Fans Petition ABC To Renew Inhumans For Second Season

If at first you don't succeed...

Fans of Marvel's Inhumans are rallying together for a moonshot protest, calling on ABC to renew the freshman superhero series for a second season. 

After a puzzling misfire of an IMAX premiere, Inhumans debuted to the most punishing reviews of any series in the Marvel pantheon, with a viewership that started out middling and promptly fell far. By the end of the season's eight episodes, the series had proved disappointing by any metric, establishing a new nadir for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Regardless of the sweeping critical consensus, some viewers of the series still see potential in the show, and are calling on ABC to give it another shot before giving it the axe.

In the two months since the series season finale, ABC has kept relatively quiet about the fate of the show—but to most observers, the writing's clearly on the wall. (Much like Black Bolt's parents.) IMAX, which partnered with ABC on the series' high-profile theatrical launch, admitted the experiment of putting an inexpensively-produced TV series on the biggest screen imaginable ended in disappointment for all involved. 

ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey also threw the series under the bus, saying recently that the show "didn't perform for us at the level that we would have wanted." According to petitioners, that's all the more reason to get back in the saddle for a spirited second try.

In their Change.org petition, officially entitled "Renew Marvel's Inhumans for a second season (a 'soft reboot' with a new showrunner!!)", the petitioners make clear that they agree the series' first season has its share of problems. They concede the series was rushed together with a small budget, huge time constraints, little unifying vision, poor visual effects, and serious story flaws, with its main characters being unsympathetic aristocrats ruling over a ruthlessly unequal caste-based society. Despite it all, the petitioners' opinion is that the series is worth keeping around as a reward for making a good effort. 

Some of the listed reasons to keep the show going include the quality of the performances—not because they were good work that went overlooked by a critical pile-on, but rather because "every actor involved gave the best he/she could", which seems like an inspiring guiding philosophy for a kinder and more caring world than this one. Another compelling reason listed for ABC executives to renew the series revolves around the fact that, despite all of the program's flaws and failures, fans "deserve a proper Inhumans show"—the "try, try again" principle of television programming.

Of course, even to the forgiving petitioners, not everyone involved with the show's first season deserves clemency. In a hilarious twist, the petition makes clear that not even Inhumans' most loyal fans want anything to do with series showrunner/chief suspect Scott Buck, who has come to be known over the years as a notorious target of online ire for fans of Dexter, Iron Fist and now Inhumans. (Following the across-the-board rotten reaction to Iron Fist season one, Buck was replaced as the showrunner for its second installment by Sleepy Hollow's Raven Metzner.)

At the time of this writing, the petition is more than halfway toward reaching its modest goal of 5,000 signatures. You can't stop the signal, y'all. There are dozens of us—dozens.