10 Most Disappointing Netflix Series Cancellations, Ranked
Nobody cancels a show quite like Netflix. Especially during the streamer's ascendancy in the mid- to late 2010s, fans and commentators alike would talk about its programming decisions as if it were the first ever to axe a beloved show. Hidden viewership data, confusing public messaging, and a sea of largely interchangeable "content" essentially made it so that, gradually, it was near-impossible to predict (or understand with hindsight) these decisions outside one's personalized content algorithm. Sometimes, a show would only seem popular to you because everyone on your feed was talking about it. It's hardly surprising that, in this context, cancellations felt more personal too.
Regardless of whether the shows below were secretly ratings disasters, budget drags, or some combination of the two, their premature endings sparked extraordinary backlash from fans. Viewers signed petitions and paid for billboards in Times Square just for one extra hour of these mostly forgotten series. Worst of all, because many of the shows' writers embraced that old TV hack of ending a season on a cliffhanger to stir interest in a renewal, some of these incredible shows are only debatably worth watching given that they end in the middle of their stories.
Read more: 15 Best Western TV Pilots Of All Time, Ranked
10. Inside Job (2021–2022)
- TOTAL RUN: 1 season, 18 episodes
- Created by Shion Takeuchi
- Executive Produced by Alex Hirsch ("Gravity Falls")
- Voice Actors: Lizzy Caplan, Clark Duke
"Inside Job" is but one of a disappointing number of Netflix series canceled after already receiving a public renewal order. This adult animated conspiracy comedy imagines a secret, high-tech, paranormal-adjacent bureaucracy responsible for keeping the world in order... (rest of the paragraph as in the original)
What makes the cancellation of "Inside Job" especially disappointing is how aggressively its plot was developing. It ended on a status-quo-changing cliffhanger that made it credible as a spiritual successor to "Rick and Morty," at least in terms of its willingness to tell serialized stories within an adult animated comedy.
9. I Am Not Okay with This (2020)
- TOTAL RUN: 1 season, 7 episodes
- Adapted from: Graphic novel by Charles Forsman
- Lead Actor: Sophia Lillis
(rest of the paragraph as in the original)
...its "derivative" ending (surely an intentional...)*