Echoes couldn't find the same success as Orphan Black (Why it's disappointing the series is canceled)

Orphan Black: Echoes has been canceled after just one season, which is a loss for fans yet there are reasons why the series couldn't be successful.

Premiering in 2013, Orphan Black had a fantastic hook. Small-time crook Sarah Manning sees an exact double of her, a cop named Beth, kill herself. Taking on Beth's identity to hide out from some bad guys, Sarah soon discovers she's one of several clones being hunted. 

The five-season run on BBC America became a sensational cult show with massive critical acclaim. The key to it all was the casting of Tatiana Maslany as the various clones. It made her an instant star and even earned her an Emmy award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama. 

The show has retained its following and a podcast sequel series. Orphan Black: Echoes was set 30 years in the future as the cloning tech has grown and Sarah's grown daughter Kira (Keeley Hewes) working for a mysterious company. Krysten Ritter starred as Lucy, a woman who uncovers her own ties to the cloning project and bonds with Jules (Amanda Fix), who she thinks is a clone of her. 

The show developed more of the series' mythology with various turns, such as how Kira had cloned her late wife and Lucy and Jules uncovering more secrets of their past. It ended in a huge cliffhanger to set up a second season but that won't happen with the series being canceled. This may be a letdown to some, yet in other ways, it's obvious why Echoes couldn't retain the same power as Orphan Black.

Echoes never had the Orphan Black DNA for success

The key issue is that the reason Orphan Black became such a hit was Maslany. Her performance(s) as the multiple clones was astounding as she made each character so distinct and vibrant that viewers could believe they were watching multiple actresses. Ask any fan of the show and they'll agree that without Maslany, the series would never have worked. 

Krysten Ritter is a good actress but couldn't quite match that same aura when she tried to play multiple parts. Supposedly, the producers wanted to get Maslany to make some sort of cameo but it didn't work out and her absence was majorly felt. Sure, we got her foster brother Felix (Jordan Gavaris) in old-age makeup, but it wasn't quite the same. The lack of Maslany was a key hurdle the series couldn't overcome. 

There was also setting it so far in the future, decades after the main show and robbing it of the immediateness that made the original more gripping. The old-age makeup on some past characters was distracting, and oddly, it didn't do as much with a future setting as one would expect. The attempts to link to the past show just didn't work, thanks to the time gap. A sequel series in modern times might have worked better. 

Other problems were the pacing, which seemed to drag too much and the emphasis on flashbacks. Moments that should have been stunning, like the revelation of Kira cloning her dead wife, came off as lacking as they didn't have the proper setup and were weakened by poor writing. The show made the mistake of scores of genre TV series in the last few decades in putting in way too much mythology and setups without making them entertaining for fans to care about. That's something the original series excelled at, making viewers invested in not just the clones but their loved ones as Echoes lacked the same spark in the cast.

The characters also came off dull with Kira's transformation into a rather selfish woman marring her character. Lucy and Jules never connected with their supposed bond despite the great talents of Ritter and Fix. The main villain was dull and some characters seemed interchangeable and lacked development. The last episodes were a mix of plotlines and a sudden twist meant to be shocking, yet coming off just blatant manipulation.

The shame is that the show had some potential in the discussions on ethics, immortality and identity. That cliffhanger looked to setup a bolder Season 2 which could have corrected some of the problems and offerd a more streamlined story. With better writing and plotting, it might have done better yet it's hard to have seen it working as to so many fans, Orphan Black was always Maslany's show and continuing without her was always doomed to fail. Thus, Echoes came off a pale shadow of a sci-fi classic and little wonder it's now gone. 

Orphan Black: Echoes streaming on AMC+.