Streaming giant Netflix has no plans to renew the science fiction drama Away after its first season, Variety reports. The program debuted on the platform in the first week of September. Academy Award winner Hilary Swank (Million Dollar Baby, Boys Don’t Cry) led the cast as the intrepid astronaut Emma Green, who captains an international mission to Mars. Away also featured the acting talents of Vivian Wu (The Pillow Book, Dead Pigs), Josh Charles (The Good Wife, Sports Night), Ato Essandoh (Altered Carbon, Tales from the Loop) and Ray Panthaki (Marcella, Colette). Swank, Wu and Essandoh were among those involved with the show who made post-cancellation statements via Instagram.
Andrew Hinderaker (The Path, Penny Dreadful), the show’s creator, spoke about his potential plans for future seasons during Away‘s PaleyFest panel: “The phenomenon that so many astronauts talk about is getting home and suddenly feeling like space is now home, and they’re away from what is their home… We’re all just really interested in that story when they come home.” Showrunner Jessica Goldberg (Parenthood, Deception) expressed to Esquire that she was interested in everything that might ensue following the crew’s successful journey to Mars: “The longer you’re away and the further away you are, the more tenuous those relationships with the people on Earth become. This story will continue to strain the tethers between the Mars crew and their families back home.”
Away is based on the 2014 Esquire feature under the same name by journalist Chris Jones, which told the story of the uninterrupted year astronaut Scott Kelly spent aboard the International Space Station. It was in this environment that he learned of the attempt made on the life of his sister-in-law, former U.S. Representative Gabby Giffords. During the PaleyFest panel, Hinderaker discussed his general fascination with the symbolic potential of the International Space Station: “That is an endeavor of countries that don’t normally get along, working together to do this improbable expedition.” Goldberg revealed at PaleyFest that it had been Hinderaker’s idea to deviate from the source material by making the main character a woman: “He had written this beautiful script that was… bursting with humanity with this female commander, who was a mother and a wife — I had never seen that before — and the things that drew him to the article drew me to the show, like this opportunity to be hopeful, to talk about the world coming together… and to really delve so deeply into this international team of astronauts and break apart stereotypes and find out who these people really were.”
All ten episodes of Away are currently available to stream on Netflix.