At this point, it's hard to find any movie or TV fan who doesn't have an ax to grind against the enduringly powerful Netflix service. Beyond the transcendent problems such as increased costs, anti-consumer practices, and rampant transphobia, the streaming service is failing at its primary purpose by canceling shows people love.
Thanks to the oversaturation of the market, the bread and butter of any streaming service is its original programming. A strong library of classic films might keep people entertained, but most people aren't signing up to watch even their best films. That's why a streaming service needs to be smart about which pieces of original content make it to the service and which stick around.
First Kill dropped on Netflix in June. It's good, but not great. Some of the writing is a bit on the nose, the story doesn't hang together 100%, and it clearly suffered from budgetary restraints. Its central element is a sincere and believable romance between a pair of well-realized characters. The show is novel in its representation, featuring a woman of color in the leading role and a relationship between two young ladies. The show is a mixed bag, leaning on the good, and it was clearly made with the intention of getting a second season. Without wishing to spoil, it ends on an unresolved cliffhanger that escalates the scope of the story as it heads into its theoretical second season. It also leaves its main characters in a deeply unsatisfying emotional position. This theoretical resolution and catharsis will not be coming, because the show was canceled just under two months after release.
The unique Sapphic vampire story is far from the only show Netflix killed after a cliffhanger ending. Adapted from the podcast of the same name, Archive 81 is an eerie and atmospheric horror series that grips its audience and leaves a strong impression. Unfortunately, there's not much sense in watching it right now, since the unresolved ending will remain that way forever. Ditto The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, which ran four seasons before its cancelation. Pretty Smart, The Baby-Sitters Club, Raising Dion, On the Verge, and countless other series were shuttered by the service this year alone. Viewing hours and Rotten Tomatoes scores vary wildly across the series that they've canceled. Some of the choices made are understandable, but some ensure that their most popular content ends with a sad resolution. There are some patterns, but they do not look good for the company.
Of the series canceled by Netflix in 2022, none of them feature a white man in the leading role. Plenty of white women and people of color take up spots on the list, but no live-action white men. In fact, some fans have pointed out that another LGBT-friendly series on Netflix's service, Heartstopper, was less popular than First Kill, but is still getting its third season. Heartstopper features two white men in the central role, while First Kill centers around a pair of lesbians, one of whom is a woman of color. It can't be said for sure that this is becoming a default policy decision at Netflix, but many fans are noticing that the shows starring people who look like they do don't make it past a season or two. If nothing else, the optics are extremely grim. The streaming service seems determined to appeal to the narrowest demographics, and its decisions continue to attract derision from fans.
If one were to put on the eyes of the heartless executive who holds the purse strings of what gets made, canceling a unique series after a single season is an ideal solution to a problem. Netflix makes its money off of subscription fees, which means the most important content is that which keeps new users joining and old users continuing to pay. If fans are looking for something they've never seen before, like a Sapphic vampire/monster hunter high school romance story, they could be persuaded to join the service that produced that idea. Once they've got the fans on board, canceling it might lose those viewers' support, but it's much easier to keep subscribers than it is to gain new ones. At least, at first.
Netflix is bleeding subscribers fast and it's hard to know how much time they have left. The stock is tanking, the big names are moving on, and the fans are fewer and farther between. The sins of the streaming service are too numerous to count, but, ramping up costs and cracking down on password sharing isn't the only thing that fans are furious about. When a streaming service cancels something that only they could provide, it provokes a very emotional response. Netflix has to be careful about what it greenlights, what it passes on, and what it allows to die before its time because every show they cancel is someone's favorite. No one is going to keep paying the company that cancels their favorite show.