Some extra saccharine news to report this morning: Netflix has renewed Sweet Tooth for a second season of apocalyptic adventures.
The series is a live-action adaptation of Jeff Lemire’s DC Comics series Sweet Tooth, which centers on a human/deer hybrid named Gus (aka Sweet Tooth) who was sheltered from the world by his father after a deadly pandemic killed countless humans. Somehow, children start being born as animal hybrids—who are immune to the disease—and Gus eventually sets out into a world he’s never known to find out what he’s been missing. As you’d expect, it’s not all sunshine and lollipops, as certain humans blame the hybrids for the virus and hunt them for sport.
The series is produced by Susan Downey and Robert Downey Jr., and its showrunners for season one were Jim Mickle and Beth Schwartz (Schwartz will not be returning for season two, however, as she has other projects in the works). Schwartz spoke to io9 about the show in June saying, “The thing for me originally was the question [of] if you could make an apocalyptic story that took you to a place that you wanted to go, or actually gave you a little bit of a sense of hope or optimism, which felt like a rarity and felt like a real opportunity with a character like Gus.” To celebrate, here’s a video of the cast getting chocolate bars the size of their heads:
Sweet Tooth turned into a critical success but wasn’t without controversy. Netflix marketing paid for an advertorial in the weekend edition of USA Today timed to the premiere on June 4. It acted as the front page in some markets and featured photos and several tabloid-like stories about human-animal hybrids—even calling them a “national security risk.” In the time of “fake news” and conspiracy theories run rampant, it felt extremely ill-advised. There was also a poorly-thought-out Netflix video surprising unsuspecting pedestrians with a lifelike hybrid. Not to mention a few days later Fox News broadcast an unrelated story about “opening the door for human chimeras.”
The series stars young Christian Convery, Game of Thrones’ Nonso Anozie, Adeel Akhtar, Aliza Vellani, Stefania LaVie Owen, Dania Ramirez, Naledi Murray, Will Forte, Neil Sandilands, and is narrated by James Brolin. All season one episodes are streaming on Netflix and we’ll be sure to bring you more on the casting and production of season two as we know it. Are you excited for more Sweet Tooth?
Correction 7/29/2021, 3:00 p.m. ET: A previous version of this post misstated that Schwartz was a current showrunner of the series.
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