Last month, Amazon announced that it would not be renewing The Wheel of Time, based on the books by Robert Jordan, for a fourth season. The epic fantasy show had really hit its stride in season 3, with the cast, crew and story all congealing. There was still a ton of story left to tell, and after season 3, fans had hope that this show could tell it and tell it well.
So of course that was when Amazon and Sony pulled the plug, breaking the news on a Friday afternoon when it figured everyone would be too busy preparing for the weekend to notice. For a show to have the legs cut out from under it right when it was standing tall hurt, and we hope for the best as fans campaign to find the series a new home.
This isn't the first time a network has pulled something like this. Nor is it the second, third or tenth time. Let's take a trip down memory lane and remember some of times studios ripped out the still-beating hearts of fans by cancelling their favorite shows.
1. Firefly (Fox, 2002)
We have to start with Firefly, a sci-fi series from the mind of Avengers director creator Joss Whedon, currently nurses his grudges in the chill wilds after being exiled from show business. The show was a jaunty space western featuring a lovable gang of rogues and misfits. It made Nathan Fillion a star, inspired a passionate fan base, and was unceremoniously canceled by Fox after a single season the network chose to air out of order, making it even harder for this quirky, genre-bending show to find an audience.
Firefly found much of its audience on home video, when networks were still releasing physical compilations of TV seasons. There was a grassroots effort to save the show built largely on word of mouth, back in the days of the early internet. That resulted in a 2005 movie called Serenity that at least served as a send-off for the show and the characters, whereas the show had left them literally floating in space. It may not have been the revival fans hopes for, but it's more than most shows on this list got.
Attention must needs be paid to Firefly because it laid the modern template for how a fan community can rally behind the show and build enough momentum to get something done. Let's hope that same energy can help our next entrant.
You can stream the first and only season of Firefly on Disney+ and Hulu.
2. The Wheel of Time (3 seasons, Prime Video, 2021-2025)
The Wheel of Time is the inspiration for this post, so of course we have to talk about it. The show is based on Robert Jordan's beloved fantasy novels, which run 14 strong. Amazon greenlit this show in a very special, narrow period right as Game of Thrones was reaching the peak of its popularity and everyone wanted their own high fantasy epic. Then, when the genre started to fall out of fashion, they lost their nerve and canceled the series.
The third season of The Wheel of Time TV show covered the fourth book, so they had a ways to go before the whole story was told. But the cast and crew had shown they had what it took to go the distance. The third season was easily the strongest in the series so far. The cast was congealing, the show had developed a great visual language, and showrunner Rafe Judkins and his writing team were layering in teases that proved they were thinking far ahead. Fans were excited to follow the story of Rand al'Thor and his companions all the way to the Last Battle with the Dark One. We could have had a new sprawling eight-season fantasy epic on our hands.
But Amazon and Sony snuffed out the show just as it was getting really good. Fans are working overtime to raise awareness and find the show a new home, and I hope they succeed, because I haven't felt this burned over a cancellation in a while.
You can stream all three seasons of The Wheel of Time on Prime Video.
3. The Orville (3 seasons, Fox and Hulu, 2017-2022)
The Orville is the brainchild of Seth MacFarlane, the man behind Family Guy. It started life as a parody of Star Trek, with a personable group of explorers and scientists venturing out into the far reaches of the galaxy, with lots of humor to leaven the drama. Somewhere along the way, it became more of an homage, with some Star Trek fans thinking The Orville did Trek better than Star Trek's had done in a long time.
The first two seasons of The Orville aired on Fox before the show switched to Hulu and took up the name New Horizons. The show got better as the characters went along. The characters deepened and the lore got denser and more interesting as we learned about the varying races and factions populating this far future. The show never lost its sense of humor, but it was enriched by ambitious stories that took the characters and the situations they faced seriously.
Technically, The Orville isn't cancelled yet, but we've heard nothing solid about a fourth season since the third ended in 2022; the cast has given mixed signals here and there. The third season finished in a way that could serve as an ending, but the show also set up lots of plotlines it clearly wanted to explore further. If this show is granted one more season, I'm confident it could bring things home in a way that would make everyone happy.
You can watch all three episodes of The Orville on Hulu.
