The hunt and eradication of alien terrorist cells has come to an early end.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Syfy has pulled the plug on Hunters after one season. The season finale of the show, scheduled to air on Monday, will now be the series finale.
Hunters, based on Whitely Striebers popular sci-fi novel Alien Hunter, told the story of Pennsylvania detective Flynn Carroll (Nathan Phillips) as he desperately searches for clues surrounding his wife’s mysterious disappearance. On his journey to find his wife, Carroll stumbles upon evidence that dangerous groups of aliens are living among us without our knowledge. Carroll teams up with a secret government organization in order to defeat the terrorist alien cells and find out what happened to his wife. Hunters also stars Britne Oldford, Mark Coles Smith, Lewis Fitz-Gerald and Sarah Peirse. Natalie Chaidez was showrunner on the Universal Cable Productions and Gale Anne Hurd drama.
There was very little love thrown Hunters‘ way when the series premiered back in April. The premiere managed to draw 540,000 viewers, but the series saw a drop off as it progressed with an average of 316,000. Critics were not kind either, with Variety‘s Brian Lowry calling it “utterly generic, conceptually cynical and instantly forgettable” and The A.V. Club‘s Dennis Perkins describing the series as a “plodding, chuckle-headed alien-invasion drama…whose every story beat is joylessly copied from more interesting shows”.
Though Hunters did not pan out the way Syfy probably hoped, it is but one misstep in a recent string of small successes for Syfy. The network just recently renewed 12 Monkeys for third season, and Syfy is also gearing up to bring The Expanse, The Magicians, and Incorporated to the rabid fan gathering that is San Diego Comic-Con.
This recent spate of quality on the channel in the last couple of years comes after Syfy president Dave Howe spoke out about the changes he felt the channel needed to make. When speaking to THR in early 2014 about the Syfy brand and this new direction Howe said, “We want to be the best science-fiction channel that we possibly can, and in some respects, that means going back to the more traditional sci-fi/fantasy that fans often say they feel we’ve exited. We’re going to occupy that space in a way we haven’t for the past few years.”
The series finale of Hunters is set to air on Monday, July 11th at midnight.