'American Gods' Season 2: The Neil Gaiman Series Returns In 2019

American Gods has gone through some problems behind-the-scenes, but a season 2 trailer has arrived intact. The show, based on the book by Neil Gaiman, follows ex-con Shadow Moon (Ricky Whittle), who gets mixed up in a plot involving old and new gods wandering the earth. This is a curious trailer, because it spends most of its runtime explaining the plot from season one – almost as if Starz is essentially rebooting the show. Watch the American Gods season 2 trailer below.

In case you haven't been keeping up with American Gods' production woes, here's a recap. First: original showrunners Michael Green and Bryan Fuller were both fired from the show after season 1 ended. Green and Fuller's firing was initially chalked-up to a budget dispute – the duo wanted bigger budgets, the producers did not. Later, however, a rumor surfaced that Green and Fuller were actually fired because Neil Gaiman was unhappy with Green and Fuller's approach. As the story goes, Gaiman didn't like how much Green and Fuller were altering his source material. After the firing, Jesse Alexander was brought in as showrunner, with the assumption that he'd stick closer to Gaiman's book. But this move didn't go according to plan – the cast, still loyal to Green and Fuller and their scripts, didn't care for Alexander's new approach. Things go so heated that co-star Ian McShane allegedly got into a shouting match with Alexander. And then an explosive report surfaced, revealing that Alexander had also been fired, and that the show still didn't have a season 2 finale script.

In summation: what a mess. I was initially unsure of how much stock I should put into all these rumors, but this trailer is definitely confirming that the show is taking some sort of soft-reboot approach. All the plot-points here already happened in season 1, but they're getting trotted out again. Why? My guess: to get the story back in line with what Gaiman wants, and go from there. Personally speaking, I'm not happy with this. Gaiman is one of my favorite writers, but I loved the approach Green and Fuller were taking with this story. To throw it all away because it strayed from the source material is disappointing.

But maybe it'll all be for the best. Visually, this footage is stunning, once again hinting at a great-looking series full of amazing moments. We'll just have to wait and see how everything else turns out. American Gods season 2 arrives in 2019.

When Shadow Moon is released from prison, he meets the mysterious Mr. Wednesday and a storm begins to brew. Little does Shadow know, this storm will change the course of his entire life. Left adrift by the recent, tragic death of his wife, and suddenly hired as Mr. Wednesday's bodyguard, Shadow finds himself in the center of a world that he struggles to understand. It's a world where magic is real, where the Old Gods fear both irrelevance and the growing power of the New Gods, like Technology and Media. Mr. Wednesday seeks to build a coalition of Old Gods to defend their existence in this new America, and reclaim some of the influence that they've lost. As Shadow travels across the country with Mr. Wednesday, he struggles to accept this new reality, and his place in it.