Countdown Season 2 In Danger Of Being Axed As Prime Video Goes Silent

Prime Video left Countdown fans dangling off a cliff, and not the small kind. If you watched the Season 1 finale, you know exactly why people are refreshing for a renewal announcement. The renewal still has not happened, but creator Derek Haas is already treating Season 2 like a done deal and talking through where he wants to take this thing next. Given how the show has performed since launch, he might not be wrong to bet on it — but there is some very real, very inside-baseball math happening behind the scenes.

Quick refresher: what Countdown actually is

Countdown is Derek Haas' latest cops-and-feds thriller — yes, the same Haas behind Chicago P.D. and FBI: International. It premiered on Prime Video on June 25, 2025, and Haas wrote all 13 episodes himself. The show centers on LAPD detective Mark Meachum (Jensen Ackles), a former Army Ranger turned undercover bulldozer who tends to bend rules and ruffle everyone in a 50-foot radius. After a Department of Homeland Security agent is killed in broad daylight, Meachum gets pulled into Robbery-Homicide to infiltrate and find the shooter. That opens a door to something bigger and nastier — a multi-agency mess where trust is a currency.

• Meachum teams up with DEA Special Agent Amber Oliveras (Jessica Camacho), FBI cybercriminologist Evan Shepherd (Violett Beane), FBI terrorism specialist Keyonte Bell (Elliot Knight), LAPD Narcotics officer Luke Finau (Uli Latukefu), and supervising FBI Agent Nathan Blythe (Eric Dane). Along the way, they uncover an inter-agency conspiracy that makes everyone a suspect.

The finale twist that has everyone yelling at their TV

Season 1 ends with the sniper targeting politicians — Todd, played by Grant Harvey — being unmasked as an FBI agent. Then he snatches Oliveras in the final moments. It is a pretty gutsy place to cut to black, especially when the show is not officially renewed. If Prime Video walked away now, that would be... unkind.

So, is Season 2 happening?

Officially: not yet. Unofficially: there is momentum. Countdown has spent its run parked in Prime Video's top five most-watched shows and has frequently cracked the top three since launch. As of now, only The Summer I Turned Pretty and The Terminal List: Dark Wolf are ahead of it. Haas tends to make shows that stick around, and Ackles is a magnet for viewers. All of that screams 'renew it.'

The complication: critics are not into it. Reviews have called the show derivative and said it loses steam as it goes. On the numbers side, it is sitting at 35% on Rotten Tomatoes' Tomatometer and a 44 Metascore. Regular viewers, though, are much kinder — 72% on Rotten Tomatoes' audience score and a 6.8 on IMDb. Translation: the audience is there; the prestige points are not.

The inside-baseball wrinkle: Ballard

Here is where it gets awkward. Countdown lives on the same service as Ballard, Prime Video's Bosch replacement, and the two play in a very similar sandbox: grizzled lead, dogged investigations, moral gray everywhere. Ballard is better reviewed and has been a stronger overall performer. Streamers have finite money and marketing oxygen, so executives have to decide if they double down on both or funnel more into Ballard Season 2. From what I am hearing and seeing, Ballard has the edge right now — but that has not stopped Haas from building his Season 2 bible.

What Haas wants to do in Season 2

Haas told TVLine he is not planning a single slow-burn case. He wants to pick up the Oliveras cliffhanger and run multiple operations next season instead of one big, dragging arc:

"I want to do multiple missions in Season 2, not just this plus one. So I don't want to tell the audience when this would wrap up because I think that was a good shocker on [Episode] 10, and this one, I don't think it's easy from here."

On Oliveras' fate and the messy Meachum/Oliveras dynamic that the finale tees up, he is playing coy but clearly planning to bring everyone back if he gets the green light:

"If she [Oliveras) survives, what's going to happen after this scene in that triangle is going to make for some really interesting episodes to come, if we get a Season 2. I want everybody back."

He also wants to push deeper into the team personally — especially Keyonte Bell and Nathan Blythe — and introduce a wild card from Meachum's past:

"If we get a Season 2, I'd like to meet his father. I don't have a cast idea in mine, but his father obviously looms over him shadow-wise. I think it'd be an interesting thing to see."

"I think you would see some more Blythe's family. And then I think the biggest thing I want to do personal-wise in Season 2 that will get the audience very curious, is cast and have as a character Melinda Bates, the woman left at the altar by Meachum that Oliveras knows and knows her sister. I have a whole plan that will not just be a personal story for that character."

If you have followed Haas' work on One Chicago, none of that will surprise you — he likes to braid the case-of-the-week stuff with personal fallout. He just has not done that rhythm on a streamer yet.

Bottom line

Countdown is a ratings win with a cliffhanger people actually care about, created by a showrunner who knows how to build long-running procedurals. The knocks are the critical drubbing and the overlap with Ballard. Prime Video has not made the call yet, but between the viewership, Ackles' draw, and Haas' plans already in motion, a renewal feels more likely than not — with the caveat that the Ballard factor could still tilt the room.