsis:

“This is America… 1857. Up is down, pain is everywhere, innocence and tranquility are losing the battle to hatred and fear. Peace is the shrinking minority, and very few possess grace — even fewer know compassion. There is no safe haven in these brutal lands, and only one goal matters: survival. AMERICAN PRIMEVAL is a fictionalized dramatization and examination of the violent collision of culture, religion, and community as men and women fight and die to keep or control this land.”

American Primeval is currently streaming on Netflix.