The series has been officially canceled by Netflix after only one season, despite the long-term plans the creators had envisioned for the series. The cancellation of the series has been confirmed by the showrunner, Mattson Tomlin, who revealed that the low viewership numbers were the primary reason the series was canceled by the streaming service. “Netflix was really great about supporting the show and giving me tremendous creative freedom to do what I wanted to do. Good partners. The show was expensive and very time consuming. The only way they could justify it was if the audience showed up for it, and they just didn’t,” Tomlin said candidly about the cancellation of the series on his X handle.
The animated sci-fi series had long-term plans of running for five seasons, but the low viewership numbers were not enough to justify the high production costs of the series.
Netflix canceled after one season due to low viewership
“Hundreds of people worked on the show, dozens I worked with very directly. The folks at Netflix’s marketing team really gave a f— and were so receptive to my ideas and trying to really make the show work. We all did our best, and I’m so appreciative I got captain the ship.“
The creator of the series, Tomlin, revealed that he had already written the second season of the series and had plans for the third season as well. The series finale of Terminator Zero had special meaning to Tomlin, as it was part of the larger five-season plan the creator had envisioned for the series from the very start.
Netflix has made a surprise offer to the creator of the series to produce two or three more episodes of the series to conclude the series, but Tomlin has declined the offer.
“I’ll also say they offered to let me do 2, maybe 3 episodes more to wrap up the story, which I declined. I felt the story I wanted to tell was much longer,” he explained. “The finale of season one actually left things in a good place. But they didn’t have to offer that. Good partners here.”
Tomlin stressed again and again how he felt supported by Netflix during the show’s creation, praising the streaming service’s executives and marketing team for their support. He also highlighted the in-person premieres in New York and Los Angeles, the large-scale press efforts, and the placement on the service’s homepage for over two weeks.
“Netflix is a company, but it’s made up of people. My exec, Dylan Thomas, and I became real-life friends; we went to Japan together, he worked so hard to protect my vision and help me make the show great. He was gutted that it was canceled. We were all in it together.”
The show, however, also faced an unusual problem in trying to bring two generations together. Tomlin explained that, generally, anime fans are younger, while fans of the Terminator movies are older. The show tried to bring these fans together, or at least “meet in the middle,” but ultimately did not achieve this.
Though the show is ending, Tomlin expressed his thanks to the hundreds of people involved in the show’s creation and the fans who supported the show. “Maybe I will return to that world in a different form. I really do love it, and it was extremely gratifying to see so many people connect with it the way they did,” he said, also expressing his hope that he could go back to the Terminator universe someday.
For now, though, the show will end with only one chapter.
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