The newly released Netflix series First Kill has been canceled after the premiere of the first season, according to Deadline. The series was produced by Emma Roberts (American Horror Story) and took on the storyline of star-crossed lovers of a vampire and vampire hunter duo.
The main series characters were Sarah Catherine Hook (The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It) and Imami Lewis (Premature). Hook portrayed vampire Juliette, and Lewis was vampire hunter Calliope. From the release of the series on June 10th, 2022, the series began strong, ranking No. 7 to peaking at No. 3 on Netflix ratings, according to Deadline. Overall the first series accumulated 30.3M hours viewed until the series dropped out of the current rated Top 10 on Netflix.
According to Deadline, it has been hard for teen series to stay at fixed success rate. Netflix’s overall decision to cancel the show was due to First Kill not having the potential of being one of Netflix’s long-term hits. Since the network foresaw the series viewings depleting, it made sense to cancel the series since the production would cost more than the revenue made from the premieres of future seasons. Another teen series that has been canceled for similar reasons was Gordita Chronicles on HBO Max. The network has been trying to avoid the release of original teen programming because of the recent drop in viewership surrounding teen-based series, according to Deadline.
First Kill was based on a short story of the same name written by best-selling authors V.E Schwab (The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue) and Felicia D. Henderson (The Quad). Although this could have helped maintain the viewership of those loyal to Schwab and Henderson as authors, there was not enough interest in the series after the first few weeks it was released on Netflix.
Viewers of the series will interpret what they think will happen with Juliette and Callipoe’s love alongside their intertwined family drama.