‘Warrior Nun,’ Canceled By Netflix, Will Try To Find A New Home For Season 3

Yesterday, it was announced that Netflix cancelled Warrior Nun, its fantasy series that is much better than its name might suggest, and it has the critic and all-time high audience scores to match.

While no reason was given for the cancellation, it’s Netflix, so unless you’re producing some giant sweeping megahit, you’re lucky to even get to two seasons, much less a third, so this was not a huge surprise. That said, the news has devastated Warrior Nun’s passionate fanbase, and naturally a #SaveWarriorNun campaign has begun.

At the head of that campaign is the showrunner of the series himself, Simon Barry. In addition to thanking fans and the cast for their support yesterday, Barry retweeted my own highly critical article about Netflix’s cancelation decision, and a Paste article that called it “another low point for Netflix.”

But perhaps most importantly, Barry confirmed he will try to save the series by taking it elsewhere:

Years ago, Netflix used to be the place to take canceled TV shows and bring them back to life. These days, that still happens, but only rarely, like we saw with Netflix bringing back Manifest after a fan campaign that kept it on top of Netflix’s viewership charts for weeks, the only language they understand. It doesn’t seem like Warrior Nun would be able to replicate that strategy and get Netflix to change their mind.

So, would another streaming service pick up Warrior Nun? There are positives to the idea, of course. First, it’s a great series with a stellar cast and would be a great addition to the streaming catalogue of any service. Second, it comes with a built-in fanbase that would herald your service as its “savior” (no nun puns intended). Positive press, a good series.

And yet, unfortunately I have to be pretty skeptical about this happening. In Netflix’s long, long list of killed-off YA and teen-based shows I keep adding names to, exactly zero of those have ever been saved by moving elsewhere. This simply almost never happens.

Additionally, we are now moving into an era of budget cuts and price hikes for streaming services. HBO Max is laden with so much WB Discovery debt it’s not just cancelling shows, it’s pulling them off the service entirely so they don’t have to pay residuals. And we’re seeing cutbacks across essentially all of the big services to some extent. The “best” hope could be places like Amazon Prime Video or Apple TV Plus where those tech companies have had more money than god, and something like Warrior Nun would be 1% of Amazon’s Lord of the Rings budget. But even those companies are not immune to a recent tech downturn.

What I’m saying is that while it’s okay to hope, don’t get those hopes…too high. It’s not impossible Warrior Nun could be saved by being shopped elsewhere, but it’s not terribly likely either.

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