Even though the second season of The CW’s horror anthology show Two Sentence Horror Stories does not air until 2021, Deadline reports that it was recently renewed for third season. According to Deadline, the show debuted on Verizon’s mobile video app go90 in 2017 and used the abbreviated title 2SH. When go90 shut down in the summer of 2018, the videos migrated to CW Seed under the new title Two Sentence Horror Stories, via Deadline. The official inaugural season aired in 2019 on The CW.
Two Sentence Horror Stories grabbed the attention of The New York Times back in May, when it was highlighted as one of seven shows that represented the contemporary renaissance of the horror anthology show format. The New York Times‘s article praised the show for its inclusiveness, both on- and off- screen: “Under the executive producer Vera Miao, its roster of writers, directors and characters is more diverse than you’ll find in just about any other broadcast-network show not set in a specific milieu.”
Miao worked as an actress for several years, appearing in small roles on shows such as Bones, State of Affairs and Eastsiders. She also produced, co-wrote and co-starred in the indie road movie Best Friends Forever. When Miao was interviewed by The Huffington Post, she explained how striving for inclusivity was always an element of Two Sentence Horror Stories: “I pitched an anthology series where each horror story is told in two sentences and is visually beautiful and emotionally developed, characters that we love, and that at the center had Queer people and People of Color.”
While the premise of Two Sentence Horror Stories may have originated in online flash fiction communities, Miao claimed in an interview for the website Comic Book that she and her fellow writers challenge themselves to devise all-new material within the established parameters: “The two-sentence horror stories in the show are original. They’re not from things that went viral.” The writing staff for the first season included Lucy Luna (We’re All Here, All Rise), Pornsak Pichetshote (Cloak & Dagger, Light as Feather) and Catherine S. McMullen (Wentworth VR, The Other Lamb).
Eight of the nine episodes from the first season of Two Sentence Horror Stories are available to stream on Netflix. Three of the five original digital shorts were compiled and aired as the hourlong Season 1 finale “Trilogy,” which can be viewed with ads on The CW’s website. The other two digital shorts, Snap and Second Skin, can be viewed on Miao’s Vimeo page or on Facebook Watch.