Entertainment

5 Shows That Need Their Own Spinoffs

by Kadeen Griffiths

Spinoffs seem to be the new hottest thing in Hollywood at the moment. Even The Walking Dead has a sequel series, while The Originals, Ravenswood, Sam & Cat, and Once Upon a Time in Wonderland are just a few of the big ones to hit the small screen in the last year. And that's before we even touch on How I Met Your Dad's recent casting shakeup, Supernatural: Tribes hitting the casting trail, and Girl Meets World starting production with lots of familiar faces in tow.

It's a formula that movie makers have been using for ages: You come up with an idea that the audiences respond well to and you drag it out for as long as possible. Television shows are often better at this than movies, because a movie is a one shot pass or fail while a television show is a weekly chance to impress them next time. But now that Hollywood has woken up to the fact that we will sit down and watch the same exact show more than once if you change its name and cast (even if you air them both at the same time), they'll probably need ideas for which winning formula to replicate next.

Veronica Mars

If the fact that the fans will throw money at Rob Thomas just to get him to make a movie based on the cancelled series doesn't prove without a doubt that it should be back on television, then nothing else will. Veronica's post-movie adventures are being continued in a book series starting with 'The Thousand Dollar Tan Line', but I, for one, would like to see her solve mysteries, save the day, and snark her way through every situation all over again. Especially if it comes along with more of Logan in that navy uniform and hat.

Teen Wolf

All right, so there's already been talk of Teen Wolf getting a potential spinoff, so having it on the list seems a little like cheating. I'm all for more female leads, especially if they're women of color, but one of the most compelling mysteries and interesting stories on Teen Wolf has always been Derek's past. When he shows up in the pilot, he's a scowling, clean-shaven forest-lurking miscreant who looks like a murderer and will spend the rest of the season hanging around with underage high schoolers. But before the pilot, Derek grew up in a house full of werewolves as the original Teen Wolf. It would be just like Keeping Up With the Kardashians, only with more howling.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is technically a spinoff itself, since it's based on the Marvel movies and headed by a character who was invented primarily for those movies. However, despite the show's rather lackluster quality, it did introduce one particularly compelling person who deserves her own series: retired badass Melinda May. She's Coulson's second-in-command and the official pilot of the Bus, but she comes with a dark past that made her shy away from field work and a resume so impressive that everyone has heard of her moniker The Cavalry. The potential storylines are endless.

Gossip Girl

Gossip Girl already tried and failed to launch its own spinoff with a backdoor pilot called The Carrie Diaries — I mean, Valley Girls. It would have been a prequel series following Serena van der Woodsen's mother, Lily van der Woodsen, during her wild childhood years as Lily Rhodes in the '80s. The finale of Gossip Girl gave us a better idea in two words: Henry Bass. Considering that his parents are Blair and Chuck and the traits he's sure to have inherited from them, do I even need to explain what that spinoff would be about?

Community

All right, so Community doesn't necessarily need a spinoff as much as it needs to bring back Donald Glover. After Troy Barnes left to sail around the world (and to inherit a bunch of money) per the wishes of his late friend Pierce Hawthorne, his whereabouts were mentioned in an Easter Egg during an episode: a news report on a television announced that he and LeVar Burton had been intercepted by pirates. Since Community is a show that lives off homage and whole episode references, a web series spinoff following Troy on his journey would give them even more material to work with. Or they could just ask Abed for ideas.

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