The news that Minx's second season — already nearly complete! — won't be aired (and that the first season will be pulled from streaming) is a particularly disappointing development in the ongoing HBO Max streaming armageddon. Minx is a high-spirited comedy that explores feminine desire, power, and professional marginalization with a unique combination of frankness, a resolutely sunny sensibility, and an excellent ensemble cast. Its first season left us with a host of enticing questions to answer, and its cast created a stable of original characters it’s just too soon to say goodbye to.

But more than that, it's an inescapably bitter irony to abruptly shutter and bury a show about a woman struggling to make space for her perspective in a crowded and male-dominated media field. The first season left us wondering what would become of Joyce's efforts to strike out on her own; now we’re left wondering the same thing about creator Ellen Rapoport’s show.

RELATED: 'Minx' Showrunner Ellen Rapoport on the Joyce and Shelly Dynamic and Avoiding Clichés

What Happened in 'Minx' Season 1?

minx-tv-series-jake-johnson-ophelia-lovibond-social-featured
Image via HBO Max

The first season of Minx followed Joyce Prigger (Olivia Lovibond), a woman with a dream: to publish her own magazine as second-wave feminism crests in the 1970s. After a slew of publishers, all older men, reject her pitch for The Matriarchy Awakens, help comes from an unlikely source: Doug Renetti (Jake Johnson), a publisher of porn mags with titles like Feet Feet Feet. The women on his staff loved Joyce’s magazine, and his Bottom Dollar Publications will print anything Doug thinks will make a buck. The Matriarchy Awakens becomes Minx, where thoughtful examinations of the female experience live side-by-centerfold with full-color spreads of nude men intended for the feminine gaze. Joyce, Doug, and the ragtag gang of Bottom Dollar employees weather moral panics, the mob, and self-righteous politicians as the magazine becomes a sensation, but the biggest challenge is internal: Joyce and Doug tussle over editorial control, and their uneasy partnership finally breaks when Doug books an off-brand centerfold without Joyce’s approval.

Surrounding the central question of whether Minx will get off the ground — and whether Joyce and Doug will learn to work together — were the smaller-scale journeys of the folks working on the magazine. Makeup artist Richie (Oscar Montoya) tapped into his creativity as a photographer whose artful lens elevated the centerfolds from pure titillation to cheeky commentary. Tina (Idara Victor), Doug’s longtime second-in-command and sometimes girlfriend, began to look outside Doug’s shadow for a career of her own. Bambi (Jessica Lowe), a staple of Bottom Dollar’s spreads, found her voice and an outlet for her boundless curiosity in her work on the magazine’s business side. And that rubbed off (ahem) on Shelly (Lennon Parham), Joyce’s dependable and pragmatic sister, whose underwhelming sex life is reinvigorated by her friendship, arrest, and fling with Bambi.

Season 1 Ended With Many Questions That Season 2 Is Poised to Answer

minx-joyce-feature
Image Via HBO Max

The first season ended with a distinct sense of optimism but an equal amount of uncertainty. Joyce had left Bottom Dollar, and Doug released the rights to the magazine to her. Where would she take the title — and where would it take her? Tina was facing down a stack of business school acceptance letters from all over the country. Would she make something new of her life, or stay cocooned in safe habits, comforting patterns, and Doug’s arms? Were Bambi and Shelley (sp) just a one-night fling, or were their sparks just waiting to be rekindled after Shelley went back to her husband? These questions and more were poised to be answered by a second season, and they offered exciting possibilities for where the show could take each character moving forward. The status quo of the series had been upended — Joyce and her magazine were in demand, rather than floundering, and every supporting character was at a crossroads. A second season could both satisfy our questions about the characters’ choices and raise new ones about what happens after they’ve made those big leaps.

A big reason those questions deserve answers is the work of the ensemble cast, all of whom built specific, indelible characters. Their work — especially since so much of it is already filmed — deserves to be seen and, if necessary, sent off properly rather than be disappeared. Lovibond’s Joyce was a sunny optimist and a bit of a prude, but willing to learn from the women she sought to liberate even if that liberation looked different than she expected. She and Parham shared a lived-in sisterly rapport, and Parham brought an earthy quality that highlighted Shelley’s newfound lust for joy. Lowe’s Brandi brought that out in Shelly with her effervescent thoughtfulness; Brandi could easily have become a trope, but in Lowe’s capable hands she never did. Victor and Johnson’s chemistry, first as trusted friends and then as lovers, was both easy and charged. And since this is a show largely about desire, I’ll say it: in addition to his magnetic good humor, Jake Johnson is an all-time great TV kisser who only got to show that off once last season. To deprive us of a second season of his particular set of skills (and his sleazy-hot costumes) is a true crime.

HBO Max Cancelling 'Minx' Carries a Note of Cruel Irony

minx-lennon-parham-jessica-lowe
Image via HBO Max

Answering the questions the series adeptly raised, seeing where those choices take the characters, and honoring the delicious work of these actors should be enough to earn the series its promised second season. But more than that, its abrupt cancellation and the decision to remove it from the streamer altogether is a cruel mirror of the show’s central conflict: a woman struggling in a male-directed media landscape to stake a claim for herself, to ask the questions and raise the issues that are unique to her experience and that of others who don’t fit into the dominant narrative. Joyce, and Minx, tell these stories with audacity and care. Each raises questions about the freedoms and limits of middle-class feminism, the joy of desire, and the stories we lose when new voices are shouted back into the margins. Just as Joyce was finding her voice, so too was Rapoport’s show, a notoriously hard thing to do in an oversaturated field, whether 1970s print magazine or 2020s streaming shows. The show, its creator, and its cast deserve to be heard, just as the marginalized magazine makers of the show do.

But just as Minx ended on a note of possibility, so too may this story. With Season 2 wrapping soon, there is hope that the show may find a home on another streaming service. At the end of Season 1, Joyce took her Minx on the road, ready to find a platform for her creation that will offer her more freedom and a bigger megaphone for the stories she wants to tell, questions she wants to ask, and eye-popping spreads she wants to unfold. With any luck, Rapoport will be able to do the same with hers.