‘Mythic Quest’ Has Already Been Renewed for a Second Season on Apple TV+

It’s barely been a week since Apple announced its latest upcoming Apple TV+ series, and we’re already hearing news that it’s already being prepped for a second season.

Last week, Apple announced that Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet, would be hitting the Apple TV+ streaming service on Feb. 7, with the whole set of nine first-season episodes expected to drop on that date. The series, which was created by the team behind the hit comedy It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Rob McElhenney and Charlie Day, first came to light back in 2018 when news surfaced that Apple had placed a first-season order for the new series.

Not much was known about the show at the time beyond the fact that it would be a half-hour comedy set in a game development studio. Last spring, however, Ubisoft, which is producing the series, made a big unveil for it at E3, showing off the first trailer, announcing the title — Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet — and giving us a much better sense of what it was going to be about.

Created and executive produced by McElhenney and Day, who both wrote and starred in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the new series is expected to be a “mockumentary” in the style of The Office and Modern Family that will parody the world of game development, with McElhenney heading up the ensemble cast as Ian Grimm, a super-egoistical and narcissistic “visionary” behind “the biggest massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) of all time.”

Despite Ubisoft’s earlier reveal, however, Apple surprisingly had nothing at all to say about the new series — not even acknowledging its existence — until it suddenly dropped its release announcement last week.

Season Two on the Way

In what now seems have become standard operating procedure for Apple, the company has already locked down a second season, The Slanted reports, suggesting that Apple’s execs like what they’ve seen thus far.

Apple made similar moves with its other hit shows back in October, renewing For All Mankind, See, and Dickinson for a second season before Apple TV+ even launched. With the exception of The Morning Show, which was picked up for two seasons from the outset, Apple has presumably taken a more cautious approach to its other programming, hesitating to commit to a multiple season run until it sees how the first season of each show turns out.

Still, producers are clearly expecting to be with Apple TV+ for the long haul. Ronald D. Moore, the executive producer and creator of For All Mankind, has reportedly mapped out seven seasons of his show already, for example.

So it’s probably not a big surprise that Mythic Quest has been renewed for a second season before the first season has even dropped. Since most of the studios working with Apple are still independent, Apple has to balance caution with locking in its shows, lest the creators and executive producers start courting requests from other streaming rivals — the appearance of a second season of an Apple TV+ show on another service would be a huge blow to Apple’s television ambitions.

The good news, however, is that Apple seems to be taking its shows pretty seriously, and plans to keep a hold on its existing hit content rather than parading a whole new lineup of shows every few months just to try see what sticks.

What’s less clear, however, is when these second seasons will drop. Season 1 of Apple’s first run of shows like The Morning Show have now reached their conclusion, to much fanfare, and while new shows like Servant and Truth Be Told will continue into January, we’re left wondering if Apple has something more up its sleeve for the winter season or if we’ll be running into a dryer spell. Apple has already announced Little America and of course Mythic Quest for January and February, but these are totally different types of shows, and aren’t going to have the “edge-of-your-seat” watchability that comes with dramatic shows like The Morning Show and For All Mankind.

Further, since Apple is dropping whole seasons of these shows all at once, these aren’t going to keep viewers coming back for more week after week. We have to believe Apple has something else up its sleeve for the New Year, but what that could be is anybody’s guess right now.