Way back in 2023, I blogged about the fourth and final season of the dystopian drama Snowpiercer, which would have wrapped up the post-apocalyptic fantasy series.
Then TNT, the network that aired the first three seasons of Snowpiercer, culled the show from its lineup and refused to air the fourth season – even though the episodes were already filmed and edited.
Now I blogged about this activity WAY back in January of 2023. It’s now March of 2024 … and we finally get news that AMC, the network that brought us Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead and Beneath the Planet of the Walking Dead and Conquest of the Planet of the Walking Dead, have agreed to air the final season of Snowpiercer some time in 2025.
AMC has also arranged to have the series’ first three seasons air on its network as well.
This is good news. Seriously good news.
Deadline reported it as such at this link.
Look … we don’t always get the chance to keep a TV show on the air. It all depends on television ratings – how much networks can charge subscribers to see the show, or how much networks can charge advertisers to sell cars or soap or reverse mortgages in the commercial time.
But I always felt that Snowpiercer deserved a better chance than it received. The show did what science fiction shows should do – it was an allegory to something in our modern world. Just like the 1980’s TV show V started out as an allegory to the rise of the Nazi party in Germany. Just like the 1990’s drama Alien Nation was an allegory to race relations and ethnic cleansing. Same thing with both versions of Battlestar Galactica – the 1979 edition was a retelling of the Book of Exodus with Cylons, while the reboot was essentially 9/11 with Cylons.
And even though its first seasons were filmed prior to the pandemic, Snowpiercer was a perfect allegory to the fears we all endured through the COVID-19 years. Cooped up in our houses. Afraid to leave. Fearful of anything that might contain the coronavirus microbe.
Again … if you’re going to tell a story that spans multiple seasons, give us the ending. Give us that coda for a long-running series. Breaking Bad got one. And that show went through six seasons and plenty of twists and turns. The Sopranos got one. Even with that ambiguous blackout ending – which, in the grand scheme of things, was probably the only satisfying way to properly end the show. Even the time-travel drama Timeless gave us a two-hour wrapup movie that cleared up 99% of the plotlines in neat, little bows.
So all I have to do is wait another year … and we finally find out what happened to the remaining survivors of the frozen Earth, all of whom are still circling the earth in a trans-continental express.
And hopefully … the three-year-wait from Season 3 to Season 4 will provide a satisfying payoff.
Chuck The Writer 