Why Dead Boy Detectives was cancelled (why season 2 isn't happening)

Dead Boy Detectives fans were distraught to learn that Netflix had chosen not to renew their beloved show for a second season. It's not surprising, as the streamer has developed a bit of a reputation for cancelling promising young adult supernatural dramas, but it is still incredibly disheartening considering there aren't that many YA dramas on television anymore - and that the show is brilliant.

The series focused on ghosts Edwin Payne and Charles Rowland, who bonded in the afterlife and, instead of going with Death to receive their fates, decided to stay on Earth and help other ghosts solve their mysteries and find peace. Edwin, in particular, wasn't keen to go with Death, as he had already spent 70 years in Hell based on a technicality and refused to go back there after managing an unlikely escape.

Audiences loved Edwin and Charles, and the team they formed with Crystal Palace and Niko Sasaki (and eventually Jenny Green and Night Nurse), but the adventures for the Dead Boy Detectives Agency will have to continue off-screen after the show's untimely - and, quite frankly, unjust - cancellation.

Dead Boy Detectives' viewership declined after a strong opening performance

TV networks and streaming services rarely provide reasoning for cancelling their projects, but it's pretty clear that Dead Boy Detectives was axed prematurely due to its ratings - or, as we say on streaming services: Performance.

The show opened well for the streamer, landing in the No. 2 spot on the Netflix Global Top 10, debuting with 3.1 million viewers in its first four days of release, along with 22 million watch hours. It fell to No. 3 in its second week but actually increased in both viewership and watch hours (which rose to 4.3 million viewers and 34 million watch hours), boasting a pretty impressive completion rate. Unfortunately, in its third week, it had a sharp decline to No. 7, averaging just 1.8 million viewers and 13 million watch hours. By the fourth week, it had fallen out of the Top 10.

That performance is pretty solid all-things considered, especially as Dead Boy Detectives is actually based on a lesser-known DC Comics series that many didn't even know was happening until the month before its release. The issue was that the show got caught up in the global domination of Baby Reindeer, which unexpectedly turned into one of Netflix's biggest hits of all time.

The Netflix algorithm reportedly kept recommending the show to the platform's subscribers, which turned it into a phenomenon very, very quickly. That, in many ways, overshadowed any release on the streamer for the rest of the month of April and well into the month of May. And that unfortunately means that Dead Boy Detectives was just released at the wrong time, and it would have stood a much better chance of picking up extra viewers if it wasn't overshadowed by Baby Reindeer or the algorithm was simply kinder to it.

Its cancellation is another example of the issues with the streaming format

Dead Boy Detectives' cancellation represents a wider problem with the streaming medium and the way that Netflix measures data. As the streamer tends to measure the success of a show based on its first month of performance, it means that very few shows ever get the chance to grow an audience. As history has taught all of us, some shows find their audiences later into the run or just build up a devoted fanbase as they go on. One month of existence isn't enough for that to happen.

It also highlights the issue of the expectations placed on a show as there doesn't appear to be room for consistent performers or smaller shows that could build up an audience over time. Not every show can have a Stranger Things or Baby Reindeer explosion onto the scene, and this format consistently places those ridiculously high expectations on them. It's okay to have your high performers and your consistent performers; there is room for both.

Dead Boy Detectives has built up a devoted legion of fans in the months since its debut who were devastated to hear that the show had been cancelled. It's understandable why, too, as the series had become a "little-show-that-could", defying the odds on multiple occasions.

It was originally planned for streaming service Max as it was spun out of a Doom Patrol episode, but after James Gunn and Peter Safran took over at DC Studios and Warner Bros. Discovery culled all of the DC TV shows in production, it was saved by Netflix and repackaged as a spinoff of The Sandman. Fans continued to fight for it after it premiered, organizing watch parties and streaming sessions in a bid to ensure that Netflix renewed it for a second season. Now that its fate has been revealed by the streamer, they are still mobilizing, organizing campaigns in a bid to save it.

The first season ended on a mostly satisfying note but there were one or two major plot threads left hanging that would have come into play in the second season and beyond.

Needless to say, Dead Boy Detectives deserved so much better.