Netflix has renewed Ryan Murphy’s The Watcher for season two and has ordered an additional two installments of Monster to focus on new subjects. According to Deadline, Netflix did not disclose what the two additional installments of the Monster anthology franchise will detail but said that they will “tell stories of other monstrous figures who have effected society.”
Netflix head of global TV Bela Bajaria aforementioned in a statement, “Audiences can’t take their eyes off Monster and The Watcher. The creative team of Ryan Murphy (Pose, Glee) and Ian Brennan (Glee, Scream Queens) on Monster along with Eric Newman (The Last Exorcism, Spiderhead) on The Watcher are masterful storytellers who captivated audiences all over the world.”
“The back-to-back force of these two series is due to Ryan’s distinct original voice which created cultural sensations, and we are thrilled to continue telling stories in the Monster and Watcher universes,” said Bjara via Deadline.
Netflix has been fervent to expand the franchise since it became abundantly clear that Dahmer would be a major success–it became the streaming platform’s second biggest English-language series after Stranger Things. The show, starring Evan Peters (American Horror Story, Never Back Down), is also the third most-watched in any language.
The Watcher, which is based on a true event, stars Bobby Cannavale (Parker, Nine Perfect Strangers) and Naomi Watts (King Kong, The Impossible). The show accumulated almost 341 million hours of worldwide views in the first 18 days after its premiere.
“We were all constantly speculating and finger-pointing to each other, trying to see what stories lined up. That’s fun, and it helps to our advantage as actors to keep up the mystery as we played it. Not knowing is the beauty of it, and it adds to the tension of how you play it,” Watts said via Entertainment Weekly. “It wasn’t spelled out to us, either, so our guessing was just as fun as yours!”
According to Entertainment Weekly, The Watcher star Jennifer Coolidge (American Pie, A Cinderella Story) taunted that she would like to see her character, the manipulative real estate agent named Karen, be “punished” for her actions in the second season. Watts told Entertainment Weekly that she and her fellow cast members consistently contemplated about the identity of the Watcher during production.
The release dates for season two of The Watcher and upcoming episodes of Monster have not yet been disclosed.