Shadowhunters ran for three seasons on Freeform, developed by Ed Decter from Cassandra Clare’s The Mortal Instruments novels. It premiered on January 12, 2016, and ended on May 6, 2019, with 55 episodes. The show was a reboot of the 2013 film The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, produced by Constantin Film. The pilot pulled the largest audience Freeform had seen in more than two years. That is the good news. The rest is a series that never quite decided what it wanted to be.
Trailer, via FreeformTvShowTrailers.
Clary Fray and the Brooklyn Academy of Arts
The premise is simple enough. On her eighteenth birthday, Clary Fray, played by Katherine McNamara, is accepted into the Brooklyn Academy of Arts. That same night, out celebrating with her best friend Simon Lewis, she sees a group of people nobody else can see. She follows them into the back room of a club, witnesses a fight, and grabs a blade. Believing she has killed someone, she rushes home. Her mother, Jocelyn Fray, then shows her invisible markings on her own skin, the same kind worn by the group at the club.
Jocelyn knows an attack is coming. She asks their friend Dot to send Clary through a portal to Luke, her only father figure. Clary arrives, believes Luke has betrayed her, and returns to her apartment. Her mother is gone. A monstrous Dot demands a Mortal Cup. A blond boy from the club saves her, and Clary is pulled into the world of the Shadowhunters, half angel and half human, who hunt demons.
That is a lot of plot for a pilot. The first season received mixed responses from critics.
The Mortal Cup and Valentine Morgenstern
The central conflict is Clary’s attempt to save her mother from Valentine Morgenstern, who is revealed to be Clary’s own father. Clary discovers powers she never knew she had, and she is thrown into demon hunting alongside Jace, Isabelle and Alec. Simon, her loyal and geeky friend, gets dragged along for the ride. Clary learns about her past and what her future may hold, living among fair folk, warlocks, vampires and werewolves.
The show is built on a journey of self-discovery, and that is where the source material lives too. The Mortal Instruments novels are built on forbidden love, hidden identities and a sprawling supernatural society. Shadowhunters put all of that on screen across three seasons.
Katherine McNamara, Dominic Sherwood and the Cast
The cast is the show’s most visible strength. McNamara plays Clary. Dominic Sherwood’s Jace Wayland is written as mysterious, narcissistic and attractive. Alberto Rosende plays Simon. Matthew Daddario’s Alec Lightwood and Harry Shum Jr.’s Magnus Bane became the show’s most-watched thread, and the awards bear that out.
Emeraude Toubia’s Izzy Lightwood, Isaiah Mustafa’s Luke Garroway and Alisha Wainwright’s Maia Roberts round out the cast. Anna Hopkins played Lilith. Wainwright joined in the second season as Maia Roberts and was promoted to series regular beginning in the third season.
Ed Decter’s Exit and the Showrunner Change
In August 2016, showrunner Ed Decter left the series over “creative differences.” Todd Slavkin and Darren Swimmer were named as his replacements. Freeform had renewed the show for 20 episodes in March 2016, and then renewed it again in April 2017 for a third season of 20 episodes, which premiered on March 20, 2018.
The second season premiered on January 2, 2017. The first season, by contrast, had drawn mixed responses from critics.
The Awards and the Cancellation
Shadowhunters won one GLAAD Award, six Teen Choice Awards and five People’s Choice Awards. It received numerous award nominations. Those wins are the show’s clearest mark of distinction, and the Alec and Magnus relationship is the thread most often cited by the fans who stayed.
In June 2018, Freeform canceled the series after three seasons, but ordered two extra episodes to properly conclude the story. The source does not give a reason for the cancellation. Two episodes to wrap up three years of world-building is a short ending, and that is a fact about the order, not a reading of it.
What Shadowhunters Put on Screen
The show adapted a lot of material. The Mortal Instruments novels are built on forbidden love, hidden identities and a sprawling supernatural society, and Shadowhunters put all of that on screen.
- Clary’s discovery of her Shadowhunter heritage
- The forbidden love between Clary and Jace
- Alec and Magnus’s relationship
- Simon’s transformation from geeky friend to something more
- The faction politics of fair folk, warlocks, vampires and werewolves
That is a large amount of mythology for 55 episodes. Whether the show handled it well is a matter of taste, and the published critical score suggests most critics did not think so.
The Key Facts
- Premiere date: January 12, 2016
- Finale date: May 6, 2019
- Network: Freeform
- Seasons: 3
- Episodes: 55
- Metacritic score: 45/100
- Published critical score: 4.5/10
- Creator: Ed Decter
- Produced by: Constantin Film
What the Record Shows
The record on Shadowhunters is short. Three seasons, 55 episodes, one GLAAD Award, six Teen Choice Awards and five People’s Choice Awards. A pilot that drew Freeform’s largest audience in more than two years. A showrunner change in August 2016 over “creative differences.” A cancellation in June 2018 with two extra episodes ordered to close the story.
What the record does not show is why the show was canceled, or whether the seasons improved, or what the cast and crew thought of the material. Those are the questions a fan would ask, and the source does not answer them.
The published critical score of 4.5/10, with a Metacritic score of 45/100, is the clearest signal of how the show was received. It is a low score for a series that ran three seasons and won awards. That gap is the interesting part. Awards from GLAAD, Teen Choice and the People’s Choice Awards measure a different thing than a critic’s score does, and Shadowhunters sits squarely in that gap.
A show can win a GLAAD Award and still draw a 45 on Metacritic. Those two facts are not in conflict. They describe two different audiences. The question is which one Freeform was counting in June 2018, and the source does not say.
What is clear is that Shadowhunters got a shorter close than its three-season run would suggest. Two extra episodes after a cancellation is not a final season. It is a finish line moved up. The show ended on May 6, 2019, and that is the last date in the record.
For a series based on novels that had already been adapted once, as a reboot of the 2013 film, Shadowhunters had a clear template and a clear audience. It ran three seasons and stopped. The record does not say whether it could have run longer, and this paper will not pretend to know.
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