Netflix’s Horror Series Marianne Had Big Season 2 Plans Before Its Cancellation

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Marianne, looking scary in a pit, from Marianne.

Netflix

The setup of Samuel Bodin’s 2019 horror TV series “Marianne” is deliciously fun. A horror author named Emma Larsimon (Victoire Du Bois) has just killed off the main character of her series of witch-based horror novels, happy to retire the series. Weirdly, one of Emma’s friends, Caroline, calls her up and explains that her elderly mother has come to believe that she is possessed by Marianne, the witch from Emma’s books. Indeed, Caroline takes her own life (in public) after talking about how Emma’s parents are going to be taken by Marianne as well. When Emma returns to her home town, her parents soon attack her assistant Camille (Lucie Boujenah) before wandering into the woods naked, bloody runes carved in their faces.

And that’s just in the first episode. The rest of the eight-episode series takes place mostly in Emma’s hometown as she returns to suss out her youth and solve her personal witchy mysteries. It seems that Emma has been having nightmares of Marianne since she was a child. She reunite with her gang of old high school buddies, most notably Séby (Ralph Amoussou), her teen crush. Although Séby is married with a child, Emma eventually has a one-night stand with him. There is a twist, however: the Séby she slept with was actually a demon in disguise. Season 1 ends with Emma realizing she is pregnant, and that the child may not be wholly human.

Sadly, “Marianne” was canceled after its brief run in 2019, so audiences never got to see that demonic pregnancy play out, or how Emma got to deal with it. It also, according to some fans, left the relationship between Emma and Camille unresolved, given their intense chemistry and romantic tension. Back in 2020, Bodin appeared on the “Phantom Limbs” podcast (handily transcribed by Bloody Disgusting), and he talked a bit about what he would have wanted “Marianne” season two to look like.

Marianne, season 2, was going to be about love

Netflix

Fans will not be disappointed to learn that Bodin was openly planning an unambiguous romance with Camille and Emma. Bodin said that the central theme of the first season was friendship, as so much of the story was devoted to Emma rediscovering her roots and reconnecting with high school buddies. The second season would extend that theme into love. The story, Bodin said, would follow Emma as she fell in love with a classy, older woman. This older woman, however, would begin exploiting Emma in a way Bodin doesn’t specify. Camille would then have to step forward and save Emma from this woman’s foul treatment, revealing that the two younger women were in love this whole time.

Bodin also said he would ditch the small-town setting in favor of the big city, and it wouldn’t be about kids anymore. That would counter the Stephen King “It” vibes of the first season. As for the pregnancy, Bodin wanted to double-back a little, describing the intended second season opening thus:

“The second season starts with Emma, nine months after the end of the first season. Emma is not pregnant. She has a normal belly. In her bathroom, there are a lot of pregnancy tests – all negatives. At the end of the first season, the test was positive. But after this one, there has not been another positive test, they are all negative. So maybe, she thinks, it was all in her head. During the first episode, she sleeps with a guy during a party. [Then], when she’s making love with this guy, her belly begins to grow, taking the shape of a pregnant, nine-month belly.”

Bodin explains that Séby was indeed a demon, but that the baby from season 2 would be more a manifestation of Marianne. After all, it’s kind of Marianne’s baby.

The father of Emma’s baby was … Marianne!

Emma and camille standing by a town's welcome sign in Marianne.

Netflix

A major theme of the second season would also explore Emma’s flagging talents as a writer. Emma is afraid that she’s lost the knack for writing, and even tries resurrecting the protagonist she had previously killed off, only to find the inspiration not coming. It may have been her demons and nightmares that inspired her, and with her personal demon, Marianne, now defeated, Emma no longer had to use her art as a coping tool. Good mental health, Emma found, harmed her work. As Bodin put it:

“Her publisher tells her that it isn’t good. In the first season, it’s easy for her to write, but because maybe there is something about Marianne in that. Something Marianne gives her, in a way. So now Marianne is not here to write, and Emma struggles a lot with that. She will realize ‘Oh my God, I don’t know how to write at all.’ It’s a problem. ‘I could write in the past because I was possessed, in a way. But I don’t know how to write at all.’ So in my mind, I really wanted to make sequences with a voiceover like in the first season, but with bad [writing].”

Which would have been hilarious. Bodin said that by the end of the second season, Emma would find her muse again, only this time, in a totally different style.

Sadly, “Marianne” was canceled shortly after its brief run (something Netflix does a lot), and season 2 doesn’t seem to be in the cards. At the very least, we know that Bodin was thinking about it. And if the money appears, perhaps it will see the light of day yet. In 2023, Bodin directed the film “Cobweb.”