Netflix Needs To Give Its Cancelled Shows A Chance To Finish Their Stories
The streamer has broken its promise to be better than what came before. Allowing these shows some way to finish their stories would be a win for everyone, including Netflix.
It’s hard for me to recommend the series of fantasy novels A Song Of Ice And Fire to people despite it being one of my favorites. The saga currently has five very long books published, with two more yet to come. But its author, George R.R. Martin, has taken an infamously long time in completing the sixth book—The Winds Of Winter—and many fans have begun to worry that the series will never actually be completed.
HBO adapted the novels into its mega-hit TV series, Game Of Thrones, but may have jumped the gun. Showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss ran out of source material somewhere in Season 6 and the remaining seasons suffered. But hey—at least they finished what they started.
Martin’s unfinished series remains a massive question mark in our collective future. And it reminds me of something: The graveyard of unfinished TV shows that Netflix has left in its hungry wake. Show after cancelled show spread out before us like half-decayed corpses. Whatever the reason—perhaps not enough Week 1 viewers (sub-100 million seems to equal cancellation) or maybe not a high enough completion rate—if a show doesn’t perform to whatever Netflix’s standards are, it gets the axe.
A cursory glance down memory lane shows us that many of the biggest TV hits over the years took time to build an audience. Shows like The Walking Dead and Game Of Thrones didn’t see their biggest viewership numbers until several seasons later. It takes time to build something, especially if it’s not an established IP like Marvel or Star Wars. But as evidenced by shows like The Walking Dead and Game Of Thrones, the audience does show up over time.
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Neither of these shows would have gained such ardent and loyal audiences, however, if they had been cancelled after one season. Like A Song Of Ice And Fire, it’s hard to recommend a show to people when that show is unfinished and likely will remain that way. I started watching I Am Not Okay With This on Netflix and found it charming and mysterious and quite good, but after a couple episodes I discovered that it had been cancelled despite showrunner Jonathan Entwistle telling Insider that, "When they commissioned season two and they greenlit us into the writers room, they told us it was to be the final season. So we were writing to a finale that we'd already planned."
Now, COVID-19 was a problem—a pesky and expensive problem that definitely contributed to the cancellation of many shows—but it’s hardly the only factor. Perhaps, as has been suggested, the sacking of Netflix executive Cindy Holland is just as much a factor, given that she was replaced by Bela Bajaria whose background and focus is reality, rather than premium, TV.
Whatever the case, I am now debating whether or not to finish the first—and only—season of I Am Not Okay With This despite—or perhaps because—I enjoyed the first couple episodes so much. I know that once I finish the season, I’ll be even more invested and that in turn will make me angry and discouraged because I won’t ever get to see the end of the show. And Netflix could have avoided this by simply giving its creators the chance to film a second—and final—season.
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I am not the only one who loses here. Obviously the cast and crew and creators of I Am Not Okay With This lose out big-time. But so do all the people I might have recommended the show to. And I have a pretty decent reach! Not only would I recommend a show like that to friends and family, I could write a post about it and make a YouTube video about it and maybe turn hundreds or thousands of people onto the show, who would then turn their friends and family onto it and by the time Season 2 came out, just the fact that I watched the first season would lead tons of new people to the show. Now extrapolate that to all the other TV critics and influencers out there. TikTok, YouTube, social media, forums, word-of-mouth.
And the real winner in all of this? Netflix! Netflix would benefit from all these people telling all these other people to watch the show and that Season 2 was coming soon and it would wrap up the story. People want stories to wrap up. It’s the nature of stories! Even ones that end on a mysterious note or open-ended, at least we come to the intended conclusion and we can make of it what we will. A story that is cut off prematurely, however, is just frustrating and sad. And Netflix is now cultivating a dark garden of stunted stories that nobody will want to recommend.
Sure, cancel the really bad ones. There’s a time and place for that. But the other ones? The ones that built a real fanbase and did decent numbers? Give them one more season to wrap things up. Even if they hoped to get five more, just say “Look, we are cancelling your show but we want you to be able to end on your terms, so you have eight (or six or ten or whatever) more episodes to wrap up your story as best you see fit. Good luck and God speed.”
There! Problem solved! And I don’t mean the cast and crew and creators’ problem. I don’t even mean my problem. I mean Netflix’s problem. They’re betraying trust with these cancellations. They’re telling audiences that they should expect new shows to just end before they’ve gotten started. I find myself thanking my lucky stars that shows like Yellowjackets are on Showtime, or Reservation Dogs on Hulu, because I could see those series getting canned by Netflix despite being wonderful (both part of my Best TV Shows Of 2022 list!)
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Netflix isn’t just losing trust, the company is losing out on all those subscribers who might keep coming back for more seasons of the shows they love. They’re losing out on these shows building into powerhouses over time. Not every show is going to be a Wednesday or a Stranger Things, but some might still be big hits that keep people coming back for more.
All it takes is not leaving so many shows—and their fans—hanging all the time. Let these stories have endings. Otherwise, they never really get to be real stories in the first place, and that’s a tragedy. And not the good kind. This way, everyone wins (or at least doesn’t lose so hard). Fans get a satisfying ending. Creators get to tell their stories. Netflix gets the goodwill and trust of their subscriber base and the long-tail boost that comes with shows actually finishing up instead of fading into oblivion. Happy subscribers means more subscribers which makes shareholders happy, too. Win-win-win-win-win. Stop losing, Netflix, and win for a change.
I am not okay with this. Nobody is okay with this. You, Netflix, should not be okay with this!
That’s my advice. Take it or leave it.
P.S. This applies to other streaming services as well, though none are as egregious in this regard as Netflix. Still, HBO should have given shows like Raised By Wolves just one more season to wrap things up and not end on a cliffhanger. Beyond all the many ways this just makes sense from a business perspective, it’s also the right thing to do. The right—and the decent—thing to do. That should count for something.
Speaking of HBO, we did finally get a conclusion (if a bit underwhelming) to Deadwood. But I still feel irritated about how John from Cincinnati and Carnivale were dropped without an ending.
The main downside of these cancelations is the perspective of not bothing to invest into watching a new series, especially when considered the flood of options now, until it is concluded and then bingeing it. But of course, enough people doing that means initial viewership numbers are lower, so more likelyhood of the series being cancelled. Will we see a trend (or is there already one?) towards shorter, as in single season, series?
The Dark Crystal series is another pretty tragic example, how can you blind to all its beauty (in any 10 minute stretch really) in the face of a bunch of cold numbers?