First Kill ratings: Was the Netflix show canceled because of low viewership?

We got some bad news regarding the fate of Netflix’s sapphic vampire series First Kill last night. The series will not be continuing at the streaming service. Netflix canceled the show after just one season.

Netflix didn’t provide much information on why they canceled the show, which isn’t unusual since most of the time we don’t get a detailed report as to why a show was canceled.

All we can really do is guess, although there are some clues as to what happened. Was it low viewership that killed the show? Maybe a poor critical score? We’ll get into it below.

Did First Kill’s viewership numbers lead to its cancellation?

Despite pretty impressive viewership numbers in the first 28 days, garnering a total of 97.66 million hours, per What’s On Netflix, First Kill was still canceled. The comparable series Heartstopper had far less, but still got renewed. That said, keep in mind that Heartstopper had a much shorter runtime.

Forbes wrote an article comparing the two series and in terms of the viewership numbers, wrote:

"“Heartstopper may have had a longer tail of viewing hours past what the top 10 data shows, and those number could be out of date. But with Netflix’s inaccessible metrics, it’s hard to know for sure.”"

In short, it’s very hard to compare numbers because so much of it is inaccessible to us beyond the first 28 days. While First Kill did get good numbers, it just didn’t appear to be enough to Netflix to warrant keeping it.

However, sources did tell Deadline that despite the viewing numbers, First Kill “did not have the staying power of most Netflix hits, still did not meet thresholds for viewing and completion of episodes.” That’s a pretty vague statement and it’s still hard to determine exactly what that means.

We have to keep in mind, too, that Netflix is trying to severely cut costs and reduce spending in the wake of plummeting stock prices and significant subscriber loss, so we’re probably going to see more tough cancellations in the near future.

Why was First Kill canceled but Heartstopper renewed?

Many fans are disappointed that Heartstopper was renewed, but First Kill was canceled. That’s not to say anything bad about Heartstopper, which is a very charming show that certainly deserved its renewal. But why did it get two seasons when First Kill couldn’t even get one?

The aforementioned Forbes article explored this conundrum a bit, noting that Heartstopper might have had a more fleshed out plan, whereas First Kill only has a single short story as its source material.

There might also have been budgetary problems. First Kill did not seem to have a significant budget, but it did have more CGI and VFX than Heartstopper, which would have raised the production cost.

Heartstopper also had much better critical scores, but both shows had high audience scores and Netflix has shown no issue with renewing series or ordering sequels for critically panned films (see The Gray Man).

Could another network or streamer rescue First Kill?

Unfortunately, it does not seem likely that First Kill will be saved by another network or streaming service. Netflix shows are very rarely picked up by other outlets. One of the few examples is One Day at a Time and that was a short-lived resurgence.