Will ‘The Shards’ Return? FX Show Tests Ryan Murphy’s Sway In Disney Empire

Logo text As The Shards hit screens in early August, Ryan Murphy spoke about how he and author Bret Easton Ellis saw the series potentially running for several seasons. It will have to get to season two first — and on that front, The Shards remains in limbo. Three-plus weeks out from the season finale, which ended on a sizable cliffhanger, there’s been no word from FX on the show’s status. That’s not necessarily a bad sign: The Disney-owned outlet has been known to take its time on renewal decisions. Pickups for Adults and The Lowdown, to name two recent critically acclaimed shows, came months after their first seasons ended. FX and Murphy also seem to have an understanding that when he’s ready with an idea, they’re ready to back it. Two-plus years passed between the last season of American Horror Story and the one that premiered Sept. 24. There was a nearly seven-year gap between seasons one and two of Feud. Those are anthology series, however, and one season doesn’t necessarily flow directly from the previous one (the large pile-up of AHS lore aside). The Shards is intended as an ongoing show, following the same set of characters over a long time. Murphy has also spoken about how much he personally connected to The Shards, even though Ellis’ novel — about a group of L.A. prep school kids in the early ’80s and a possible serial killer in their midst — is semi-autobiographical (not the serial killer parts, obviously). “My pitch to him was that 1981, the year the book is set, was the most important year of my life in many ways,” Murphy told The Hollywood Reporter about how he sold Ellis on working together. “That was the year I turned 16. That was my first date. My first driving lesson. I lost my virginity. On and on and on. I really understood those kids, and particularly, the Bret character.” Compounding the mystery is the fact that no one outside of Disney really knows how well The Shards performed for FX and Hulu. Linear ratings were small — an average of 237,000 viewers for initial airings on FX — but that’s par for the course for a scripted cable series now. A great majority of the show’s audience will come from streaming, but The Shards never made Nielsen’s streaming top 10s and FX hasn’t released any of its own data. Neither of those facts is out of the ordinary either: Most FX shows don’t break into the streaming charts, and the outlet rarely does ratings PR. The Shards is also the second Murphy-produced FX show this year to end on a cliffhanger and not (as yet) be picked up. The Beauty wrapped its season in early March with a lot of loose threads; in July, the show’s cast was released. (Love Story, which FX did point to as a ratings success, also hasn’t been renewed, but it may fall under the aforementioned “when the right idea hits” plan for Murphy’s anthologies.) Murphy has a big overall deal with Disney’s 20th Television and a long working relationship with both the studio and FX — even when he was based at Netflix, his 20th-produced shows continued to churn out new seasons. If The Shards does get a second season, it may be a testament to those relationships more so than the validation of a big hit.