Netflix is many different things to many different people. To some, it's the home of gripping original series. To others, it's the perfect laundry-folding service, offering harmless entertainment and light reality shows to put on in the background. But to select TV fans, Netflix is the home for second chances.
As Netflix grew in stature and influence, the streamer needed more content to fill its servers. So it took, and took again, to previously canceled network and cable shows: shows that often had
an impassioned but small cult audience. Netflix reunited the main cast and creative team of each show, to try and relight the fire it originally had and provide closure its fans desperately needed. Some experiments were successful. Others, less so. But all are worth talking about in the history of Netflix as a medium disruptor.
Here, then, are 10 TV shows Netflix saved from cancellation. Is your favorite on the list?
Read more: 5 Banned South Park Episodes You Can't Watch On Max
Arrested Development
As we are reminded at the top of every episode, "Arrested Development" is the story of a wealthy family who lost everything and the one son (Jason Bateman) who had no choice but to keep them all together. Its original run on Fox from 2003 to 2006 secured it a spot as one of the most acclaimed and influential comedies of the 21st century. But it could never rise above the ratings threshold the network was looking for, and "Arrested Development" got canceled after its third season.
The show then gained more and more of a following thanks to DVD sales, reruns, and especially streaming on Netflix. And finally, in 2013, Netflix released a revived fourth season, effectively un-canceling the show.
This season was marred by some logistical roadblocks, with some actors very obviously green-screened in to ensemble scenes. It also took a bold, formal experiment with its use of non-linear storytelling (an experiment met with such disdain that the whole season was re-edited in a more traditional format six years later). A fifth season was ordered and released by Netflix from 2018-2019, but it's probably for the best that it ended there.
Cobra Kai
New media busted up the traditional television and media landscape in ways we're still struggling to understand. And in the earliest days of this busting-up, YouTube Red (now called YouTube Premium) took a stab at greenlighting and producing TV-ready content.
Enter "Cobra Kai," a martial arts dramedy spun off from "The Karate Kid" and featuring two of that franchise's original cast members (Ralph Macchio and William Zabka) reckoning with their past and present as they train new students in their rival dojos (and have some dope fight scenes along the way). YouTube aired two seasons on its premium service, but then told the series creators they were only interested in one more season, as YouTube was shifting away from scripted content.
Instead of taking this cancellation lying down, the creators struck a deal with Netflix, taking the third season -- and three more seasons beyond that -- to the juggernaut streaming service. "Cobra Kai" became a critical and audience hit for Netflix, garnering Emmy nominations and spurring interest in a new film revival, 2025's "Karate Kid: Legends".
Girls5eva
The trio of Tina Fey, Robert Carlock, and Meredith Scardino has given us some particularly daffy, fast-paced, and laugh-out-loud TV comedies in the form of "30 Rock" and "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt." In 2021, they struck again with Peacock series "Girls5Eva," a musical comedy starring Sara Bareilles, Busy Philipps, Paula Pell, and Renée Elise Goldsberry as a reunited girl group from the '90s given a surprising second chance at stardom.
The show was a perfect fit for Peacock, expanding the voice so expertly honed in "30 Rock" to include some more complicated and even darker material. So, naturally, it was canceled after two seasons. But Netflix had a history of picking up Fey/Carlock/Scardino shows discarded by the Peacock family; "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" began as an NBC sitcom before being sold to Netflix. So, Netflix ran it back, picking up "Girls5Eva" for its third season. Sadly, however, Netflix itself then axed the show right after. Why, Netflix, why?
The Killing
"The Killing" was a bit of a harbinger of our current, oversaturated market of "prestigious melancholy genre TV series." It wrote the playbook for how many of these shows now work, casting appealing stars (Mireille Enos and Joel Kinnaman) in a familiar format (the murder mystery police procedural) and presenting it with cinematic quality and a pointedly dark tone.
As with many things that are ahead of their time, the powers that be didn't quite know what to do with "The Killing." It was actually canceled multiple times; first, it got the ax from AMC after its second season. Then, after renegotiating a deal (which included some healthy streaming rights for Netflix), AMC gave it a third season -- then canceled it yet again.
Finally, Netflix swooped in and funded the damn thing itself, ordering a fourth and final climactic season of "The Killing" that aired in 2014. However, like some other Netflix revivals on this list, this final season earned some pretty mixed reviews.
Longmire
Another cult series that formed the mold for later trends to find success in, "Longmire" concerns Wyoming Sheriff Walt Longmire (Robert Taylor) as he, his colleagues, and his daughter Cady (Cassidy Freeman) solve crimes. I don't think we'd have gotten either the TV empires of "Yellowstone" or "Bosch" without "Longmire," a traditional neo-Western based on a literary detective, showing how it could be done.
The show began on A&E in 2012, and over three seasons, became the network's highest-rated original drama series of all time (take that, "Pride and Prejudice" miniseries from 1995 my mom was obsessed with). But despite these seemingly objective successes, and maybe because the network began primarily chasing the reality market, A&E canceled the show, leaving "Longmire" fans dangling on a big cliffhanger.
