If you were hoping for a second season of Netflix’s hit show, Adolescence, prepare to have your dreams dashed. Co-creator Jack Thorne has confirmed that there he has no intention of creating series two of Adolescence, because the story has nowhere left to go.
Adolescence follows 13-year-old Jamie Miller after he’s arrested for murdering his female classmate, Katie Leonard. Based on real events, the charges against Jamie force his parents to confront how he came to carry such violent misogynist beliefs about women. An instant hit on Netflix, Adolescence made history with more than 66million views in its first two weeks.
It's not merely Jamie as a character that’s sucked viewers in, it’s the creative minds of Thorne, and co-creator Stephen Graham, in telling such a powerful story in the most gripping and brutally honest way. That’s why viewers are so keen for a second season, with some hoping it might focus on the life of Katie instead.
‘I don't think we're the right people to tell Katie's story,’ Thorne said in an interview on ITV’s This Morning. ‘I think there are other makers out there that could tell beautiful dramas about Katie or girls like Katie, and that those shows should be made. Our aim was to try and tell Jamie's story as fully as we possibly could. And maybe trying to tell her story would dilute that in some way and maybe we would be inadequate to that task.’
It's with that in mind that Thorne confirmed we can’t expect a second season of Adolescence. ‘I think Jamie's story is finished,’ he confirmed. ‘I don't think there's any where more we can take Jamie.’
That said, he and the team behind Adolescence, who have also been credited for their camera work – filming each episode in one continuous shot -, are up for creating more series together in the same format.
‘We’d love to tell other stories with it, but I don't think [another series] of Adolescence is quite right for us,’ Thorne said. Producer Hannah Walters, who is married to Graham, agrees. ‘A prequel to Adolescence, that’s certainly not going to happen,’ she told Variety. ‘But there’s so much mileage in the one-shot and so much mileage in investing into human nature again and looking at something else.’
Perhaps we’ll see the team explore other powerful themes in a different series – with so much critical acclaim around their work, it’ll certainly be a must watch.