Netflix today is the present, it’s the moment, and it’s our number one source for high-quality scripted films and TV series at home. But it wasn’t always that way. At one point, Netflix was still the future — the little engine that could, if you will.
The difference between that era and now is striking. Back then, we had a streamer eager to splash money on talented filmmakers, hoping to win them over to their then-new way of doing business in Hollywood. Now, the focus has shifted. Netflix is more concerned with keeping s on the app, competing with an ever-growing number of rival streamers and battling for watch time.
But through all that, we’ve seen shows fall out of the fray — often to fans’ great disappointment — getting cancelled far too soon, with little to no explanation. Here are 8 of our picks for shows that deserved better:
The OA
The OA was a lot of things — an auteur-driven mystery about a missing girl who resurfaces after seven years. Brit Marling, who plays Prairie Johnson (the missing girl), also co-created the series. As the story unfolds, Prairie is revealed to be a Russian oligarch’s heiress and, later, a dimension traveler.
Over the course of the show’s two-season run, Prairie cures her own blindness, forms a cult, and guides a group of misfits on a metaphysical journey. The narrative is dense, yet never rushed — and poetically, the series formed its own cult following in the real world.
But despite its growing fan base, Netflix abruptly cancelled it with no real explanation. Since then, fans have done everything they can, including organizing a fan-led demonstration in Times Square. Still, nothing worked.
That’s not to say Netflix’s silence has gone unnoticed. Just recently, during the chaotic press run for The White Lotus, Jason Isaacs reassured fans that the streamer’s stance with the creators remains: “no chance of letting it (The OA) go.”
Mindhunter
Mindhunter came along at a time when Netflix had already figured out its voice and business model. They knew exactly why you were tuning in: late-’90s to 2000s classics and murder docs. So it only made sense to bring in David Fincher to create a show about the formation of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit — the department tasked with investigating serial killers.
The show received predictably high praise, and to this day, it’s hard to find anyone with a bad word to say about it. But quietly, it was removed from Netflix’s future slate. And unlike The OA, fans didn’t have to wonder why for long — Fincher himself came out and rained on the parade, confirming there were no plans to continue. According to the Fight Club director, the show was simply too expensive for the streamer to justify.
Santa Clarita Diet
The worst kind of Netflix cancellation is the kind that gets nipped at a cliffhanger. Netflix has been trying to land a sitcom that sticks for its entire lifetime. For a moment there, Santa Clarita Diet felt like they had found one. It was a big swing, don’t get me wrong: an R-rated sitcom about a family slowly turning into zombies is about as dark as sitcoms go.
But the thing about streamers is, they’re not beholden to rs. All that matters are the subscribers. And just when Timothy Olyphant’s character was also turned into a zombie, they nipped it in the bud. Apparently, the cast and crew found out during the edit of the third season. Netflix rarely does season fours unless the ratings are humongous — but ironically, that’s often when these shows finally hit their stride.
To this day, the search for the big Netflix sitcom continues. And Santa Clarita Diet is that rare show that still remains watchable despite the lack of resolution. Netflix really dropped the ball here.
Anne with an E
By 2020, Netflix was well and truly in its ruthless era. It suddenly had real expectations to meet — not just from subscribers, but from investors. And anything that didn’t retain viewers, no matter how beloved, was getting canceled.
Anne with an E came with an inbuilt audience. An entire generation — especially in Canada — grew up with the literary icon, imagining how she would engulf the screen with updated urgency and relevancy. But right on cue, at the predictable season 3 mark, the announcements came in: “Anne of Green Gables’ story will come to a satisfying conclusion.” Satisfied, fans were not. There were hundreds of thousands of petition gs, threats of canceled subscriptions — but Netflix didn’t care one bit.
The Society
To be fair, there’s a reason Netflix is number one. There are some genres that Netflix does incredibly well — and one of them is teen dramas. The Society set up a world where all the parents disappeared, which is already a nonsensical trope in these shows to begin with. But The Society made that trope an integral aspect of the plot.
This time, the show actually pulled impressive numbers and had a new season in development — but the COVID pandemic ruined those plans, and it had to be canceled. And unlike most shows, with teen dramas, you can’t just revive them after a while. Even Ginny & Georgia, with its long gestation period, is already causing Twitter drama over how grown the actors are starting to look.
Julie and The Phantoms
Sometimes Netflix goes a bit too experimental for mainstream fans’ tastes, and it becomes difficult to grow the audience the show has already garnered. Julie and the Phantoms follows Julie Molina as she navigates her grief over her mother’s death by summoning the ghosts of a band from the 1990s. And did I mention it’s a musical?
By all means, the show is actually good — especially the first 3 episodes. It had the potential to be the High School Musical for a new generation. But it was just a bit too novel for Gen Z audiences. After one season, Netflix pulled the plug.
Warrior Nun
It’s kind of ridiculous how many times Netflix has had to battle its own subscribers. If HBO Max (yes, that’s what it’s called again — for now) didn’t exist, Netflix would easily be the company that least understands its customers. Warrior Nun is based on an anime about warrior nuns who use an ancient Catholic relic to accidentally resurrect a young girl.
There are some mesmerizing, breathtaking sequences in the show’s first season — truly one of the only live-action anime remakes that actually works. But the audience just wasn’t there, so fans picketed, blogged, complained — and they got a season 2. But a season 3? Lightning wasn’t going to strike twice in the same place.
Lockwood & Co.
Lockwood & Co. was another attempt by Netflix to stick to what they know best — developing established IP and focusing on teen dramas. The show follows Anthony Lockwood and his trusted sidekick Lucy Carlyle as they run a ghost-busting agency with a very casual tone. Each episode kind of lives and breathes on its own — it’s a little like Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
But maybe it was a case of oversaturation, or something else entirely. There just wasn’t a big enough audience. Netflix canceled it after one season and, by their standards, faced very little pushback. Just a campaign here and a petition there, nothing they couldn’t ignore.
GLOW
The case of GLOW was genuinely tragic. GLOW had everything Netflix looks for in a show — the story, the fans, the critical raves, and even 18 Emmy nominations. That’s right, and they even won 3 of those.
The show still holds up to this day and follows a group of women navigating the growing 1980s wrestling scene — calling their outfit Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (GLOW). It’s still worth the watch today if you don’t mind a case of unfinished stories. It was canceled while awaiting its final fourth season due to the pandemic. Alison Brie, a core star of the show, called the abrupt cancellation “the great heartbreak of my career.”
1899
Of course, unlike its competitors, Netflix actually has a global footprint. Just like they’ve been searching for their big sitcom, they had also been deeply searching for their big international hit. Narcos was Netflix’s first attempt to dip their toes in the water, but the subject of those first two seasons was always the DEA, and therefore, it read as an American show.
But with 1899, it seemed like they finally had one. Oh, how ambitious that show was. The cancellation even inspired WIRED to publish an article declaring it the end of the Netflix weird era. The show is set on a ship from London to New York, full of a multilingual cast of characters who clash because of modernity and old beliefs.
The show was big, lavish — but it just didn’t capture enough of an audience to justify its price tag. And for Netflix, that’s all they need to see. It was canceled immediately.
Luckily for Netflix, soon after, they got Squid Game, which helped them reach their goal.
Published: Jun 6, 2025 12:51 pm