Yahoo News American Gods season 2: Everything you need to know
So here we are: Mr Wednesday has revealed himself to his minder Shadow as Odin, the Allfather, Glad-of-War, and taken the fight to Mr World and his modern-day gods. Shots have been fired. War has been declared.
So, what next?
To find out we'll have to wait for season 2, which was commissioned just two weeks into the run of season 1. Here's everything we know so far about it – we'll be updating the article as and when any new information emerges.
American Gods season 2 release date: When can I see it?
Season 1 launched on April 30, 2017, so until there's an official announcement, let's say late 2018 as a best guess.
"It's a difficult show to do, a lot of people to wrangle, so I can't tell you exactly when the next season is going to be on the air," Starz boss Chris Albrecht has said. "We're actively pursuing making sure we get it as soon as possible."
It's possible that any planned launch date might have to be pushed back anyway, due to the surprise departure of original American Gods showrunners Bryan Fuller and Michael Green.
Variety alleged that Fuller and Green exited after with the show's production company FremantleMedia refused to cough up an increased budget – more than the $10 million per-episode budget they were already allotted.
Albrecht told EW, "They were not fired, nor did they quit … There's a very good relationship between Freemantle and Michael and Bryan. Everyone is trying to work this out to have this be a win-win for the people involved and the show itself."
American Gods season 2 showrunner: So who's taking over the job?
With Bryan Fuller and Michael Green out, there's been a gap in the American Gods production for a few months now, but in February 2018 the pair's replacement was finally revealed to be Jesse Alexander.
Alexander has previously worked on Lost and Alias, and he's also worked with Fuller before too, sharing credits on Hannibal and Heroes, as well as CBS' Star Trek: Discovery too, which Fuller was involved with before leaving to focus on American Gods.
He'll now work alongside author Neil Gaiman on the show, with Gaiman saying he was "thrilled" by the new appointment.
"He loves and understands the book, he loves and understands the TV series and he's dedicated to making future seasons of American Gods as good and as beautiful and as unique as they can be," Gaiman told The Hollywood Reporter.
American Gods season 2 episodes: How many will there be?
The first season was commissioned as ten episodes, but Fuller and Green requested that be brought down to eight for structural reasons. Part of the reason was that episodes four and five didn't work as they stood, so Fuller and Green requested they cut an episode's worth of material and move elements of it later in the story.
Fuller confirmed that season 2 will have ten episodes but that's out of his hands now.
American Gods season 2 cast: Who's in it?
Ian McShane (Mr Wednesday), Ricky Whittle (Shadow Moon) and Emily Browning (Laura Moon) are guaranteed to be back, and we'd be very surprised not to see the return of Bruce Langley (Technical Boy), Crispin Glover (Mr World), Pablo Schreiber (Mad Sweeney), Yetide Badaki (Bilquis) and Orlando Jones (Mr Nancy).
There have been no official casting announcements, but it would be odd if Chris Obi (Anubis) and Demore Barnes (Mr Ibis) didn't show up again, too. We also very much doubt we've seen the last of Peter Stormare (Czernobog), Cloris Leachman (Zorya Vechernyaya), Martha Kelly (Zorya Utrennyaya) and Erika Kaar (Zorya Polunochnaya).
One notable absentee will be Gillian Anderson, who's confirmed she won't be reprising her role of Media, citing Fuller and Green's departure as the impetus behind her own exit.
Kristin Chenoweth (Ostara/Easter) has also revealed she's uncertain of her involvement with season two going forward. "When Bryan was the showrunner, I was coming back for several episodes, but I don't know now," she told Variety. "It depends on who it is and if they think I add value or not."
Albrecht says, "Kristin Chenoweth, as far as we all know, is still committed to the show - obviously pending her availability because, as you are seeing, we're having some trouble getting the second season underway. It's an incredibly difficult adaptation of a fantastic novel. It's one of the reasons it took so long to get to the screen in the first place.
"Neil Gaiman will be taking a more central role moving forward into a more traditional showrunner function, and we're looking for a partner for him who can ensure that the television part of this gets the appropriate attention. We're very committed to American Gods. We love the show; as I mentioned before, it did very well for us."
Other than that, it would be a shame if Jeremy Davies (Jesus Prime) and Omid Abtahi (Salim) didn't return, but that's just because we liked them. Neither played any significant role in Neil Gaiman's source novel.
New characters (contains possible spoilers!)
"There's lots of new characters to come into this world that were part of this story in the book as well as some that weren't that we want to include," Fuller says. "We're excited about Mama-Ji and we're excited about Sam Black Crow. There were a lot of characters that we want to start weaving into the mythology of the television series, and we're really excited about seeing characters from the first season, again, that you may not expect to see again."
(Does that mean the Djinn will be back?)
In the novel, Mama-ji is a middle-aged Indian woman who, it's no real spoiler to suggest, has more to her than first appears, while Sam Black Crow is a bisexual, Native American hitch-hiker and art student who falls in with Shadow on his travels.
"Personally," says Neil Gaiman, "one of the 'Coming to America' stories that I really enjoy and can't wait to see what they do with it is the Mama Zouzou story." (Mama Zouzou in the book is an African twin sold into slavery, who becomes an influential voodoo priestess in one of the novel's vignettes.)
Others we might expect to see from the book are Whiskey Jack, an enigmatic Native American, and Hinzelmann, the kindly elder statesman of an idyllic midwestern town where Shadow hides out for a while, and the return of Shadow's old cellmate, "Low Key" Lyesmith (Jonathan Tucker).
American Gods season 2 plot: What's going to happen?
"Much of the pacing and dreamlike quality of season 1 was about Shadow Moon's mental state," Fuller told The Wrap. "Now that he's been activated [as a believer], we can expect something a little different from how we're going to tell the stories. Whenever anyone engages in a faith bargain and they commit to it, they change their perspective in a massive way."
That's all by way of saying they mean to pick up the pace a bit in season 2 and focus on story a bit more.
"We can't help but acknowledge that the world we're going to be writing in is so much darker now," showrunner Michael Green told Deadline. "So I wouldn't be surprised if season 2 got a lot angrier."
(Of course, after Fuller and Green's departure, it's unclear if season 2 will follow their original planned template or if their replacements will opt for a different approach.)
At the end of season 1, we saw Bilquis – probably acting as a spy for Technical Boy – en route to the House on the Rock, a real-life roadside attraction in Wisconsin.
In the novel, this bizarre, sprawling funhouse and museum in the middle of nowhere is where Wednesday first rallies the old gods and makes them commit to his cause. Meanwhile, Shadow will have to take on board the knowledge that not only is his boss a god, but – if Laura chooses to tell him – Wednesday is also responsible for her death and his incarceration, according to Mad Sweeney.
Then there's the unnatural winter that Ostara spread across the land in the season finale. People are going to notice, and will want their spring back.
Intriguingly, Pablo Schreiber has hinted at a slightly different story structure for season 2, with standalone episodes focusing more on individual characters.
"I know that we're going to have opportunities for all of the cast to have their own, like, sort of standalone things where you really get to focus on one character for an entire episode," he teased.
American Gods season 2 trailer: When can I watch it?
There's no trailer available yet, and we wouldn't expect more than a teaser before 2018. But in the meantime, here's the season 1 trailer.
American Gods is available to view on Amazon Prime Video in the UK.
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