Warrior Nun’s Fate Has Been Decided
The Netflix giveth, and the Netflix taketh away. Fans of the Netflix fantasy drama Warrior Nun will be left disheartened, on account of the fact that there apparently aren’t enough fans of the Netflix fantasy drama. Despite having an unprecedentedly-high audience approval rating, Deadline reports that just one month after Season 2 of Warrior Nun was released, the streaming giant decided to pull the plug on the show.
The series, based on the Ben Dunn comic book series Warrior Nun Areala, follows a teenage girl who wakes up in a morgue and discovers that she’s been inducted into an ancient order tasked with fighting demons. While it never became particularly popular, it still has a dedicated fanbase. Fans launched a Twitter campaign shortly after Season 2’s release in hopes of getting Netflix to commit to a third season, but to no avail.
Despite fans’ attempts, Season 2 of Warrior Nun only spent three weeks in English Language Netflix’s weekly top 10 ratings, never going higher than #5 on the list. It was a bit of a surprise that the series got renewed for a second season, to begin with, and Season 2 was apparently released without any promotional budget whatsoever. So, while fans are no doubt disappointed, the series’ cancellation is not a major surprise.
Netflix is, of course, well-known for greenlighting tons of unknown series and canceling them if they don’t perform well. Warrior Nun is just the latest in a long line of mothballed shows. In the past few months, Netflix has announced the cancellation of The Midnight Club, The Bastard Son & The Devil Himself, Partner Track, The Imperfects, Fate: The Winx Saga, and First Kill.
Mass cancellations, such as the one surrounding Warrior Nun’s demise, are nothing new for Netflix. However, this news comes at a time when the streaming giant faces untold competition and unprecedented hardship. With the company losing stock value, laying off employees, and losing the top spot to Prime Video, the future of the company doesn’t seem nearly as surefire as it did at the end of 2021 when the COVID-19 pandemic drove hundreds of millions of pairs of eyes to the platform.
However, for every canceled series like Warrior Nun, Netflix tends to have another up its sleeve. True to form, Netflix has several new series in the pipeline, including an animated adaptation of Tomb Raider, an animated series based on Magic: The Gathering, a live-action adaptation of My Hero Academia, a crime drama about the opioid crisis called Painkiller, a crime drama called Jigsaw, a drama series called The Lying Life of Adults, and much more.
Only time will tell whether Netflix’s rapid-fire approach to series creation will serve it well in the end. Having a huge back catalog of original content such as Warrior Nun can be seen as an asset for the streaming service — but only if subscribers want to go back and watch the shows after they’ve been canceled. A series that ends too early is less likely to get a re-watch than a series that’s allowed to play out until a natural ending, so Netflix’s approach might end up backfiring in the long run.
