When Does Those About to Die Season 2 Come Out? Is It Renewed?

What is Those About to Die about?

Those About to Die arrives as Peacock's sprawling attempt to do for Roman gladiatorial games what succession dramas have done for modern power structures. Anthony Hopkins plays Emperor Vespasian, overseeing a web of characters whose fates entangle around the Colosseum and its blood sports. The show wants you to care about senators and enslaved fighters, corrupt officials and desperate entrepreneurs, all grinding against each other in the arena and in the corridors of power. It's the kind of ensemble cast that suggests ambition, even if the results are uneven.

The show trades in prestige television aesthetics: expensive sets, a stellar lead actor, and the assumption that mixing violence with political intrigue automatically generates drama. Hopkins does what he can with a role that mostly requires him to seem wise and withered, but the ensemble work around him feels scattered. Some scenes crackle with tension. Others feel like they're waiting for something to happen. The tone veers between historical gravitas and soap opera plotting, and it's not always clear whether the tonal whiplash is intentional or a sign that the creators couldn't quite decide what story they were telling.

Audiences gave it a middling response. The show landed on Peacock in July 2024 and wrapped immediately, making no real cultural dent. Reviews were respectful toward its scale and Hopkins' presence but pointed out what viewers seemed to feel: that spectacle and starpower don't automatically make a story matter. At 6.7 on IMDb, it sits just above "competent" and below "necessary."

It belongs in the graveyard with other expensive streaming dramas that swing for historical grandeur and wind up as competent but forgettable. There's enough here to keep you watching for a few hours if you have a Peacock subscription and time to kill, but nothing that justifies the canvas the show paints itself across.

Created by Robert Rodat

Is Those About to Die renewed or cancelled?

Why was Those About to Die cancelled?

Those About to Die arrived on Peacock as a ten-episode limited series in July 2024, and that's exactly how it concluded. The show was designed as a single, self-contained season from the start, not a victim of cancellation but a planned limited run. Creator Roland Emmerich structured the series to tell a complete story about gladiatorial combat in ancient Rome across those ten episodes, with a definite endpoint rather than an open-ended narrative designed to sustain multiple seasons.

The critical reception was mixed at best. The show earned a 6.7 rating on IMDb, suggesting it found an audience but failed to generate the kind of enthusiasm that might have pushed Peacock to greenlight a continuation. For a streaming series in an expensive historical drama genre, that middle-ground reception probably didn't help its case. Still, since the show was always planned as a limited series, its conclusion was predetermined regardless of how viewers and critics responded. This was Emmerich completing the project he set out to make, not Peacock deciding the investment wasn't worth extending.

Limited series have become a standard format for streamers, allowing them to deliver prestige drama without the commitment of an ongoing production. Those About to Die followed that model intentionally, delivering its ten hours and ending as scheduled. The show had its moment on the platform and moved on, which is how these things are supposed to work.

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