Sadly, Obliterated has fallen victim to Netflix's trend of canceling shows after one season. The action comedy series created by Cobra Kai's Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg, and Josh Heald was only able to send its characters on one tipsy mission before getting the ax. However, they did have a plan if the show got renewed, and knowing that strategy makes this news even more of a bummer.
After getting a straight-to-series order from the streamer, and premiering in November of last year, THR reported that Obliterated will not return for a second season.
The series followed a special-ops team played by Nick Zano, Shelley Hennig, C. Thomas Howell and more after they thought they completed a world-saving mission in Las Vegas. So, they decided to party it up. However, in the middle of the party, they learned that the world wasn't saved yet, and they were forced to go on another mission while high, drunk, hungry and out of it. Basically, it was like if you took The Hangover and upped the action.
This is incredibly sad news as a fan of the show, because when I spoke with Hurwitz, Schlossberg and Heald about the series before it premiered, they already had a plan in place if it got picked up for a second season. While speaking about Obliterated's potential to come back, and how Season 1 was close-ended, Heald said this about how they'd approach it:
That's how we looked at the series from the beginning was to have these missions, that the first one obviously is a crazy mission gone wrong in Vegas, but it is very closed-ended. That's not to say there can't be some open-ended threads to pull going forward. But we want it to feel more like a successive season could be that next sequel to that season versus a direct pickup.
So, kind of like The White Lotus, the plan was to tell one full story per season and take the Obliterated cast to a new location to send them on another mission. I adored the first season, and I had so much fun seeing this crazy cast of characters attempt to save the world while drunk, high and out of it. While we can compare it to shows that switch things up with every season, Heald noted that their inspiration for this idea was rooted in some of the best action films, like Die Hard. He said:
We wanted this to feel more akin to a Die Hard, where you then have a Die Hard 2 and Die Hard 3 in a different location with different stakes but similar suspense.
The hope was to jump from party city to party city, and Schlossberg explained that to me, noting:
We want all the party cities in the world to buy for the next setting for Obliterated. You know that's something from the very beginning, we thought like, ‘Oh, wouldn't it be great to like, every season, a different kind of fun party city with big action.’ And that's the hope.
Sadly, it will have to stay a hope, and what happened in Vegas will have to stay there. However, you can always go back and watch the wildly fun series with a Netflix subscription. Also, we'll thankfully be getting the sixth season of Cobra Kai on the 2024 TV schedule, so there will be more fun to look forward to from Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg, and Josh Heald.
But for now, let's pour one out for Obliterated. It was sadly around for a good time, not a long time. However, I'll always be holding out hope that someday we'll get another adventure from this crew in a new party city.
