Unlike the general public, I have seen The Savant.
It is, unsurprisingly, a high-class production. All of Apple TV’s original series have a quality sheen and sizable budgets, and the creative talent behind this one is substantial. Jessica Chastain—an Academy Award winner for Best Actress—is not only the star but also an executive producer through her company, Freckle Films. Behind the camera are Emmy-winning producer Alan Poul (Six Feet Under, Tokyo Vice) and Oscar-nominated documentarian Matthew Heineman (Cartel Land). The pedigree here is real and cannot be dismissed.
Due to Apple TV’s embargo rules, however, I cannot speak specifically to the quality of the series, and I don’t know when I can, since The Savant has no release date.
For those who may not know, or may have forgotten, why The Savant became a hot-button issue: Just three days before its scheduled premiere—September 26 of this year—Apple TV announced that the show would be postponed:
“After careful consideration, we have made the decision to postpone ‘The Savant. We appreciate your understanding and look forward to releasing the series at a future date.”
While Apple TV’s statement provided no reason for the delay, the prevailing belief is that the September 10 murder of conservative podcaster Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University was the primary factor behind the decision.
So what about The Savant gave Apple TV cold feet in the wake of Kirk’s death? The answer lies in the series’ central premise: domestic terrorism. Jessica Chastain plays an American intelligence expert tasked with uncovering far-right terrorist plots—specifically those involving white supremacist groups.
It is a dire and timely subject.
Militant white supremacist violence has been steadily increasing in the United States and continues to outpace all other forms of domestic terrorism. Drawing on three decades of government research, the National Institute of Justice has found that since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides in the United States than far-left or radical Islamist groups—documenting 227 attacks that killed more than 520 people, compared with 42 far-left attacks resulting in 78 deaths. Notably, this NIJ report was removed from the Department of Justice’s website in the days after Kirk’s death, though it remains accessible through the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.
The NIJ article, still available on the DOJ website on September 12, two days after Kirk’s death, had disappeared by September 13. Ten days after that, on September 23, Apple announced its decision to “postpone” The Savant.
While The Savant does not mention Kirk in any of its eight episodes, it does engage with a Charlie Kirk favorite—“the Great Replacement” theory—a debunked theory Kirk frequently promoted, which claims that Jews and Western elites are conspiring to replace white Americans and Europeans with non-European populations, particularly immigrants from Africa and Asia. In a December 27, 2023 post on X, Kirk wrote the following:
“It’s not a Great Replacement Theory, it’s a Great Replacement Reality. Just this year, 3.6 million foreigners will invade America. 10–15 million will enter by the end of Joe Biden’s term. Each will probably have 3–5 kids on average while native born Americans have 1.5 per couple. You are being replaced, by design.”
In the wake of Kirk’s death—and amid an administration that has aggressively pursued the expulsion of immigrants of color, weaponized the DOJ and ICE against marginalized communities, and elevated Kirk to near-martyr status—it is easy to see why Apple chose not to poke the presidential bear. One need only recall how Jimmy Kimmel’s relatively restrained commentary about Republican opportunism following Kirk’s death during his September 15 monologue got him pulled off the air.
Apple TV appears to have no appetite for courting political backlash. The show was quietly removed from the platform’s release schedule, and no corporate statement or update has followed since the original announcement of “postponement.” A search for The Savant on Apple TV now yields only an image, a trailer, and a single line of text—“Coming at a later date”—a notably vague placeholder that may never be resolved.
If it works, this infinite backburnering of inconvenient projects may become a trend. And perhaps it already is. On Tuesday, December 21, CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss abruptly canceled a 60 Minutes segment focused on CECOT, El Salvador’s notorious detention center, where the United States has sent more than 280 undocumented immigrants. Internal memos later revealed that the segment was pulled to wait for input from Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security advisor.
The problem is that 60 Minutes had already made repeated attempts to secure an on-the-record interview with a Trump administration official for the story, only to be rebuffed each time. Weiss’s decision, therefore, places the fate of the segment in the hands of the government. If an administration official must appear on camera for the piece to run, all the White House has to do is continue refusing interviews, and the segment will never air. This decision by CBS recalls the Jeffrey Wigand scandal, when the network bowed to pressure from Big Tobacco and silenced its own whistleblower, an episode dramatized in Michael Mann’s The Insider, one of the finest films ever made about journalistic integrity. It took 60 Minutes years to regain public credibility after the Wygand debacle. The question is whether the same outrage over censorship exists today.
