Archive 81 canceled, but here’s what season 2 would have been about

It’s all about the found footage and brooding horror. Archive 81This is Netflix-style thriller fiction. Follow Dan Turner (Mamoudou Athie), an archiver, who is being called to help restore videotapes damaged in a 1994 fire at Visser’s apartment building. The mystery grows from every direction.

But that wasn’t enough for Netflix, who announced on Thursday they had cancelled the show after just one season. Netflix doesn’t report any viewership figures for shows it produces, but they do not often publish them. Archive 81 peaked at the number two spot in the streaming site’s top 10 lists, and stayed there for three weeks (and even reached number one in other countries’ top 10).

Final word Archive 81Season finale provided answers to many of its key mysteries, something not all mystery-box shows will do. The series didn’t just end in a neat way. Rebecca Sonnenshine, the showrunner, said that she deliberately left some fuel in the tank to make it through season 2. Here’s what Sonnenshine planned to do about two of the biggest mysteries the show left off on:

[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for the end of season 1 of Archive 81.]

What took place at Visser

Image courtesy of Netflix

After reviewing hours and hours of Melody’s (Dina Shihabi) tapes, Dan discovers that what was happening at the Visser is regular old cult stuff — but they do happen to be a cult based around real magic. Vos Society attempted to rescue Kalego the demon, from a Baldung coven-trapped statue.

Virgil, the tech-entrepreneur who hired Dan for the restoration of the tapes was named Martin Donovan. He believed Melody had destroyed the Visser and murdered his brother Samuel Jonigkeit (Evan Jonigkeit). The tapes show that Melody saved Jess (Ariana Naal), who was being possibly sacrificed by Melody, but she couldn’t stop it completely. The ritual is what caused the fire, burning down the Visser and obscuring the fact that Melody and Vos leader Samuel got sent to Kalego’s “Otherworld.”

While that’s one mystery squared away, there’s still others looming — like, for instance, what happened at Dan’s house when he was a child, burning down his home and killing his family. Although Dan learns that Melody was his father’s girlfriend, Sonnenshine confirmed she would reveal more about the mystery behind the Visser house fires in an upcoming season.

“There are a lot of little Easter eggs or little things like that, that if you’re like, ‘I wonder if that’s something that is part of the mythology and that will be explored further?’ And, yes,” Sonnenshine told Entertainment Weekly earlier this year. “Some things just didn’t actually make it into the season.”

Dan, what happened?

Photo by Quantrell D.Colbert/Netflix

After going into the Otherworld to rescue Melody, Dan gets separated from her and wakes up to find himself in an apartment … in 1990s New York, Two Towers reflection and all. But if you were thinking that there might still be some otherworldly shenanigans playing tricks on Dan’s perception, Sonnenshine assures you there aren’t.

“I can tell you that he is in the ’90s,” the showrunner told Variety of the final shot of the season. “He’s in the real ’90s, and the clue for that is that it does not have the particulates floating around there. He’s in 1994. And the question we’re asking is, we saw people disappear into The Otherworld in different time periods, right?

“It means there’s little holes, little poke, poke — little entry and exit points. And that people have gotten kind of mixed up in there trying to exit, and maybe didn’t exit through the right door.”

With the Otherworld spitting people out in various points in time, Sonnenshine says that means Samuel is “still very much a part of the story.” Were Netflix to renew them for second season, Samuel and Virgil’s stories would have been a much bigger part of it.

“It’s kind of at the top of our list for season 2, because we didn’t quite get to it, but also I can say that everyone in the show is doing something that they think is right,” Sonnenshine said to EW.

Had the show been renewed, there certainly would’ve been more material: The podcast the show is based on has aired three seasons. Sonnenshine confirmed that when it does, there would’ve been plenty of cross-media magical madness.

“We definitely are not abandoning [the found footage aspect]. There are all kinds of ways when you think, oh, how would he communicate with them?” Sonnenshine told Variety. “It wouldn’t be the same device, but it would be a different window with a similar device. […] We’re ready to go, should we be so lucky to get a season 2, we have some really cool stories to tell.”