Here's why Netflix canceled The Midnight Club

When it comes to shows from Mike Flanagan, there’s a chance that you expect everything to be a limited series. Just look at the likes of The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor. The Midnight Club was different.

This series focused on teenagers who were facing terminal illnesses. A group would gather together in the library to tell horror stories to each other. This was a chance for them to face death together. After all, nothing was as scary as their reality.

That was until their reality got even scarier. There was clearly something supernatural going on within the building they were living in. The ending left us with a lot of questions, and now we won’t get any answers on the screen. Flanagan did share things in a Tumblr post, so we’re not left completely without answers.

Why was The Midnight Club canceled by Netflix?

While Netflix never really stated why, Mike Flanagan shared his thoughts on why the cancellation happened. Some of it was certainly due to lower viewership compared to other Flanagan shows. There also wasn’t the critical response that the other shows got, especially compared to The Haunting of Hill House.

However, according to Slash Film, it was also potentially linked to the way Netflix changed the way it promotes new shows. This was one of those shows that didn’t get as much promotion as others, leading to a lot of people not knowing about it until it was too late. It is a problem that Netflix has had with a lot of shows. How many times have you heard a series was canceled without even knowing that it was even a series? Too many times to count!

Was it also to do with Flanagan’s move to Amazon Studios? He doesn’t think so, but you never know. If he wasn’t going to be involved in the day-to-day business of the Netflix show for some Amazon shows, then there is a chance that Netflix wasn’t all that certain about how the show would perform. However, it’s likely that if the series got the attention that others of the past did, it would have been renewed.

What’s clear is that Flanagan isn’t done with telling stories about life and death, despite The Midnight Club being canceled. He focuses on how death is just the end of the physical life. The spiritual life goes on, and each of his shows have focused on that in some aspect. That’s going to continue whether it’s on Netflix or Amazon.

The Midnight Club season 1 is available to stream on Netflix.