In a move that shocked nobody, AMC announced they would not be ordering a third season of THE KILLING.
The series garnered a fair amount of negative publicity when they ended the season without revealing who killed Rosie Larsen. The problem was that the entire marketing campaign was based around the phrase “WHO KILLED ROSIE LARSEN?” The season had it high points, but it meandered and dragged on. Many, including myself, stuck around to find out who the killer was. When they gave us a “Nah-na-na-na-NAH-nah” ending.
So many opted not to come back for season two. I predicted they would lose 25%, I was off by a bit. The season two premiere saw a 20% drop from the season one finale and the series finale did almost half of the series premiere and just over 60% of what the season one finale did. The show upset the loyal viewers to the point where it just did not matter how it played out, they had had enough.
Had season two revealed the killer early on, it might have brought folks back. But the decision to carry the Rosie Larsen plot line all through the second season was never reconsidered.  Quite honestly, I felt they showed an unbelievable arrogance. The showrunner’s comments made it clear she cared little for the outrage and one of the stars openly stated he found it funny. Maybe they are not to blame, but you can’t tell me that there was not at least one person that pointed out that all of the ads pitched the first season as being about finding out who killed Rosie. Regardless, the public and critics spoke loudly and nobody seemed to listen. They even used the same marketing for the DVD release.
But the bottom line is that the show was a mixed bag and the bad ultimately outweighed the good.