Yesterday, Netflix announced it was canceling The Resident Evil after only one season, meaning there will not be a second season, nor any more seasons featuring all of the other “Resident Evil” characters the showrunner said, “they had planned”.
Netflix has decided to give no go-ahead for the second season of an action-horror series loosely based on Resident Evil. While Resident Evil hit survival-horror video game series is not among the most well-received adaptations of the Resident Evil series, the show has still failed to generate the type of buzz that would have convinced Netflix to take a chance on another season, and it is not returning for a second season, according to Deadline.
Netflix’s Resident Evil series received mixed reviews from fans and critics, and it generally did not appear to match up with the video games legacy up until today. The series was a critical success/failure (we liked it), but was not accepted by many hardcore fans of the gaming franchise.
Furthermore, another significant factor behind the cancellation was that the Netflix Resident Evil Live-action series failed to garner any kind of love from viewers, either fans of Resident Evil or the audience with no RE knowledge. Notably, the cancellation came despite the statement from showrunner Andrew Dabb that the Netflix live-action Resident Evil series was stronger because it refused to rigorously try to stick to the canon of the original game.
The Netflix series ran for only eight episodes before being canceled. Now, while the idea behind the showrunners was to take a potential second season in a new, unexpected direction, that is clearly not going to happen. The series stars Paola Nunes, Ella Balinska, Adeline Rudolph, Tamara Smart, Lance Reddick, Ahad Raza Mir, and Siena Agudong, among others.
The news, coming one-and-a-half months after the July 14th series launch, is not exactly a surprise, since Resident Evil has not had particularly strong performances on Netflix’s top 10, and cost-to-view is Netflix’s primary criteria for renewing. Per Deadline, who first reported on Picks news, the Netflix Resident Evil TV series debuted as Netflix’s second-biggest program of the week, trailing only Stranger Things, but it fell off the charts rapidly in just a few weeks.
Much like Welcome to Raccoon City recently, and so many of Resident Evil’s prior movies, Resident Evil simply failed to capture what made the game franchise one of the most beloved survival horror properties in the past 25 years, which eventually led to its cancellation.
Netflix is still diving further into this genre with more shows coming. Looking ahead, there is the live-action series Pokemon, Assassins Creed Live Action Series announced way back in 2020, an untitled animated series based on the Castlevania and Tomb Raider franchises, and, not least, a live-action Horizon series to be made by The Umbrella Academy Steve Blackman. Film and TV adaptations from video games have seen a big rise as Arcane from League of Legends top Netflix’s charts and going on for a second season also a God of War is also in development at Amazon Prime.
