Stumptown Cancelled at ABC Despite Season 2 Renewal

Back in May, Stumptown, the Cobie Smulders-starring series based on Greg Rucka, Matthew Southworth, and Justin Greenwood's comic books, was renewed for a second season, but in the wake of COVID-19, ABC has now reversed that decision. Per a report from Variety, ABC has now cancelled Stumptown after just one season on the network with the show being unable to resume production in a timely fashion in terms of scheduling needs due to the coronavirus pandemic as a contributing factor and the studio, ABC Siganture, will be shopping the series to other outlets.

Stumptown debuted last fall as part of the 2019-2020 television series and starred Smulders as Dex Parios, a strong, assertive and sharp-witted veteran with a complicated love life, gambling debt and a brother to take care of in Portland, Oregon. Her military intelligence skills make her a great PI, but her unapologetic style puts her in the firing line of hardcore criminals and not quite in alliance with the police. In addition to Smulders, the series also starred Jake Johnson as Grey McConnell, Tantoo Cardinal as Sue Lynn Blackbird, Cole Sibus as Ansel Parios, Adrian Martinez as Tookie, with Camryn Manheim as Lieutenant Cosgrove and Michael Ealy as Detective Miles Hoffman.

Ahead of Stumptown's premiere last year, Smulders compared the training that went into her preparation for Stumptown to that of her work in other comic book inspired projects -- specifically the Avengers movies.

"It's always fun to do a job where you get to learn new skills," Smulders said. "We had an amazing team do the pilot and will continue to do great sequences. I think the thing that's very exciting about this show is, my character is not a superhero. She's not really skilled but she's a scrapper, and the fights we're going to see throughout the show are going to be really dirty and really grounded and very realistic. I'm a woman and I'm going to come up against men who are a hundred pounds heavier than I am, so it's finding ways to even out the playing field. That's been really cool to choreograph and get into.

"There's much more [hands-on training] on this because in all the Marvel stuff, Maria Hill has the power of the Bluetooth. She's got them on speed dial but she's not going after anybody. So the training on this is much more intense."

News of Stumptown's cancellation may come as a surprise for fans. In late July, it was announced that the series would be getting a new co-showrunner for its second season with Marvel's Agents of SHIELD executive producer Monica Owusu-Breen coming on board to work alongside series creator Jason Richman and replacing Matt Olmstead.

The series was a critical standout with a 92-percent Tomatometer at Rotten Tomatoes and even ComicBook.com's Nicole Drum declared Stumptown to be last fall's best new show writing "Overall, Stumptown is an excellent show with a solid chance at being the next big series favorite. With wide-ranging appeal, humanity, heart, the perfect amount of humor, and multiple stand-out performances, it's easily the right show at the right time and it's one you absolutely can't miss."

Are you surprised that Stumptown has been cancelled after one season? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.