The team behind a cult Netflix hit have savvily protected its legacy from being officially cancelled.
In the last few years, the streaming service has made a habit of calling time on acclaimed series still in their prime, with the most frustrating cases including The OA, Mindhunter, 1899 and Shadow and Bone, which was canned despite being one of its most-watched titles. The most recent show to fall foul of the axe was Kaos.
It has been confirmed that another well-liked series will not be returning – but the makers appeared to prepare themselves for this news well in advance by essentially ending their own show while it was on a high.
Scott Pilgrim Takes Off premiered on Netflix in November 2023. It was a continuation of Edgar Wright’s 2010 graphic novel adaptation Scott Pilgrim vs the World, and was developed by the source material’s creator Bryan Lee O’Malley.
The animated series, which welcomed back many of the film’s original stars, received huge acclaim, and currently has a near-perfect Rotten Tomatoes score of 96 per cent.
O’Malley has now updated fans on the status of season two, revealing he was “recently informed the show will NOT return”.
However, before fans grow too outraged and launch angry petitions complaining about the service’s knack for cancelling shows, it seems O’Malley played Netflix at their own game by devising it as a one-season show.
He wrote on X/Twitter “As you know, we only intended one season, and called in a lot of favours to make it happen, so making more would have been nearly impossible. Still, I know some of you have been holding out hope.”
This update comes after O’Malley told Rolling Stone of the show following its debut: “It’s self-contained for now. We loved what we did. We put it all in there. We don’t have any ideas lying on the floor. We pretty much put them all in.
“I never say never, but right now, it seems like it would take about 50 different miracles simultaneously for another season to happen.”
He added: “People are always complaining about how shows get cancelled after one season. So we hedged our bets immediately, and tried to make a self-contained one season.”
This is a savvy move considering O’Malley and his co-creator Ben David Grabinski essentially protected the show from being cancelled prematurely.
It’s unknown whether they would have devised a second season should bosses have wanted more episodes – but, for now, the show can go in the annals as one of the rare Netflix shows that went out on, not just a high, but on its own terms.
