It sounds like the decision to leave the show’s fate afloat wasn’t totally up to the network. “Doctor Odyssey isn’t currently on our schedule,” Craig Erwich, Disney Television Group president, told the outlet. “Ryan [Murphy]’s really busy. He’s doing a lot with us. 9-1-1, 9-1-1 Nashville, All’s Fair [for Hulu]. So we’re just continuing that creative conversations [sic] with him.”
As such, the call on whether or not to continue Doctor Odyssey’s voyage will likely be Murphy’s to make. “I really love Doctor Odyssey, I think it’s a wildly inventive show, and we’re doing everything we can to support it,” Disney TV Studios president Eric Schrier told Deadline in a previous interview. “That decision ultimately lies with Ryan Murphy, whether Ryan wants to continue to do it, and he feels like there’s stories to tell that he feels confident in.”
If the first season is any indication, Doctor Odyssey does have a lot of stories to tell. The show, which premiered last September and is set to wrap its initial run this Thursday, stars Joshua Jackson as Dr. Max Bankman, a cruise ship physician tasked with handling a variety of cases on the open ocean. Phillipa Soo, Sean Teale, and Don Johnson also star.
Whether or not it gets a second season, Doctor Odyssey brought a whole lot of fans along for the first. The show averages around 8 million viewers over 35 days according to Nielsen’s cross-platform ratings (via The Hollywood Reporter). That’s the fifth highest viewership among ABC dramas (behind High Potential, Will Trent, 9-1-1, and The Rookie) and seventh overall on the network this season, not including sports. But while those 8 million fans may have to live in uncertainty for a little while, they can at least rest assured that season one’s finale could also serve as a satisfying series-ender, per Deadline‘s sources.
