‘Aquarius’ canceled by NBC; season 3 hopes dead

Well, here’s some news that may be sad, but is certainly predictable: After two extremely-low-rated seasons, NBC has dropped the ax on “Aquarius.”

The David Duchovny series started off as a bit of an experiment for the network, as they dropped the entire first season online at once and made them available for binge-watching. Early indications were that the majority of viewers were still watching the show live, and the ratings in that measure were not great, either. The series was moved to Saturdays alongside “Hannibal” during its first season, but was a surprise season 2 renewal.

For this second batch episodes, again the show had a chance during the week before being shelved on the weekends, and earlier this summer while at the Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour, we certainly got the feeling that it was not long for this world.

As for what this means in the long-term, it could free up Duchovny for more episodes of “The X-Files,” though he was always going to likely do that, anyway. It just allows for more schedule flexibility given everything that Gillian Anderson has going on. We do also wonder if this could free up Claire Holt to do more of “The Originals” provided that she wants to, and the timing of this enables everyone to be able to go back out and audition for pilot season. That’s one of the benefits of being a summer; if this aired during the standard season cycle and the cancellation was announced in May, it’d mean that most of the good parts were already scooped up and they’d have to hope for something to free up at the last minute.

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