Hulu renewed Furious for season 2 four days before Emmy Rossum's season 1 finale — the streamer almost never moves that fast

Hulu does not do this.

Hulu waits. Hulu lets a season finish, lets the long-tail viewership numbers trickle in over weeks, lets you sit there refreshing a fan wiki wondering if your show is dead. That is the Hulu way. It's how Not Suitable For Work got canceled this very week — two full months after its finale.

And then on Thursday, with the Furious finale still four days out, Hulu renewed it for season 2. Emmy Rossum announced it herself in a video captioned with a syringe emoji, which, if you've watched the show, is a threat and a promise.

Why this is a big deal

Because it means the numbers were so obvious nobody needed to wait for the rest of them.

Some context, courtesy of Deadline's reporting on the pickup:

• Furious premiered July 27 with only three episodes, then went weekly.
• Even on a three-episode drop, it cracked Nielsen's streaming originals Top 10 in its launch week with 372 million minutes.
• Hulu says one-day views for episode 7 were up 40% over the premiere. Shows are supposed to shed viewers as they go. This one gained them.
• It's sitting at 98% on Rotten Tomatoes after debuting at 100.

Add "reasonable cost by streaming standards" and you've got a show that was, from a business standpoint, un-cancelable. So they didn't bother pretending.

When a streamer renews you before your finale, it isn't a vote of confidence. It's a confession that the vote was never in doubt.

What the show is, in case you're behind

Rossum plays Alice Black, an FBI agent hunting a female serial killer named Catherine Grace (Lola Petticrew, who has been quietly giving the performance of the summer). Both women think they're the one doing the pursuing. Both are right. The logline says the line between right and wrong "begins to blur," which undersells how much fun the blurring is.

It's from Liz Meriwether — yes, New Girl Liz Meriwether — and it's loosely inspired by the 1987 Debra Winger–Theresa Russell thriller Black Widow, whose screenwriter Ron Bass is an executive producer here. Quincy Tyler Bernstine and Scoot McNairy fill out the cast; Jake Lacy, Rob Delaney, and Hope Davis drop in.

Brian Kirk (Game of Thrones, The Day of the Jackal) directed the first two episodes and set a tone that the rest of the season, unusually, kept.

What season 2 looks like

Nobody knows yet, including the people making it. At an FYC panel the same night the renewal dropped, Meriwether admitted she doesn't have a plan and is actively trying to come up with one — which, from a comedy writer who became a drama writer, is a refreshingly honest thing to say out loud.

Rossum, meanwhile, has been pitching. Aggressively. She told the panel she's been sending Meriwether text messages full of ideas, some of which get a thumbs-up and some of which get nothing at all. Her summary, per Gold Derby: "I can take a hint."

The star is texting the showrunner story ideas and the showrunner is replying with a dancing-girl emoji. This is how a second season gets written. This is fine.

Rossum, who is also an executive producer through her Composition 8 banner, has also been candid that the show's focus on predators isn't abstract for her — she's been in this industry since she was seven and has talked about the show as a "full-body experience" to make.

The takeaway

Hulu canceled a comedy two months after it ended and renewed a thriller four days before it did, in the same week. The Playlist noted the renewal gives the show momentum heading into the finale, which is a polite way of saying: watch it tonight knowing it isn't going anywhere.

The finale streams today. Meriwether wrote it. The syringe emoji stands.