Spanish Netflix drama Holy Family started its original run with an intriguing premise, and some high-quality, slick production, which led to a second season being greenlit quite quickly. However, amid diminishing returns, an overly convoluted plot, and what seems like a fairly conclusive ending, Holy Family Season 3 does not seem a likely proposition.
The story follows Gloria, an enigmatic figure with a dark past, infiltrating Madrid’s upper echelons before realizing that not everyone is who they seem. A stolen child, surrogacy, a faked death, and dark family secrets all added to the almost soap opera narrative, and after a thoroughly unresolved ending to the first run, the second season picked up the pieces and carried on. However, the forward momentum was lost, characters behaved oddly and made strange decisions, and the slow pacing left critics and fans frustrated by the clumsiness and convoluted plot. As a result, the series suffers when compared to its first run, and it looks as if the second season will be the last.
Will there be a Holy Family Season 3?
Official Renewal Status: Cancelled
Holy Family has been canceled and will not be renewed for Season 3. All available evidence suggests that the show was only ever meant to run for two seasons anyway and that the Season 2 ending was intended to be definitive.
It seems that with so many streaming platforms, and so many shows of this kind, projects such as Holy Family have a shelf life, and things just have to come to an end sometimes. The fact that it managed to gain enough traction to get a second season in the first place was quite the feat, as many thrillers such as this one often present their story and come to an end after their first set of episodes.
Of course, the writers and producers will usually leave a back door open, just in case there is a chance for another series, but with so much competition out there, your show has to be something special to make it to Season 3, and even if so much of the plot and character arcs hadn’t been resolved, Holy Family probably dropped the ball in that regard with its obvious quality downturn.
Despite all this, according to Netflix Top 10, the first season of Holy Family managed to break into the top ten in 37 different countries, and it remained in the global top ten for two weeks. However, it’s expected that the second season will perform poorly compared to this.
How did Holy Family Season 2 end?
The convoluted plot lines in Holy Family do pretty much get tied up in the second season, although it may not be the satisfactory ending viewers were hoping for. Upon closer inspection, there may be a few dangling threads left, however, the main driving force of the narrative — Gloria and Natalia battling over Nico — reached a logical conclusion that made sense for the characters.
In the first season, Gloria had kidnapped Nico — her grandson, fathered by her late son Santi and her daughter-in-law Natalia — and taken him to Madrid, attempting to start their life anew with her own children, Aitana and Eduardo. By Season 2, Natalia had followed Gloria to Madrid.
The second season ended with Gloria abducting Natalia and driving off them both off a cliff to their deaths, leaving the kids behind to pick up the pieces. Nico leaves Spain along with Aitana and Eduardo. Aitana is pregnant by Marco, but Eduardo tells the doctors he is the father, confirming they will raise the child together. This conclusive ending to the storylines does seem to acknowledge that the writers had pretty much concluded the story they wanted to tell.
Why do shows like Holy Family get canceled?
There are many reasons why your favorite show may get canceled, and you probably already know most of them.
Usually, low ratings and high production costs lead to cancellation, and the network has to believe in your show to keep it running when all signs point to it being on the decline. The changing nature of television, with the rise of streaming platforms, seems to have made it very difficult for shows to survive these days, and the complicated business of licensing a TV show means that there are no blanket rules for TV properties. Every one of them has different criteria and goals to reach.
There is also the reality that some shows simply aren’t intended to run for many seasons. Limited series are released all the time and are perfectly capable of telling a complete story in 6, 8, or 10 episodes. Holy Family might not have been a limited series itself, but it clearly had a short shelf life.
The obvious case study is Warrior Nun, which was unceremoniously canceled by Netflix after Season 2 but saved, in a roundabout way, by a devoted campaign from fans who couldn’t bare to see the show and its positive queer representation disappear without a proper conclusion. Holy Family doesn’t have the same kind of fanbase, source material, or potential for future seasons, so it being cancelled now makes a lot more sense and feels like less of an injustice.
Ultimately, there are no guarantees in TV, so if you find a show you love, enjoy what there is of it because one day it will be gone.
