The Punisher, Jessica Jones canceled; season 3, season 4 nixed at Netflix
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Today, the streaming service confirmed that they are officially canceling the two superhero shows after two and three seasons, respectively. The Punisher recently wrapped its second season on the streaming provider; meanwhile, Jessica Jones still has a season 3 to air. If you’ve been following the headlines for a while now, you probably had a good sense that this was something that was going to be happening. Netflix had already formally canceled Daredevil, Iron Fist, and also Luke Cage. Clearly, all of this represents them wanting to move on from the properties.
So why do this? The reasons are fairly complicated. One way to look at this is that the shows do have diminishing returns — while Netflix doesn’t publicly release ratings data, most indications we’ve seen suggest that the average viewership for the Marvel series has declined from one season to the next. Yet, our suspicion is still that the cancellations have to do more with Netflix getting out of the Disney business. Most of their properties are migrating over to the Disney+ streaming service; the upcoming Captain Marvel is the first film within the Marvel Cinematic Universe that may not end up on the service.
In a statement, here is what Netflix (per Deadline) had to say about the decision:
“Marvel’s The Punisher will not return for a third season on Netflix … Showrunner Steve Lightfoot, the terrific crew, and exceptional cast including star Jon Bernthal, delivered an acclaimed and compelling series for fans, and we are proud to showcase their work on Netflix for years to come.
“In addition, in reviewing our Marvel programming, we have decided that the upcoming third season will also be the final season for Marvel’s Jessica Jones. We are grateful to showrunner Melissa Rosenberg, star Krysten Ritter and the entire cast and crew, for three incredible seasons of this groundbreaking series, which was recognized by the Peabody Awards among many others.
“We are grateful to Marvel for five years of our fruitful partnership and thank the passionate fans who have followed these series from the beginning.”
It’s a pretty-polite statement, but did you expect anything less? It’s clear that they just want to move forward from Marvel and develop more of their own properties that don’t have any sort of complications from Disney now being a streaming competitor. Netflix hasn’t really faced a lot of tough questioning about this yet, and we wonder when that could actually happen.
What do you think about The Punisher and Jessica Jones being canceled at Netflix? Be sure to share right now in the comments. We’ll have more news on the subject as it becomes available. (Photo: Netflix.)