The average television viewer or general public might not be aware of the magnitude of creating an entire television episode, let alone a complete season or series. It’s why great shows continue to be created year after year, with many Hollywood stars doing their best to provide great content for their viewers. But even with so many people trying to contribute and create something astounding, there are always speed-bumps and dead-ends that the creators might run into, causing the show to end sooner than expected and well before fans are ready to say goodbye.
Succession, HBO’s hit series about a family of billionaires and the ever-looming question of who will take over the family business/fortune, is one such show and recently announced that they’d be calling it quits after the upcoming fourth season. According to reports, the creator of the series felt that the fourth season was the right time to end the show. He didn’t want the show to drag on and become boring. Although some, including the show’s creator insist that the fourth season is the rightful ending, there’s always debate among fans about what the next season will bring. They want more content for their favorite shows. So, with Succession deciding to hang it up after the fourth season, it raises the question – what other television series ended sooner than fans were hoping for?
Daredevil, The Punisher, Other Marvel Shows
While critics can claim that the MCU has lost it’s touch over the past few years with the insistence on churning out new movies and shows at a rapid pace, it doesn’t come anywhere close to their greatest sin – cancelling several beloved shows they already had out in order to make way for the new ones on Disney+. Although copyright issues for television are a nightmare and the creatives/higher ups weren’t able to influence the decision, it was a difficult decision. Nevertheless, the choice to cancel shows like Netflix’s Daredevil and The Punisher was one that fans just couldn’t take on the chin, especially considereing the poor reception that recent MCU shows have gotten on Disney+.
Luckily, these particular shows were so popular (and the latest ones have been such a disappointment) that Marvel got the message from it’s fans and ordered a revival of the Daredevil show with an 18-episode season set to hit Disney+ next year. There is no word yet on whether shows like The Punisher and Agent Carter will be reworked into the larger MCU. But at least fans can just rejoice knowing that at least one unjust cancellation has been reversed.
Freaks and Geeks
Never has there been a more popular cult-classic television show than Freaks and Geeks, especially considering it only lasted for one season. Judd Apatow created the sitcom about a group misfit high school students. It featured a cast that was a bunch of nobodies at the time. Nearly every actor on the show became an A and B-list talent, and nearly all of them went on to stardom in Hollywood. The cast included Busy Phillips and Linda Cardellini as well as Busy Phillips, James Franco and Lizzy Caplan. Rashida Jones was also part of the cast. It aired at a time when soap-opera-esque teen shows were in vogue and the satirical comedy that was used in the one-season made fun of them. While the show has a ridiculously loyal fanbase to this day, it’s a shame that audiences never got to enjoy more of it.
The Class
Speaking of cult-classic, one-season comedies with a cast that wasn’t appreciated until after its time,
The Class is another comedy that was ridiculously underrated. The show aired in the early 2000s. Although the premise was not as relatable and believable as Freaks or Geeks10, it featured a group of ex-colleagues reuniting after nearly 20 years and then (somehow), having their lives intertwined from thereon. That said, the comedic gold of the characters interacting with one another was something that hadn’t been seen for such a large core cast in a live-audience sitcom before.However, it wasn’t all that surprising how the cast had such chemistry with one another because, just like
Freaks and Geeks, the show had several cast members that were relatively unknown at the time and went on to be household names. Jesse-Tyler Ferguson and Jon Bernthal were all cast members on the show. However, the show was cancelled after only one season. This was the same reason why James Cameron, one of the most prominent dark sci-fi directors, created Dark Angel
. The director of Aliens, The Terminator and Avatar is well-known. However, James Cameron tried his hand at television in 2000. The series
Dark Angel was created by Cameron. It was a futuristic series about a super soldier with genetically enhanced capabilities.10 Despite the intriguing premise and an Oscar-winning creator like Jessica Alba, the show was cancelled in its second season. Cameron was informed that the show would be renewed on Saturday. This caused him and his crew to celebrate the weekend, only to be called on Monday to learn that there had been a mistake and that the show had been cancelled. Even for an Oscar-winner, Cameron admitted that he was livid with the decision.
Firefly
You know what’s worse than being cancelled? A show that would become a cult-classic would be replaced by one that would also be cancelled. Yes, it’s true that
Dark Angel actually got the boot in order to make room for Firefly, a series set five-hundred years in the future following a small crew aboard a spacecraft as they tried to traverse the galaxy, that became one of the biggest cult-classic tv shows of all time. The sci-fi premise combined with a cast that included actors like Nathan Fillion, Gina Torress, Alan Tudyk, Morena Baccarin, Summer Glau, and many more created a show that fans were so thrilled with that they completely forgot about how much they missed Dark Angel.Unfortunately, the premise, A-list cast, and writing was simply before it’s time (just like
Dark Angel) and the amount of money necessary to create the show didn’t justify the studio keeping it around. Joss Whedon created the series, but despite loyal fans holding on to it, the show was eventually cancelled. Although it is an animated kids show, Jimmy Neutron
was a more creative show. The series was about a young boy who happens be the smartest person in the world. He had so many creative ideas and his hilarious group of friends that it was a one-two punch that everyone laughed. The inventions that Jimmy would come up with and the hijinks that he and his lovable band of friends would get into created a one-two imaginative combo that had children and adults laughing with merriment.
Unfortunately, the show aired on Nickelodeon amongst other hit animated kids shows like Spongebob Squarepants and The Fairly Oddparents, and despite the show having its own feature film, the premise was just too advanced and ahead of its time to get the massive amount of seasons that Spongebob or The Fairly Oddparents attained.GlowTo be honest, we tried to keep as many shows that were cancelled by complications from the Covid-pandemic off this list as possible because such a list would be a mile long, but this one stung a little bit more than the rest.
Glow
10 was a Netflix series that followed the lives and struggles of professional female wrestlers from the 1980s. The series starred Alison Brie, and it had already produced three seasons worth of some of Netflix’s best original programming.
Despite a large fan base, a premise that could easily have continued for many more years, and three solid seasons, Glow10 was eventually cancelled due to complications from pandemic. The rest of these shows were not appreciated until later, but
Glow10 was the only one that was truly appreciated during its run and was astonished when it was finally cancelled.
