Gregg Araki has revealed that a full second season of Now Apocalypse was written, the cast was paid, and then the whole thing fell apart when the executive in charge was fired and Starz underwent a leadership change. He disclosed the details to Deadline on 29 July 2026.

The strangest part: the Season 2 script had already scripted something close to the real-life catastrophe that killed the show. In the written episodes, character Carly's storyline involved her paid TV development executive being fired and her show being put into turnaround — meaning the rights revert back so another buyer could theoretically pick it up. That is essentially what happened to Now Apocalypse itself.

Now Apocalypse was a half-hour coming-of-age comedy created by Araki, co-written with Karley Sciortino, and executive produced by Steven Soderbergh and Gregory Jacobs under Soderbergh's deal at Starz. Araki directed all ten episodes of the first season, which aired on Starz from March to May 2019. Avan Jogia led the cast, with Kelli Berglund, Beau Mirchoff, and Roxane Mesquida alongside him. Tyler Posey, Jacob Artist, and Chris Aquilino had recurring roles.

Starz greenlit the series in March 2018. By April 2019, Araki was already writing Season 2 without a formal renewal, telling Decider he was forging ahead regardless. Starz cancelled the show in July 2019 after one season. The cancellation was part of a broader network strategy to attract more female viewers, as IndieWire reported at the time. Starz COO Jeff Hirsch called the show "a great show" and "a great experiment for us" when confirming the end.

The cast, however, had already been paid for the second season before the axe fell — a detail Araki shared with Deadline that underscores how far along the production was before leadership changes derailed it.

For fans, this means a complete, finished Season 2 script exists somewhere in a filing cabinet or on a hard drive, never filmed. Araki's interest in reviving the series did not fade quickly: as of 2023, four years after the cancellation, he was still talking about potentially bringing it back, per Yahoo News.

Whether that script ever reaches a screen is another question. For now, it sits as one of television's more curious footnotes — a show whose writers' room accidentally wrote their own cancellation into the plot.