Just two months after releasing to an excellent critical and audience response, J.J. Abrams’ new HBO thriller Duster — starring none other than Lost legend Josh Holloway — has been officially cancelled and will not receive a second season.
In a statement issued to GamesRadar, the streamer insisted it was happy with the series despite not ordering another round. “While HBO Max will not be moving forward with a second season of Duster, we are so grateful to have had the chance to work with the amazingly talented co-creators,” the company said. “We are tremendously proud of this series.”
Abrams, best known for directing 2009’s Star Trek reboot and the Star Wars sequels The Force Awakens and The Rise of Skywalker, and co-showrunner LaToya Morgan’s series was a critical hit. It secured a 92% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes with a nice 83% audience rating on the site as well. That said, when the show premiered mid-May, it failed to land a large viewership — and even failed to make any of the viewing charts.
According to the official synopsis, Duster “explores the life of a gutsy getaway driver for a growing crime syndicate that goes from dangerous to wildly, stupidly dangerous when a tenacious young agent comes into town hellbent on taking his crime family down.”
Holloway plays the driver, and it was definitely a reunion moment for him and Abrams, who worked together extensively on six seasons of Lost. The actor recently spoke out about having to take a break from the industry due to a lack of work, which made Duster the perfect project to return with — being that it was with a longtime friend running the show.
“I couldn’t even believe what I was hearing,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in a recent interview about getting the call for Duster. “That was right before the pandemic, and then HBO was sold twice. But we kept making it through everything. [We wondered] ‘Are they going to cancel us?’ No, no. We kept chugging along.”
Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
