What Stephen King Had To Say After Watching Black Summer
By Daniel Kim
Plenty of people have discovered the gory glory of "Black Summer." Season 1 earned immense praise from critics judging from Rotten Tomatoes, and Season 2 did even better. It currently stands at 100% fresh on the Tomatometer as of this writing. You can count Stephen King among those fans. Shortly after Season 1 came out in 2019, King took to Twitter to say, "Just when you think there's no more scare left in zombies, THIS comes along. Existential hell in the suburbs, stripped to the bone." Such kind words have to make the creators of "Black Summer," namely Karl Schaefer and John Hyams, feel good about themselves.
However, King doesn't stop there, going on to tweet, "No long, fraught discussions. No endless flashbacks, because there's no back story. No grouchy teens. Dialogue is spare. Much shot with a single handheld camera, very fluid. Showrunners could learn a lot from this." While he doesn't call out any shows, in particular, it's hard not to view the comments as a shot toward "The Walking Dead." As evidenced from Reddit threads like this one, fans have many of the same complaints about that show's later seasons that King brings up. Again, there's no way to tell for sure, but at least "Black Summer" has avoided the problems King seems to find annoying.
So far, there's been no word if "Black Summer" Season 3 is in the works. If Netflix wants to keep Stephen King happy, the company will renew it as soon as possible.
