7 Netflix Shows That Were Cancelled Too Soon
Seems like Iron Fist and Luke Cage have also been snapped by Thanos...
Netflix's unrivalled, undisputed dominance of the home entertainment market allows them to take big risks with their content, should they choose to do so.
With over 100 million paying customers each month, the service has a massive, Scrooge McDuck-esque bottomless pit of gold coins they can spend on superhero shows, comedy shows, drama shows, and everything else in-between. The bad thing is, this more open approach to content creation has one major downside: cancelling any of these shows will not diminish Netflix's success in the slightest.
In fact, the streaming giant could probably erase half of its original series and barely put a dent in those 100 million subscribers. As a result, Netflix has cancelled a lot of shows in the past, and while many of these received satisfying conclusions, went out on a high note, or just felt like they'd reached a natural ending point... some didn't.
Whether they were just plain good, had unresolved plotlines, or showed some promise that an additional season (or two) could have capitalised on, there are a bunch of Netflix shows whose cancellations feel bitterly disappointing, and they definitely ended far too soon.
7. Sense8
Why It Was Cancelled: Netflix announced that Sense8 had been axed on 1 June 2017, little over a month after its second season debuted.
A few days later, Netflix’s chief content officer Ted Sarandos commented that the audience for the show simply wasn't large enough, insinuating that the production costs outweighed the benefits (via TheWrap):
"We did two seasons of it and a movie in between... the audience was very passionate but just not large enough to support the economics of something that big, even in our platform.”
The show was then revived for a feature-length special the following year, but an actual third season never materialised.
Why It Deserved A Future: It's odd that Sarandos seems to think that Sense8's audience isn't that large, because it was that very same audience - with petitions, hashtags, and other means - that persuaded Netflix to make a feature-length special after the show's initial cancellation.
To put that into perspective: Sense8's fanbase is so big and so passionate that it managed to make a multi-billion dollar company change its mind. With an audience like that waiting for more content, it just doesn't make sense to not keep Sense8 going, at least for a couple more years.
The show itself was risky, complex and diverse, and was praised for its impeccable portrayal of LGBTQ characters. This made it feel genuinely important to a massive group of people, and with positive reviews and great word-of-mouth, it doesn't seem right that Sense8 is no longer around.