One of the few people to publicly oppose the decision was Chastain herself, who spoke out tactfully but firmly against Apple TV’s move to pause the series:
“I wanted to reach out and let you know that we’re not aligned on the decision to pause the release of The Savant. In the last five years since we’ve been making the show, we’ve seen an unfortunate amount of violence in the United States: the kidnapping attempt on Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer; the January 6th attack on the Capitol; the assassination attempts on President Trump; the political assassinations of Democratic representatives in Minnesota; the attack on Speaker Pelosi’s husband; the assassination of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk; the recent shooting at an ABC affiliate station in California; and over 300 school shootings across this country. These incidents, though far from encompassing the full range of violence witnessed in the United States, illustrate a broader mindset that crosses the political spectrum and must be confronted. I’ve never shied away from difficult subjects, and while I wish this show wasn’t so relevant, unfortunately it is. The Savant’ is about the heroes who work every day to stop violence before it happens, and honoring their courage feels more urgent than ever. While I respect Apple’s decision to pause the release for now, I remain hopeful the show will reach audiences soon. Until then, I’m wishing safety and strength for everyone, and I’ll let you know if and when ‘The Savant’ is released.”
Chastain’s statement gets to the heart of why not showing The Savant matters. Precisely because the series is timely, Apple appears to have decided not that we need to see it, but that we should not. As Chastain makes clear, the show is about patriots who dedicate their lives to keeping the public safe. The Savant is hardly an Oliver Stone–style polemic; it offers a relatively straightforward portrayal of the professional and moral challenges faced by someone in her position.
In fact, it is not so different from Showtime’s Homeland, starring Claire Danes. The key distinction lies in the location of the threat. Homeland follows a U.S. agent infiltrating Muslim terrorist organizations abroad; The Savant follows Jessica Chastain’s character as she infiltrates white supremacist groups at home. The Middle East has long functioned as a convenient boogeyman in American television, and it’s easy to imagine another season of Homeland—or a new series built on the same premise—receiving an immediate green light. But the research is clear: domestic terrorism has grown, and yet the subject has become increasingly taboo.
There is, however, ample room in film and television to explore white grievance—white dissatisfaction, disillusionment, and anxiety. In recent years, a slew of films and series have engaged these themes: Civil War, Eddington, Yellowstone, Hell or High Water, and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Even the quiet, lyrical Train Dreams includes moments that register white male fear of being displaced by immigrant labor. I admire many of these works (Eddington aside). They all contribute meaningfully to the national conversation. The question is not whether such stories should be told—they should. The question is why there is so little counterpoint.
It is worth noting that The Savant was greenlit in March 2023, during the Biden administration. The tone and tenor of the federal government’s relationship with media institutions has shifted markedly since Trump took office on January 20, 2025. Are creators no longer allowed to address the threat of white supremacy in the United States? Or do we only make room for projects that illuminate the reasons for white grievance, while refusing those that reckon with its terrible cost?
Would projects like John Singleton’s Rosewood (1997) or Damon Lindelof’s Watchmen (2019)—both of which confronted real histories of Black oppression and mass murder carried out by white supremacist violence, the Rosewood massacre of 1923, and the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921—be deemed too incendiary to release in the current climate? These histories, largely absent from school curricula, have survived most accessibly through film and television. Millions of viewers, myself included, first learned about the Tulsa massacre when Watchmen aired on HBO. Watchmen star Regina King and numerous commentators noted that audiences rushed online after the premiere to search for “Black Wall Street” and “Tulsa 1921,” unaware that the scene depicted real history.
The point is simple: people learn from film and television. When those works disappear, so does the public’s access to the truths they may carry. If this trend continues in the U.S., what will we be allowed to see? What will we be allowed to know?
From the Third Reich’s Chamber of Culture, to Soviet censorship under Zhdanov, to the blacklists and banned films of Pinochet’s Chile and Franco’s Spain, and the Hollywood chill placed on the film industry by the McCarthy era, people still tried to make, disseminate, and access art. Sometimes they died for it. What is most frightening, and most insulting, is how little it took to kill The Savant. There is no evidence that the government leaned on Apple; instead, it appears that, not wanting to be sued or attacked by a notoriously litigious administration, they leaned on themselves. This is worse than cowardice. It’s precedent-setting. It’s enabling. And it’s embarrassing. Who are we when comfort becomes more valuable than freedom, money, and, more importantly, than the truth?
Releasing The Savant would not require spectacle or a statement—only the simple act of lifting a finger from the pause button. Allowing audiences to see the work and judge it for themselves is not a political act. But disappearing, The Savant is.
This is how democracy erodes: through small choices made in the dark. What the country needs now is an abundance of light.
Release The Savant.
Reel Reframe 