When it debuted back in January, The Shannara Chronicles was deemed something of a game changer for MTV and it's proven to be just that, with ratings - traditional, digital and Live Plus 7 - higher than anything the network offered this past season, and now it's been renewed for year two.
Based on Terry Brooks' long-running Shannara fantasy novels that launched in 1977, the series stands as a fairly unique entry in the genre. In Empire's comprehensive look at The Shannara Chronicles, executive producer Al Gough commented, "What was great about Shannara is that Terry is a real old-fashioned, in the best sense of the word, storyteller. The story had a real pace to it and it just had a great world, which you hadn't seen in fantasy, which is our world in the future. The way Terry tells stories, it felt more Star Wars than Lord Of The Rings to me. If you think back, Star Wars was pitched as a princess, a farm boy, a rogue, and knights taking on an evil empire. It was a space fantasy. This one, when we read it, we recognized as a great story and we could totally see it as a show."
In season one of The Shannara Chronicles, an army of evil demons that have been locked away for centuries in a magical prison created by the elves have begun to escape and are bringing death and destruction upon the world. Young Wil Ohmsford (Austin Butler) learns he is the last of the Shannara bloodline and has undiscovered powers within him; the same powers his ancestors once used to rid the world of demons. Princess Amberle (Poppy Drayton) is the grand-daughter of the Eleven King (John Rhys-Davies), and she is chosen to go on the quest needed to restore the magical prison. The only one fit to protect her on the journey is Wil, and so the two of them set off on a seemingly impossible quest to save the world, as demons and other obstacles stand in their way.
No word from the network on when the show will return or for how many episodes.