The ‘First Kill’ cancellation created shockwaves among new fans of the lesbian vampire romance series on Netflix, birthing a new hashtag ‘CancelNetflix’ that’s currently trending.
Last August 2, the streaming platform had axed the 8-episode show after only one season— or a two month-run– and despite its apparent popularity among viewers.
First Kill cancellation inspires outrage
Fans of ‘First Kill’ are spreading the hashtag #CancelNetflix in response to Netflix’s refusal to renew ‘First Kill’ even as they cancelled their own subscriptions to the streaming giant.
But more than that, they’re using the hashtag #SaveFirstKill in hopes that the series will be picked up by another streaming platform for its second season.
Fans pointed out the lack of queer representation among Netflix shows, citing Netflix data that the show was doing well on its first season and being among the top English-language shows on the platform.
Twitter users also pointed out that this isn’t the first time Netflix cancelled a show with a queer narrative, citing examples like ‘I Am Not Okay With This’, ‘Gypsy’, ‘Teenage Bounty Hunters’, and ‘Everything Sucks!’
Show producer blames Netflix marketing
In an interview with The Daily Beast, ‘First Kill’ showrunner Felicia D. Henderson said Netflix is to blame for the show’s cancellation and not its low viewership.
“When I got the call to tell me they weren’t renewing the show because the completion rate wasn’t high enough, of course, I was very disappointed,” Henderson said.
She added, “What showrunner wouldn’t be? I’d been told a couple of weeks ago that they were hoping completion would get higher. I guess it didn’t.”
Henderson said that Netflix’s marketing for the show wasn’t ideal: “The art for the initial marketing was beautiful.”
However, she thought that other important elements of the show like the monsters’ fight with monster hunters would be “eventually be promoted, and that didn’t happen.”
She did admit that Netflix did take a chance with the series because “they licensed the IP, paid for a pilot script, and gave it a healthy production budget.”
Netflix cites numbers for First Kill cancellation
Variety learned from its sources that Netflix axed the series because its low viewership didn’t warrant the price tag of making a second season.
Based on a short story written by author Victoria Schwab, the show focuses on Juliette (Sarah Catherine Hook) and Calliope (Imani Lewis), who belong to a vampire family and a family of vampire hunters, respectively.
According to Deadline, the show broke into the Top 10 for English-language TV series three days after its release.
It peaked at number three of that category in the first week of its release with almost 50 million hours viewed, later racking up over 97 million viewing hours.
Despite this, ‘First Kill’ wasn’t renewed while ‘Heartstopper’, a gay Netflix teen romcom, was renewed for two more seasons after garnering about 53 million viewing hours with its first season.