Max grounds dark comedy series The Flight Attendant after two seasons

Kaley Cuoco as Cassie Bowden in HBO Max's The Flight Attendant
(Image credit: HBO)

For TV fans, the scariest thing in the world isn't one of the infected from The Last of Us or the chilly atmosphere in True Detective: Night Country. It's the time after you binge the second season of your favorite show and wonder if that means the ax is going to fall before there's ever a season three. Again and again we've seen shows bumped off after a second season, and the latest member of that club is Max's The Flight Attendant. 

The Flight Attendant is a dark comedy thriller that follows Cassie Bowden, played by Kaley Cuoco (The Big Bang Theory), an alcoholic air hostess, who wakes up after a one-night stand to discover a dead body beside her. Rather than call the cops, she cleans up the crime scene and tries to pretend that nothing happened. 

If that plan had worked, we wouldn't have two seasons of the show to stream. But sadly, there won't be a third, which means there's even less of a chance that it will be added to our roundup of the best Max shows to watch. 

Why Max canceled The Flight Attendant

It looks like this time the cancellation wasn't due to viewing numbers. According to The Hollywood Reporter, star and executive producer Kaley Cuoco decided not to return to the role. In a statement, Cuoco said: “I always envisioned TFA as a limited series and thanks to an incredible creative team, we were able to deliver two thrilling seasons. Personally, playing Cassie has been a dream come true and I am so grateful for everyone who played a part in bringing this extremely original series to life."

Cuoco has been busy since the second season of The Flight Attendant wrapped. She's the voice of Harley Quinn in Max's animated series about the DC villain we love to hate, and she's also the star and executive producer of Peacock's Based On A True Story. That's been renewed for a second season.

As for The Flight Attendant, don't let the lack of a third season stop you from streaming it: Season one has a very healthy 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, with Stuff saying that it is "a slick, stylish, pitch black comedy that hooks you early and has more than enough intrigue and mystery in its eight-parts to ensure its binge worthiness". The New Yorker says that "Cassie moves through the world like a flesh-and-blood cartoon, careening from drunkenness to lucidity", while Film Mafia claims that "if Alfred Hitchcock had created a spin-off series for Samantha from Sex and the City, it might have been this".

Seasons one and two of The Flight Attendant are streaming on Max.

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Carrie Marshall
Contributor

Writer, broadcaster, musician and kitchen gadget obsessive Carrie Marshall has been writing about tech since 1998, contributing sage advice and odd opinions to all kinds of magazines and websites as well as writing more than a dozen books. Her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, is on sale now and her next book, about pop music, is out in 2025. She is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind.

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