The second season of the comedy, which reunited Carell and “Office” creator Greg Daniels, premiered on February 18. Season 2 of “Space Force” began with General Mark Naird (Carell) and his underdog team having to prove their worth to a new administration while dealing with interpersonal issues.
Series regulars John Malkovich, Ben Schwartz, Tawny Newsome, Diana Silvers, Jimmy O. Yang, and Don Lake also appeared in “Space Force.” In addition, Lisa Kudrow played Naird’s wife, Maggie Naird, in the first season of the show, which also starred the late Fred Willard as his father.
“Space Force” was co-created by Daniels and Norm Hiscock. Daniels, Carell, Hiscock, Howard Klein, Brent Forrester, and Ken Kwapis executive produced the show.
“Space Force’s” 10-episode first season premiered in May 2020. Season 2 was reduced to seven episodes.
Variety TV critic Caroline Framke wrote of the show’s second season, “In humbling the characters into bigger underdogs than they already were, ‘Space Force’ as a whole both loses its inherent tension and relaxes into itself as a lower-stakes workplace comedy.” The end result isn’t as sleek or ambitious as the first season, but the show appears to be much more at ease in its own skin. In fact, it’s almost the polar opposite of what Daniels and Michael Schur did with ‘Parks and Recreation’ after its first rocky season.
Why was Netflix cancelling Space Force?
Unlike some of the other shows canceled by Netflix, Space Force is unlikely to spark any passionate fan campaigns to save the show. Season 2 struggled to reach the viewership numbers that Netflix expects from its shows.
According to Deadline, the second season debuted at No. 8 on the streaming originals Nielsen charts before rising to No. 7. Following that, it had a brief appearance in Netflix’s Daily Top 10, peaking at No. 5. The first season held the top spot for a longer period of time.
Comedy appears to be one of the areas that Netflix is struggling to conquer, with many sitcoms and comedy series, particularly multi-cam comedies, performing poorly. There are a few more on the way, including Mike Myers’ The Pentaverate, Blockbuster, and That 90s Show, so we’ll see if Netflix can compete with any of them.