American Gods season two’s opener has landed in the UK on Amazon Prime, and we got basically 15 minutes into the episode before we realised that original showrunner Bryan Fuller’s absence from the show has created a massive plot hole. That’s got to be some kind of record.
But before we get to that, a bit of backstory. Season two of American Gods might pick up directly after season one in terms of the narrative but there’s been a long gap between those two scenes in the real world. Two years, in fact.
In that time, showrunner Bryan Fuller left the series, along with his co-showrunner Michael Green. Fuller reportedly had some budgetary concerns, so handed over the reigns to Jesse Alexander and Neil Gaiman.
[Bryan Fuller]
But then Alexander also left and producing director Chris Byrne and line producer Lisa Kussner took charge. It’s been a bit messy, to be fair.
When Fuller went, he didn’t just remove the driving creative force behind the show, he also took a couple of key cast members with him.
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One of those cast members was Kristin Chenoweth (aka Easter), who worked with Fuller on Pushing Daisies, where she played Olive, winning an Emmy for her troubles.
Fuller brought Chenoweth on to American Gods, and when he went, so did she. "I couldn’t come back without him,” Chenoweth said. "It wouldn’t be right ... He's my guy."
It’s a shame she’s gone. Especially as the new showrunners don't appear to have had a chance to come up with a decent reason for why Easter’s missing from the opening moments of season two, where she should definitely be.
Their attempt to fix the situation creates both an immediate plot hole and a major issue for the future of the show.
First, let’s look at how they explained Easter’s absence. In season one, Wednesday runs over a load of rabbits on his way to meet Easter to enlist her in his war.
In the first episode of season two, Mr Nancy says that "the rabbit" (aka the Easter Bunny, aka Easter) has gone because of what Wednesday did to the rabbits on the road: "You are persona non grata in the rabbit community and I think you know why."
Thing is, if Wednesday did know he was doing such a bad thing, then why did he run over them in the first place? It's such a pointless action (which was clearly supposed to be a throwaway joke about how Wednesday doesn’t care), there's just no way he'd risk losing Easter as a powerful ally in his war over such a dumb thing.
It really smacks of Byrne and Kussner having no logical excuse for Easter vanishing from the scene. But by not solving that problem, they’ve created more. And that’s where the major plot hole comes in.
In season one’s (slightly underwhelming) finale, Easter does this big power move where she decimates the land around her house, an action that spreads and spreads. She’s demonstrating her allegiance to Odin with the full force of her power, draining the life from the area and turning the beautiful landscape into a barren wasteland.
It’s essentially the cliffhanger at the end of the season, and we’ve had to wait two years to see it resolved.
American Gods season two doesn’t even pretend to deal with it. It basically shrugs and moves on. Except, here’s the thing: Easter hasn’t just destroyed the ecosystem, she’s completely reinvented herself from someone who gives life, to someone who takes it away – all in service of Odin’s war.
And she’s just going to vanish because he ran over a couple of bunnies?
Do these new showrunners know what happens in war? People die!
Oh, but she doesn’t care about people, she loves nature, that’s why she left. But… She just killed the entire natural world around her house and beyond! Do you think there might be a couple of rabbit casualties when they have NOTHING TO EAT?
And the fact that the situation is just completely ignored (we never see or hear of the devastation again) is actually pretty infuriating. The whole of the first season built up to that moment and now it doesn’t matter?
But there’s yet another problem. Book spoilers follow, so look away if you haven’t read the source material, as we’re going to spoil an event that won’t happen for another few seasons (if the show maintains its audience when it’s prepared to mess us around like this).
Towards the end of the book, Shadow receives a fatal wound. It’s this whole big Christ allegory, so of course Easter is brought in to help.
She breathes life into him and he continues his adventures. The book (and the show) make a big deal about how Easter’s power to give life is unique to her.
So now Easter’s gone, what are they going to do? Completely forget what they’ve established, and just give someone else that power?
We’re going to pray that doesn’t happen, but, going by how they’ve handled the Easter situation so far, we wouldn’t put it past them.
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Sam is an entertainment writer with NCTJ accreditation and a twenty-year career as a film journalist.
Starting out as a staff writer at Total Film, moving up to Deputy Online Editor, Sam was responsible for Total Film’s YouTube channel, where he revolutionised the magazine’s approach to video junkets, creating influential formats that spread to other outlets.
He’s interviewed a wide range of film icons, including directors such as David Lynch, Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson, Sofia Coppola, Ridley Scott, Michael Bay and Sam Raimi, as well as actors such as Meryl Streep, Nic Cage, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Anne Hathaway, Margot Robbie, Natalie Portman, Kermit the Frog, all of the Avengers and many more.
Sam has also interviewed several comic creators, including Stan Lee, Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, and he has a zombie cameo in The Walking Dead comic.
In 2014, Sam went freelance, working directly for film studios including Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox and Disney, as well as covering red carpet events for film marketing company PMA Productions.
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His byline has appeared in outlets such as Yahoo, MTV, Dazed, Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, Elle, and Good Housekeeping among others.
In 2012, Sam made it to the final of the Leicester Square Theatre New Comedian of the Year competition, and went on to become a filmmaker himself, directing three features that have all played major festivals, and secured distribution – starring in two of them.
Jim Carrey once mistook Sam for Johnny Cash, and John Carpenter told him to ‘Keep up the good work.’ He promises to try his best.
