UPDATE: We’ve included the latest no-good, very bad news from HBO, plus a glimmer of hope.
This post contains spoilers for Season 1 of Minx.
Season 1 of Minx, HBO Max’s series about a feminist pornography magazine in the ’70s, left us with some agonizing cliffhangers. Joyce (Ophelia Lovibond) is leaving Bottom Dollar and setting out on her own with Minx. Doug (Jake Johnson) has willingly given up the title he hoped would bring Bottom Dollar money and prestige, while the Minx staffers are in disarray after the disastrous issue 3 centerfold shoot and the M.E.N. riot. Meanwhile, Shelly (Lennon Parham) and Bambi (Jessica Lowe) have realized that they’re attracted to each other, but Shelly seems to have gone back to her husband. There are so many directions Season 2 could go in! But what does the future hold for Minx?
‘Minx’ and the Patriarchy
Season 1 of Minx ends with some epiphanies, with characters realizing that the patriarchy isn’t so easy to shake off.
All throughout the season, we see Joyce struggling to escape the grip of more powerful people—usually men, but not always—who want to use her work for their own ends. We get a flashback to her days in a hippie commune, forced to sleep on a moldy mattress and gather eggs while the men lounge around and take the good bedrooms for themselves. We see her as a researcher at New York Magazine, with a boss who sleeps with her and then steals her pitch so he can give the assignment to his male writers. Joyce even starts to reconcile with her ex-boyfriend Glenn, who asks if she wants to bring Minx to a publishing house he’s starting up. Joyce quickly realizes, though, that Glenn is trying to exert the same control over her vision as the rest of the male publishers she’s worked with.
At the very end of the season finale, Joyce tells Doug that she’s tired of getting trapped in the same sexist dynamic over and over again. To her surprise, Doug relinquishes control of Minx over to her, admitting that it can’t succeed without her. This moment represents a sea change for both of them: Joyce finally gets through to someone and gains the autonomy and respect that’s been denied to her, and Doug finally understands that his patronizing attitude toward Joyce and his control over Minx’s editorial process isn’t okay.
Along with all the logistics issues of the new arrangement—for example, will Joyce succeed at publishing Minx herself? What about all those lawsuits and the new anti-pornography bill in the Valley?—Season 2 can keep exploring all the shifting and evolving power dynamics at Bottom Dollar and the wider publishing world.
‘Minx’ and White Feminism
Minx Season 1 also doesn’t shy away from highlighting all the problems with white feminism (that is, feminism primarily by and for privileged, white women), and there’s plenty more ground for Season 2 to explore. In the college scene in episode 6, the young feminists are mostly ridiculous (“I resent the implication that women are too weak to see an erect penis!”), but they do make a couple of good points, telling Joyce that the magazine excludes women of color and working class women.
The white feminism in the show gets ramped up to another level when Joyce attends a dinner party with a friend who works at Betsy magazine. The wealthy progressives at the table talk about feminism while they’re served by two women of color in housekeeper’s uniforms. They wax philosophical about sex workers, claiming that Joyce is “slumming it” by working in pornography. They ignore Joyce’s insistence that the women who model for Bottom Dollar aren’t helpless victims who need wealthier women to come save them.
All this cluelessness and hypocrisy is no accident. Showrunner Ellen Rapoport is well aware of the problems with second wave feminism. In an interview with Variety, she says:
Even in [the real ‘70s] magazines, the sexism from white feminists is crazy. They literally say, “We will take care of ourselves first, and then we will move on to racism.” It’s startling! It’s like they said the inside part out loud, but they didn’t have any problem with it. It was a product of its time, but pretty insular and non-inclusive. So we definitely did not hesitate to poke fun at any of that, or to shine a light on it.
Overall, Season 1 sets up some pretty rich themes, which unfortunately are still all too relevant today. It’s exciting to think about all the places Season 2 could go.
Will We Get a Season 2?
In May 2022, Deadline reported that Minx was renewed for season 2. On the renewal, Rapoport said,
All of us at Minx have been blown away by the passionate response from audiences across the world, who have mashed-up, TikTok-ed and fanfic-ed us into a renewal. We are so grateful to our partners at HBO Max and Lionsgate for being true champions of the show, and for the opportunity to continue on this journey. Here’s to more chest hair, pussy bow blouses and tasteful nudes in season two.
The renewal was no surprise. Minx‘s first season earned a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics calling it “original, and addictive.” (Here’s our own review, if you’re interested!)
In an interview with Slashfilm, Rapoport said that she’d ideally love for Minx to go for 12 seasons:
I would love for it to go into the ’80s. I think what happened was so interesting, how the whole country took a real conservative shift with Reagan being elected president and how the feminist movement really splintered in two with the pro-pornography and the anti-porn feminists. I’d also love for them to go corporate and move to New York, sell “Minx” to a big conglomerate. See Doug in that position. I think it could go all the way there. So what is it, ’72? So, I don’t know. 12 seasons.
HBO Cancels Minx—but there’s hope
On December 12, HBO announced that Minx has been canceled as part of the company’s sprawling efforts to cut costs. Other casualties of David Zaslav’s Warner Bros. Discovery takeover include Batgirl, Wonder Woman 3, and several animated series. We won’t be seeing Minx on HBO again any time soon.
However, most of season 2 has already been filmed, and Rapoport seems optimistic that Lionsgate will be able to take the show to another platform, tweeting that “I’m proud of the show we’ve made and am confident that the audience will come with us to our new home.”
Jake Johnson echoed Rapoport’s hope, announcing that HBO didn’t halt production on the show, and they’ll keep filming despite the cancellation.
(featured image: HBO)
