Neil Gaiman thinks American Gods will go on for six seasons

Neil Gaiman author of American Gods believes the series will get into his unpublished sequel by the sixth season.

You know I always wondered why “American Gods” the book didn’t have a sequel. It has a spin-off novel, “Anansi Boys”, but not a sequel and as far as I knew, Gaiman never had one planned. Turns out he had one on the mind for a while, and already has the whole story mapped out. He just didn’t have time to write it down.

This untitled, unpublished, sequel will be worked into the show’s narrative and bring it in exciting new directions. There is only one thing, we won’t get this new narrative until season 6.

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Season 6!? Aren’t we getting a bit ambitious? Just two months ago, the second season of American Gods seemed in jeopardy. Losing three showrunners, a cast member and arguments happening on set delayed the series for about six months.

It hasn’t even been renewed for a third season yet. Behind-the-scenes drama isn’t as big a crisis as we make it out to be, so I have faith that they’ll get greenlit for number three, but planning a show for an additional four years when the second season hasn’t even aired yet might be setting it up a little too high.

American Gods is about a man fresh out of prison, Shadow Moon (spoiler alert, he’s a demi-god) who meets the Norse God, Odin going by the name Mr. Wednesday, and takes a road trip with him. The series follows Shadow as he learns about the world hidden inside our own. He meets the Old Gods and the New Gods who are at war with each other over relevance and power.

It takes time for him to comprehend, especially after his dead wife comes back from the grave, as a rotting corpse with a leprechaun as her escort. Speaking of that leprechaun, if Gaiman is going to be a showrunner and drive the show to follow his books, I really hope he changes the fate of my two favorite characters. Mad Sweeney being one of them, start a #ProtectMadSweeney on Twitter.

Photo Acquired Courtesy of Starz/ American Gods /

Gaiman opened up about his long-awaited sequel at NYCC and discussed how it will factor in with the series. When speaking to ScreenRant, he explained how he always intended to leave room in the series for the book’s sequel, published or not.

"“There are hooks built into American Gods that the sequel clips onto. And some of them are big and obvious, and some of them are almost invisible, and only I know how they work.”“If we make it through 5 seasons and we get to finish the book, and then we’ve done the stories of Shadow in the UK, I can get to roll up my sleeves and do the story of Shadow’s return to the US. But that’s a long way down the line.”"

The first season covered the entire first half of the novel. The second season starts up at the novel’s midpoint, at the carousel scene, so I guess this means the series will stretch the second half of the book out for five seasons. In that case, the show will definitely have to change some things from the book to keep it going, change what happens to characters like Technical Boy, Mad Sweeney, and Bilquis and shift the pace so the war happens much later than it originally does.

Gaiman served as an executive producer on the first season and will act as a creative consultant on season two. He’s a man in current high demand, with four projects outside of American Gods in development including Good Omens, The Sandman, The Graveyard Book, and The Thing About Cassandra.

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The second season of American Gods premieres on Starz in 2019.

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