We’re never going to know what the next, next stage is now! The Big Door Prize has been canceled after two seasons at Apple TV+.
“It is a beloved show, and while we know Season 2 ended with a cliffhanger, we are just not moving forward with a third season at this time,” a rep for the streaming service told TVLine in a statement.
And what a cliffhanger that was in the Season 2 finale! The series follows the residents of a small town forever changed when the mysterious Morpho machine appears, promising to reveal everyone’s true potential, and leading to them changing jobs, rethinking relationships, and questioning long-held beliefs. Season 2 sees them moving on to the next stage. Then, at the end of it, following what seemed to be a permanent split after a season of “selfploration” for Dusty (Chris O’Dowd) and Cass (Gabrielle Dennis), he returns to the Morpho machine and inserts the Guide card (per instructions at the end of Episode 9).
The machine then reads, “To achieve your potential you must discover who you are,” and Dusty sees himself (and the rest of Deerfield’s residents) on the screen as video game characters. He hits Continue, the blue butterfly appears onscreen, and its wings flap faster and faster until… Dusty suddenly finds himself somewhere else! In the machine? He presses his hand on the glass in front of him, and someone approaches from the other side in the fog… and that’s now how the series ends.
Creator David West Read was careful when addressing that ending when TV Insider spoke with him. “Dusty goes on probably the biggest emotional rollercoaster of anyone in the show because he starts out being the most opposed to the machine, the most scared of the machine, the most anxious about the machine to, in some ways, the most obsessed with the machine in the second season,” he said. “And it just felt fitting that Dusty would be the first person to enter whatever that next, next stage is, which we want to leave really open to interpretation right now.”
But with where Season 2 leaves off, “there is an escalation of the intensity of what the machine is bringing to this town that feels really exciting,” Read did note. “We go from these little cards with single words or phrases on them in Season 1 to these visions which are more like 32-bit retro video game technology in Season 2 to this third potential stage, which is beyond anything the characters could have imagined the machine would bring. And I think the psychological reckoning that that could lead to and the chaos and confusion create so many opportunities for drama and comedy.”
Are you going to miss The Big Door Prize? What’s your theory about that ending? Let us know in the comments section, below.