Is Netflix cancelling queer stories?

There’s nothing more abhorrent than realizing the show you’ve been binging for hours ends abruptly with a cliffhanger, no planned next season, and Netflix naggingly recommending you “similar” shows that in no way correlate to what you just watched.

I recently experienced this over the holiday break. I found myself bored out of my mind, endlessly scrolling and praying to the Netflix gods for something interesting. Not good, not well produced, not a cinematic masterpiece, just something that could catch my attention to pop up, and as I browsed through the rom-com section, it came to me. 

First Kill  is advertised as a cheesy teen fantasy drama that tells the story of a vampiric young lady and the girl of her dreams, who just so happens to be a vampire hunter. The show immediately caught my eye with its plot description. It by no means looked like anything special, but it scratched the itch my brain had for something fun to pass the time. So, I spent the next 8-ish hours of my life watching First Kill’s first (and only) season.

I won’t bother with the specifics, but eight hours later, I found myself at the season finale, a nail-biting cliffhanger. The main couple broke up, their families were torn apart, a new villain was introduced, and a dramatic build-up to the supposed second season finished off the episode.

I expected to click “next episode” as the finale came to a close, to tune in to another episode of the overly dramatic and complicated relationship between the two girls and their eye-roll-worthy family feud, but I was met with the disappointing, typical Netflix screen recommending me to watch Big Mouth instead. Why is it always Big Mouth?

I was disappointed, but not surprised, when I saw the show had been made in 2022, and had no plans for a 2nd season. First Kill was a fun show, but it was undoubtedly cheesy and produced on a low budget. I assumed it was simply another case of not enough money or popularity to be renewed, so I turned off the TV and went on TikTok to look for content of the show. I perhaps expected to see that the show had a small but dedicated fan base, still thriving somewhere in the depths of the app with maybe 15 or so views per video.

I was wrong.

First Kill’s fan base was much larger than I anticipated. So much larger, in fact. Thousands of videos with over hundreds of thousands of likes popped up, most of which were recent. People discussing their favorite characters, edits of their favorite scenes, and character analyses all flooded my feed. The more recently published videos on First Kill all shared one common theme, though: how badly people wanted the show back. I found myself taken aback. This show was incredibly popular, so much more than I expected. If this is the case, why was it not given a second season? 

To get to the bottom of why First Kill was cancelled, we have to get to the consider why Netflix shows get cancelled in the first place. Usually, shows get cancelled because they do not meet a certain “goal” that the creators had for them. The official reason Netflix provided on social media as to why First Kill was cancelled was that the show “Did not have the staying power of most Netflix hits.” Which…explains nothing.

First Kill was in Netflix’s top 10 the week it was released, with over 30,340,000 hours of the show being streamed that week. As of now, the show has accumulated over 100 million total viewing hours. Considering the show is at most around 9 hours long, that’s a whole lot of people watching it. 

So if it wasn’t lack of viewership, a common conclusion many come to is that First Kill was canceled due to its poor quality writing and undeniable cringe.

As a fan of the show, I too agree that the show didn’t exactly reinvent the wheel with its plot. It was exactly what it advertised itself as, a cheesy teen fantasy romance and nothing more. But quality writing and breathtaking cinematography are never what Netflix has prided itself on. Shows like Riverdale, Ginny and Georgia, and The Kissing Booth all thrived on Netflix despite the constant complaints about their poor quality writing.

At the end of the day, if a show’s entertaining, Netflix will renew it. So why was First Kill not? What sets it apart from all the other terribly written, cringey teen series that went on to get 3-4 seasons?  First Kill is centered on queer characters.

The story of First Kill, of a beloved queer show being pushed aside despite its dedicated fan base, isn’t a unique one, though, especially on Netflix. Netflix has cancelled numerous queer shows that were in the same boat as First Kill. Notable examples being I Am Not Okay With This, Teenage Bounty Hunters, One Day at a Time, Dead Boy Detectives, and Everything Sucks.

All of these shows had numerous hours watched, positive reviews, and passionate fans, but were nonetheless canceled by Netflix, many under similar guises of not meeting the creators’ expectations. If all of these shows are incredibly successful and still not meeting the requirements their creators set for them, it begs quite a lot of questions.

Most of all, are the expectations the creators set for these shows unrealistic? How many views does a queer-centered romance show need to receive for it to be just as valid as the average straight rom-com? How many fans need to voice their love and passion for an LGBTQ+ series for it to not risk sinking into the endless abyss of cliffhangers? Why must every piece of media that features queer characters be a perfect and meaningful piece of art, while non-queer-centered shows are allowed to just be okay? 

Even queer shows that are critically acclaimed are not safe from this fate. One Netflix hit that was abruptly cancelled recently, called Boots, was in the Netflix top 10 in over 50 countries within its first week on the streaming platform. It is based on the memoir “The Pink Marine,” and follows the perspective of a closeted gay teen boy in the 1990s who impulsively joins the Marine Corps. Throughout the story, we see our main character struggle to make it through boot camp with his best friend all while hiding his identity as a gay man, as being homosexual was a crime that could get him expelled at the time. 

Despite Boots having an average approval rate of 86-90 percent from general audiences and 93 percent approval from critics, Netflix announced the cancellation of the show just a couple of weeks ago. Though the streaming service provided no official reason for the show’s cancellation, sources speculate that the series was cancelled due to the backlash from more conservative viewers, as well as a U.S Pentagon spokesperson referring to the show as “woke garbage” in an interview. Representative Kingsley said that Netflix is satisfying “an ideological agenda” with shows like Boots on their platform, and just a month after that statement was released, Netflix announced that the show would never receive a second season.

It seems not to matter whether a show with queer characters is a literary masterpiece or a cheesy teen rom-com, for Netflix’s concern clearly does not lie in viewer satisfaction as much as it does in being palatable to people who cannot handle queer media.