4. Westworld (4 seasons, HBO, 2016-2022)
Once upon a time, Westworld looked like it was going to be one of HBO's next great water cooler series, a heady reimagining of the 1973 movie about tourists who visited a Wild West-themed park populated with robotic cowboys designed to make their stays memorable. But what happens when the robotic "hosts" decide they've had enough and turn on their masters? Westworld told a story of man-vs-machine that seems prescient in an age where no one can stop talking about the effects of generative AI.
To be fair to HBO, the show did lose momentum with each season. Not only did new episodes take an eternity to produce, the story slackened as it went on, becoming more bloviating and self-serious until the audience was a fraction of what it once was. I can't blame executives for looking at this, seeing the pattern and wondering whether they should pull the plug.
AND YET, the fourth season ended with what was clearly a setup for one fifth and final run. The show had gotten worse over time, but it still showed flashes of inspiration and the producers obviously had an ending planned. HBO could have followed through with the show and had a finished, if imperfect, sci-fi epic for their catalog. Instead it created an incomplete homunculus. That's why this one hurts.
To add insult to injury, HBO removed Westworld from its HBO Max streaming service, opting instead to air it on FAST services like Roku and Tubi, where it’s free to watch with ads. So it's out there, but it doesn't have a home, an ignominious end for this once-promising show.
5. Raised by Wolves (2 seasons, HBO Max, 2020-2022)
Raised by Wolves was another challenging sci-fi show produced by HBO, but while Westworld at least started with a lot of buzz, Raised by Wolves always had trouble finding an audience. The premise is hard to get a handle on. It's about a pair of androids, Mother and Father, who are raising a group of human children on a distant planet after the Earth is destroyed in a religious war. There are also bestial sea creatures, a levitating snake creature made of biotechnical matter, and tons of religious symbolism. It was really, really weird.
And there's something very admirable about that. HBO is known as a network that takes chances, and even though a lot of the stuff on Raised by Wolves seemed bats**t nuts, you had to admire the show's nerve. I would've loved to see what the completed version of this story would have looked like, but HBO canceled it after two seasons.
Like Westworld, Raised by Wolves was taken off HBO Max and set adrift among FAST streaming services, doomed to wander for eternity, difficult to access. I'm realizing that a lot of shows on here were produced by HBO. I think that's partially due to me being a fan of HBO series, and partially due to famously heartless hatchetman David Zaslav becoming the head of HBO's parent company Warner Bros. Discovery in 2022. The axe has swung a lot more since then, and we're all worse off for it.
6. The OA (2 seasons, Netflix, 2016-2019)
The OA is about a young woman named Prairie Johnson who turns up after being missing for seven years. She now has strange scars on her back, calls herself the original angel (OA), and can see despite previously being blind. Over the course of two seasons, we find out what exactly happened to her. She recruits people to help find others who also went missing.
The OA resists easy classification; it's part mystery, part drama, part sci-fi and part fantasy. Some critics initially called it a rip-off of Stranger Things, although it came out only only months after the first season of Stranger Things and couldn't have copied it. Even those critics came around for the second season, when all agreed that, whatever it was, The OA was unlike anything else on TV.
That originality attracted extremely passionate fans, including powerful producers like Shonda Rhimes, Sam Esmail and Alex Kurtzman. But their numbers weren't big enough to convince Netflix to keep the show around. It was cancelled after a cliffhanger to the second season. You can watch it now on Netflix.
7. Carnivàle (2 seasons, HBO, 2003-2005)
A lot of the shows on this list were cancelled in the past several years; we're talking about cancellations that hurt us, and those wounds are fresh. But networks have been axing shows well before their time for decades. Take the case of Carnivàle, an innovative HBO series that was too bold and strange for the room.
Carnivàle follows the lives of people in a traveling carnival during the Dust Bowl. If I got any more specific, we'd be here all day; the show had a dense mythology and was concerned with themes of good vs evil, religion and the surreal. The atmosphere was bitterly bleak in an age where TV shows weren't doing that kind of thing. Had Carnivàle come out a decade later, when audiences were more used to experimention on TV, it may have had a better shot of survival. As it stands, a six-season plan was cut down to tow, and the show ended on a cliffhanger.
You can stream Carnivàle on HBO Max.
8. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (2 seasons, Netflix, 2016-2017)
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is based on the novel series by Douglas Adams, the guy behind Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. There's been a lot of dramas on this list, so why not something a little lighter?
Samuel Barnett stars Dirk Gently, a "holistic detective" who solves crimes by looking at the interconnectedness of everything, which may be hippy-dippy nonsense he's passing off as eccentric genius may be actual psychic ability. Elijah Wood adds some star power to the show as Dirk's hapless sidekick Todd. They have a Sherlock Holmes-and-Watson thing going on, but much, much goofier.
Douglas Adams is a sci-fi legend, and it was about time some of his work got adapted into a proper TV show. Like many other shows on this list, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency amassed a passionate fanbase, but not one large enough to save it from the axe. You can watch both seasons on Netflix.
9. Our Flag Means Death (2 seasons, HBO Max, 2022-2023)
We've mostly covered sci-fi and fantasy shows in this article, but we're going to stretch the definition of "genre" a bit and bring in the gay pirate show Our Flag Means Death. Pirates are a genre.
Our Flag Means Death is one of those shows so specific and quirky it was always bound to make lifelong fans of some people and turn away others. Rhys Darby plays Stede Bonnet, a real-life "gentleman pirate" who left his life of luxury to be an outlaw on the high seas. That's kinda-sorta true to life. Things diverge when the foppish Stede falls in love with the dread pirate Blackbeard, played by Taika Waititi. We meet other real-life figures from actual history who mix and match in a daffy, queer-friendly take on the Golden Age of Piracy.
Our Flag Means Death never had a huge fanbases, but the people who loved it absolutely adored it, flooding the zone in a way that made them look more numerous than they were. I know that networks can't renew shows just to make fans happy — there has to be a financial incentive — but Our Flag Means Death looked pretty cheap to produce, at least compared to other series on this list. Plus, the producers had one more season planned to round out the story. Even if HBO lost a little money in the short term producing season 3, having a complete series could pay dividends over time, as new people discover the show and can enjoy it in its entirely. Instead, the show ended right as it was about to take its final lap, pleasing no one.
Both seasons of Our Flag Means Death are streaming now on HBO Max.
10. Warrior (3 seasons, Cinemax and HBO Max, 2019-2023)
Let's end with one that hit me especially hard. I started watching Warrior during the long wait between seasons 2 and 3, and fell instantly in love. A historical drama set in San Francisco in the years after the Civil War, I think it's one of the best action shows I've ever watched. And the action isn't frivolous. The show explores conflicts between Chinese gangs at a particularly explosive moment in U.S. history, with plenty of juicy character drama in between the spectacular fight scenes.
Warrior started life on Cinemax; to my knowledge, it's one of the last pieces of original programming they ever produced. After season 2 the show jumped over to Max, where it had one last awesome season before getting the axe. Obviously it ended on a cliffhanger, with relationships in flux and many asses left to kick. You can watch all three seasons now on HBO Max and Netflix.
When I started this list, I didn't realize how many of my picks would be shows cruelly cancelled by HBO in 2022 and 2023. Again, I suspect that David Zaslav becoming the leader of Warner Bros. Discovery had something to do with this. As if there weren't already enough reasons to dislike the guy, add four more to the list.
These are only some of the shows that have been cancelled well before their time. To me, they're the ones that hurt the most, but let's spare a moment for some of the other series taken too soon:
- 1899
- The Acolyte
- Altered Carbon
- Caprica
- Dead Like Me
- Dollhouse
- The Expanse
- Heroes
- Kaos
- Mindhunter
- Penny Dreadful
- Rome
- Sense8
- Shadow and Bone
- Twin Peaks
- V
- Warrior Nun
Some of these shows are more beloved than others. Some got to have endings of a sort, even if they were canceled too soon. Others were left on cliffhangers that will never be resolved. Twin Peaks had a movie and then a third season made 25 years later, but most can't hope for that.
A lucky few, like The Expanse, got to come back for multiple seasons and have endings that satisfied people, even if there's still more story to tell. I'm hoping for that kind of outcome for The Wheel of Time, which was cancelled recently enough that fans are still holding out hope. It deserves more than to lay unfinished. All of these shows do.
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