'Lovecraft Country' showrunner takes a swipe at HBO after the show's cancellation

Lovecraft Country won't be returning to HBO for a second season.

The network confirmed the news in a Friday announcement. Lovecraft Country was adapted from Matt Ruff's 2016 novel, which used historically racist author H.P. Lovecraft's notions of cosmic horror to fuel stories set in the American South during (primarily) the 1950s.

"We will not be moving forward with a second season of Lovecraft Country. We are grateful for the dedication and artistry of the gifted cast and crew, and to Misha Green, who crafted this groundbreaking series. And to the fans, thank you for joining us on this journey," HBO said in a statement on Friday (via The Hollywood Reporter).

Green, who served as Lovecraft's showrunner, didn't comment on the cancellation directly, though she did share a tiny peek at t he "Season 2 Bible" on Friday after the news emerged. The theoretical second season would have carried the subtitle "Supremacy," and it was to have introduced viewers to a reorganized "Sovereign States of America."

Tweet may have been deleted

Markings on the restructured U.S. map in Green's tweet suggest the Season 2 journey would have spanned the length of the map's "Whitelands," between southern Pennsylvania and northern Texas. Though that's just a red dot and a red X; who's to say what the route from one to the other would've looked like?

It's a tantalizing tease, but perhaps the bigger standout feature of Green's tweet is her choice of hashtag. The "#noconfederate" hashtag ties to a social media pressure campaign that sprung up after HBO's announcement of the show Confederate.

It was pitched as an alt-history sci-fi drama set in a world where the U.S. southern states successfully seceded as a result of the Civil War. The show would have picked up generations later, introducing a reimagined North America where the nation founded by the former U.S. states evolved slavery into a modern institution.

Notably, Confederate was to be spearheaded by Game of Thrones executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss — both of whom are white. So the #noconfederate pressure campaign was conceived to protest HBO's support for the idea. It seemed to work. The network went relatively silent after the show's announcement in 2017, and the project was ultimately confirmed as canceled in 2020.

Which brings us back to Green's tweet. The #noconfederate hashtag existed for a very specific purpose: To protest the existence of an ill-advised TV project that many felt had no business being in the hands of two white creators (particularly in light of some of the criticism directed at Thrones). It's hard to read Green's use of it in response to the Lovecraft cancellation as anything other than a swipe at HBO.

Confederate never ended up happening, but not necessarily because HBO was cowed by the criticism. The network only ever went as far as acknowledging that the initial announcement was handled poorly. And when news emerged in 2020 that it was, in fact, no longer happening, it only came after Benioff and Weiss had stepped away from a high-profile Star Wars project that was apparently derailed by a deal they'd struck with Netflix.

In other words: HBO never really closed the book on Confederate in a way that suggested it had actually listened to critics. So Green's use of the hashtag now is a little reminder of the network's fraught recent history with another alt-history project that it seemed only too willing to press forward with until other business considerations — as opposed to social considerations — surfaced.

Green will be fine, though. She co-created the excellent Underground on WGN America, and despite the cancellation, Lovecraft Country has proven to be a winner with critics and audiences both. She has a number of other projects lined up, including a sequel to the Alicia Vikander-starring Tomb Raider movie, (tentatively) titled Tomb Raider: Obsidian.