Most-Watched Canceled Netflix Series Revealed

While Squid Game season 2 being the most-watched series on Netflix in the back half of 2024 is probably not surprising to anyone, what about numbers for the shows Netflix canceled? The streamer’s latest numbers dump shows us why they made the decisions they did in regards to all the shows that got the axe last year.

The streamer’s bi-annual What We Watched report says subscribers watched over 94 billion hours of content in July through December of last year. Netflix uses a performance vs. cost ratio to decide what shows to renew or cancel, which provides clarity to some of their decisions.

For example, KAOS, the Jeff Goldblum-starring Greek-mythology comedy, had 20.3M views in that period, making it the #27 most watched show on Netflix. However, ten million of those views were in the first week the show was available, showing it didn’t have much of a long-tail word-of-mouth reputation. On paper, 20 million views seems like a lot (one of Netflix’s biggest hits, Bridgerton, netted 21.7M views in the same time period) but the show was expensive to make and reviews were middling, so Netflix decided not to move forward.

Another show to meet its end was Rob Lowe’s comedy Unstable, which only pulled in just 3.1M views in its second season after premiering on August 1. Also cancelled was That 90s Show, a sequel to That 70s Show. The third season of the series pulled in 5.6M views, and was canceled shortly after.

The most surprising bit of info was how few people watched the third season of Girls5Eva, a much-loved Tina Fey-produced comedy that Netflix rescued after it was cancelled by Peacock. It seems fans must not have even known of its revival, as the third season only had 1.3M views.