Last month, Hulu debuted the new exclusive series Chad Powers, starring Glen Powell as a disgraced college quarterback using a disguise to make an unlikely comeback. While the first series of the show was just six episodes long and ended on a major cliffhanger, it’s not certain whether or not there will be a second season.
During a recent interview with TheHollywood Reporter following the conclusion of the first season of the show, series co-creator and showrunner Michael Waldron opened up a little bit on the status of a potential second season of the show.
What’s the Premise of ‘Chad Powers’?
The series follows Russ Holliday (Glen Powell), a disgraced former star college quarterback who has fallen into some hard times after an embarrassing mistake that cost his team a win in the national championship game, followed by a high-profile altercation with a young fan.
With his football career totally derailed, Holliday hatches a half-baked plan to use movie prosthetics and makeup to join a team in need of a quarterback. Using the alter ego of Chad Powers, Holliday joins the fictitious South Georgia Catfish and instantly becomes a star while desperately trying to hide his true identity.
The show is actually based on a viral prank video in which NFL legend Eli Manning wore stage makeup and tried out for the Penn State Nittany Lions football team as a walk-on under the same name, Chad Powers.
Why Only Six Episodes?
The series has been heavily promoted by ESPN during its college football broadcasts as a member of the Disney family, which also owns Hulu. Powell even got the chance to promote the show on ESPN’s College Football GameDay ahead of the season-opening showdown between the Ohio State Buckeyes and his beloved Texas Longhorns.
However, despite the heavy promotion, the show had just six episodes in the first season. As it turns out, that was a creative decision from its creators.
“This is the real answer: It stopped where I would have wanted to stop it. As much as I love these characters, you can’t do 150 episodes of this premise. Powers will run out of eligibility. So the idea was always to go to about the midpoint of the football season. And yes, Glen’s a busy guy, but six episodes felt right to me. Loki was six episodes. That was technically an hour long, but [Chad Powers] episodes are longer [than the typical 22-minutes for a sitcom],” Waldron told The Hollywood Reporter.
“Doing six episodes felt like an event, which I liked,” he added. “When you’ve got Glen Powell on television, it makes you accelerate your storytelling in a way that, again and again, I’ve found is a good thing. You never tread water.”
Will There Be a Season 2?
While the first season concluded on a major cliffhanger, providing little to no clarity about the conclusion of the story, the series has not yet been renewed for a second season. However, the creators do have a plan for one if Hulu decides to renew.
“We’ve certainly talked about it — talked about a plan. [Hulu] has a sense of where we’d like to take it. Ultimately, we have to see how the show performs, but everybody knows Glen and I want to see this thing through to the end,” Waldron said.
“There’s a lot more story left to tell, so I hope we get to do it. When you get to the end of the first season, it feels like we’re just getting started. Ricky is now pulled into this alliance and now we can get into our Empire Strikes Back chapter of this trilogy. I hope we get to to keep it going.”
Waldron said that he would ultimately like the show to run through one full college football season, which he estimates is “at least three seasons” of television. Whether or not that happens, however, is largely out of his hands.