So Netflix came in and ordered a fourth season, ultimately giving the drama a total of six seasons before Walt Longmire hung up his spurs for good. But now, interestingly, the show isn't available on Netflix, instead being streamable on Paramount+. In other words, Netflix revived a canceled show before canceling it so hard that it doesn't exist on its platform anymore. Again, we ask Netflix: Why?!
Lucifer
A DC Comics adaptation that feels more "Buffy" than "Batman," "Lucifer" stars Tom Ellis as Lucifer Morningstar, who is literally the lord of Hell that we learned about in the Bible. When he gets tired of his duties and jumps up here to Earth (specifically, Los Angeles), Lucifer gets involved with LAPD Detective Chloe Decker (Lauren German) and starts helping the police solve increasingly supernatural crimes.
It's an absolute blast, "Lucifer," but never quite found its footing, either creatively or with a wide audience, in its original home on Fox (even after referencing Fox's beloved "Bones" in season 3). So in 2018, after three seasons, the network canceled it, unleashing a rabid fanbase hankering for more of this addictive genre-blending charmer.
Later that year, Netflix listened to, aided, and abetted these vocal demons, ordering a new season of "Lucifer" that aired in 2019. The series kept going on Netflix for two more seasons after that, giving us six seasons and 93 episodes in total.
Manifest
Another genre-blender, and one of many attempts to recapture the lightning-in-a-bottle cultural force that was "Lost," "Manifest" throws an impressive ensemble cast into an intriguing high concept. Five years ago, a plane went missing, and all of its passengers and crew were presumed dead. But now, everyone has suddenly come back. And as if reorienting themselves into society wasn't enough, they're now experiencing supernatural callings of future events that may or may not occur.
"Manifest" aired on NBC for three seasons, from 2018 to 2021, garnering a dedicated fanbase to its serialized brand of storytelling. But NBC no longer saw the business justification for the show, canceling "Manifest" after its season 3 cliffhanger (especially dangling since creator Jeff Rake pitched it with a six-season plan).
But right around the time of this cancellation, "Manifest" had started streaming on Netflix, and it became one of the most highly viewed TV shows on the service. So Netflix tapped into this sudden market and ordered a fourth season to conclude the series. If you're still looking for more in its zone, there are some other shows you can binge watch right now.
Star Trek: Prodigy
Created by children's entertainment gurus the Hageman Brothers ("Hotel Transylvania," "The Lego Movie"), "Star Trek: Prodigy" represented that ubiquitous franchise's first foray into family-friendly kids' content. The animated series starred Brett Gray as Dal R'El, an alien who discovers an abandoned Starfleet ship called the USS Protostar, and becomes its captain alongside his similarly eccentric friends.
The lovely series, skewed towards a new generation, got great reviews and a Children's and Family Emmy win for its first season, originally airing on Paramount+ from 2021 through 2022. But as the cast and crew began work on a second season, Paramount+ pulled the plug, canceling "Prodigy" and removing it from the streaming service entirely.
And so, much like Dal R'El and his crew finding an abandoned ship and bringing it back to life, Netflix picked up "Star Trek: Prodigy" and ordered a second, similarly acclaimed season. But when viewership didn't rise to where the big N wanted, they canceled the show soon after.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars
To certain fans of "Star Wars," that behemoth of a multimedia science fiction franchise, the peak isn't "The Empire Strikes Back" or "The Mandalorian" or any live-action tale from a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. It's "Star Wars: The Clone Wars," an animated interquel series that tells the stories between "Episode II" and "III" of the prequel trilogy.
Dave Filoni's beloved animated saga features familiar characters Anakin Skywalker (Matt Lanter) and Obi-Wan Kenobi (James Arnold Taylor) teaming up with immediate fan-favorite Ahsoka Tano (Ashley Eckstein) as they attempt to defeat the powerful forces of Count Dooku (Corey Burton). It began airing, after a preliminary movie of the same name, on Cartoon Network in 2008. But despite increasing creative successes and high ratings, it was canceled after five seasons in 2013.
One year later, Netflix ordered and aired a sixth season, subtitled "The Lost Missions," intended to be the series' last. But then, as all things "Star Wars" migrated over to Disney+, the show got a surprise seventh and final season in 2020.
You
A serial killer lead character, a litany of upsetting psychosexual and violent content ... "You" seems custom-tailored for streaming services, where creators making shows like "You" are given more freedom to explore the edgier sides of their imagination.
How soon we forget that "You" actually began on Lifetime in 2018, introducing us to charming sociopath Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley), who obsessively stalks and has murderous fantasies about romantic targets on the network best known for ... original movies about charming sociopaths who obsessively stalk and have murderous fantasies about romantic targets. Okay, better fit than I thought.
Regardless, "You" was canceled by Lifetime after its first season, shifting over to Netflix, airing for four more seasons, and becoming a minor cultural phenomenon for the streaming service. For co-developer Greg Berlanti, this all felt in line with his original plan. As he told Entertainment Weekly, "it always felt like more of a binge show. We tried initially to sell it to Netflix at the very beginning and [Netflix's Chief Content Officer] Ted Sarandos has said as much that they wish they'd gotten it the first time."
I guess, much like Joe, Berlanti and his team kept their eyes on the prize until they got exactly what they wanted...
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Read the original article on SlashFilm.
