Archive 81 canceled: Archive 81 season 2 not happening at Netflix

We have sad news for fans of the Netflix series Archive 81. The streaming service officially canceled the show after just one season. The news comes from a Deadline exclusive reporting that the horror drama starring Mamoudou Athie and Dina Shihabi would not be renewed at the streaming service after its January 14 debut.

Inspired by the popular podcast of the same name, Archive 81 followed a conservator investigating a mystery surrounding the disappearance of a filmmaker and a suspicious apartment building at the center of numerous strange occurrences. Apart from Athie and Shihabi, the series also starred Evan Jonigkeit, Julia Chan, Ariana Neal, Matt McGorry and Martin Donovan.

Archive 81 was Athie’s third Netflix project alongside The Get Down and Uncorked. Shihabi is set to star in the upcoming Netflix series Painkiller as a series regular.

Why did Netflix cancel Archive 81?

It’s not clear why Netflix canceled Archive 81 just because the show was successful in terms of ratings when it debuted. Deadline reports that the series broke into Nielsen and Netflix’s weekly Top 10 ratings and even made it to No. 1 in the US before Ozark returned.

But Netflix is now increasingly focused on getting precise audience data, as we saw with The Baby-Sitters Club, and it’s getting harder to tell exactly what the streaming service is looking for in viewership numbers. In short, it comes down to Archive 81 not getting the number of views Netflix wanted to justify continuing the series based on its budget.

Could Archive 81 season 2 air somewhere else?

While it is not unheard of for a Netflix series to get saved by another streaming service or even broadcast, it is extremely rare. One of the two primary examples is Tuca & Bertie, saved by Adult Swim and Pop’s rescue of One Day at a Time. Even though plenty of people watched Archive 81, the odds are slim that it will get picked up by another service. At least we still have the podcast, I guess!