That Fan Petition to Renew 'Inhumans' Is Literally Fewer Than 1,000 People
It might be more by the time you read this, but sad fan petitions aren't worth talking about.
ABC appears to have quietly canceled Inhumans, its extremely cheap-looking adaptation of one of Marvel’s less-popular superhero franchises that premiered in IMAX theaters to a 10 percent Rotten Tomatoes rating. Over the weekend, SpoilerTV noticed that ABC had totally scrubbed any mention of the show from its press site, which sure seems like a sign that it won’t be coming back for Season 2. To the vast majority of people, this cancellation means nothing, but Inhumans did have a few fans, and some of them are apparently desperate to save the much-derided series.
Presumably, one of those fans started a Change.org petition, and a couple of news outlets are reporting on the petition. As of the time I wrote this, fewer than 1,000 people had signed it, so the petition really, really doesn’t matter.
Inhumans was canceled because almost everybody hated it (even Rotten Tomatoes audience score, which is typically much kinder than the critics’ score, was just 51 percent) and the ratings were abysmal. Fewer than 2 million people watched the finale. Those are two very good reasons for a major network to cancel a series, and it’s doubtful that a few hundred jabronis on Change.org are going to make Disney, a company worth tens of billions of dollars, do an about-face.
Also, anybody can make a Change.org petition. I could log on, right now, and make a Change.org petition demanding that NBC bring back the 2011 superhero drama The Cape. My petition would not be news, and wouldn’t be a signal that there’s a huge groundswell of support for a revival of The Cape, let alone that NBC is going to listen to some pseudonymous fans who clicked a button to sign a petition. All it really means is that a small group of people have access to an official-looking platform that makes their demands look more serious than they are, especially when news websites add legitimacy to these petitions by covering them. Heck, the only reason that the Inhumans petition might have cracked 1,000 signatures by the time you read this is that folks heard about it from these news websites. Some might’ve signed it as a joke.
Even fan petitions with more impressive numbers, like that fan petition demanding that Waner Bros. release a Zack Snyder cut of Justice League, are unlikely to make an impact, but with 170,000 signatures, the petition is somewhat newsworthy, at least. That’s not enough people to get Warner Bros. to do anything, probably, but it is a somewhat interesting look at fan culture. The Inhumans petition is an uninteresting look at what a couple hundred people are clicking online.
Fan petitions are about as convincing as this request.
I will eat all of the hair shaved off of Medusa’s head if I am wrong, and this petition goes mega-viral, forcing ABC to capitulate and renewed Inhumans for a sophomore series. That’ll probably be when Disney removes The Last Jedi from Star Wars canon because some Change.org users were Mad Online, so I feel pretty safe.
