Prime Video Is Silently Burying a 2-Season Supernatural Thriller With a 100% RT Score

Prime Video’s The Devil’s Hour is one of the platform’s most inventive thriller series to date. Created by Tom Moran, the two-season thriller follows Lucy (Jessica Raine), a CPS worker caught in a time loop of alternate realities and visions. Putting a supernatural spin on the overused trope, the series avoids the genre’s high-concept complexities, turning a straightforward manhunt into a story about morality and ethics.

Despite its critical success, earning 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, The Devil’s Hour is a relatively obscure sci-fi against the platform’s more notable entries. This is worsened by the delay of its final season, with almost two years having passed since season 2. Lacking the attention of its counterparts, the series’ lengthy gap and the nonexistence of a release date could see Prime Video inadvertently derail one of its strongest sci-fi thrillers of the decade.

The Devil’s Hour Is a Perfect Combination of Mystery and Sci-Fi

The Devil’s Hour follows Lucy Chambers, a CPS worker suffering from insomnia and visions of an alternate life. When a manhunt begins for Gideon Shepherd (Peter Capaldi), a local serial killer, Lucy starts experiencing visions of his victims before their attacks. Drawn into the investigation, she discovers that the mysterious man possesses supernatural knowledge of her past, present, and future, offering cryptic clues about her unsettling experiences.

Time loops are hardly a new concept in the world of science fiction. However, these stories typically follow a single character reliving the same day in hopes of saving themselves or others, or learning a valuable lesson. The Devil’s Hour goes beyond this overdone trope, with Gideon being repeatedly reborn and forced to experience his life over and again.

The series uses this concept to question morality, with Gideon as something of an anti-heroic assassin who attempts to prevent wrongdoing. During his first life, he and his brother are killed by their abusive father. In subsequent lives, he kills his father to prevent history from repeating itself, eventually turning his attention to other abusers. Each new cycle influences the crimes he chooses to interfere with, leading to his run-in with Lucy, a detective in one of the alternate realities.

Whether Gideon is an honorable character is a matter of viewer perception, which makes the series’ argument. It suggests that morality is a double-edged sword, depicting how one bad event can ripple into unexpected consequences. A prime example is Gideon saving Lucy’s mother from suicide, a noble act on the surface. However, this rewrites Lucy’s main timeline, meaning she never becomes a detective, marries an abusive man, and gives birth to Isaac, who was never meant to exist.

This turns The Devil’s Hour into a game of tug-of-war between right and wrong, leaving viewers questioning the ethics behind Gideon’s crimes. On the one hand, he saves lives by stopping killers and abusers ahead of time. On the other hand, he causes greater devastation to the victims by altering their predicted realities.

This also leads to differing opinions on Lucy; again, is she preventing harm by interfering with Gideon, or causing more by allowing the planned events to unfold? The series never gives the audience an answer, which is one of its biggest strengths. Rather, it leaves viewers to determine which version of events is justified, making its central assertion that the line between good and evil isn’t always as black-and-white as it seems.

Few shows manage to combine thriller and sci-fi as effectively as Moran does here. Much of The Devil’s Hour’s appeal comes from the mystery surrounding its world, Gideon, and Lucy’s visions, while its supernatural and scientific elements mean that answers unfold in ways viewers may not initially expect. It keeps both genres hand-in-hand, with neither outshining the other, turning what could have been a fairly conventional crime procedural into a more complex and rewarding story on ethics.

The Devil’s Hour’s Season 3 Delay Threatens Its Future

Peter Capaldi and Jessica Raine in Prime Video's The Devil's Hour — Peter Capaldi and Jessica Raine in Prime Video’s The Devil’s Hour

The Devil’s Hour was always intended to be a trilogy, with season 3 being confirmed alongside season 2. In fact, the third season has already been filmed, with production wrapping well before season 2 premiered on Prime Video. However, there’s yet to be a release date, with the last official update from the cast and crew predicting an October 2026 release. Considering that’s a month away, it’s safe to assume that this unfortunately won’t be the case.

Details surrounding the final season’s storyline are still being kept under wraps. Season 2 ended with Gideon attempting to trigger a reset by shooting Lucy, despite her objections over protecting her son. In the final moments, a different version of Lucy appears before Isaac, setting up another shift in the series’ already complex timeline. How exactly the series will tie all this together remains unknown, but either way, the season promises to wrap up the overall time-loop story to finally give viewers long-desired answers.

However, the lengthy wait could prove problematic for the series. At the time of writing, it has been almost two years since season 2 premiered, matching the gap between the first and second seasons. The difference this time is that season 3 has already been filmed, yet viewers still have no indication as to when they can expect to see it. With no release date in sight, the fate of The Devil’s Hour is consequently left up in the air, despite the story already being complete.

This is particularly concerning for a series that, despite boasting a perfect 100% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes, is relatively obscure compared to Prime Video’s bigger sci-fi releases. The longer The Devil’s Hour is left on the sidelines, the harder it could be for the series to hold on to its momentum, particularly when audiences have already had to wait years between seasons. For a show centered on intricate timelines and alternate realities, asking viewers to remember the details of its previous seasons after such a long absence is no small problem.

Still, season 3 has plenty of reason to inspire excitement whenever it finally arrives. Raine’s comments during an interview with Radio Times in 2024 suggest that Lucy’s story is about to take another unexpected turn, while the cliffhanger surrounding Isaac leaves plenty of questions for the final chapter to answer. For now, fans can only wait to see where Lucy’s journey takes her and whether Gideon’s interventions will finally bring the series to a fitting conclusion.