Netflix heard the phrase “bury your gays” and took that literally, as evidenced by the streamer’s cancellation of lesbian vampire romance series First Kill after only one season, despite its apparent popularity among viewers.
The eight-episode show followed the Shakespearean tragedy-esque duo of Juliette (Sarah Catherine Hook) and Calliope (Imani Lewis), heirs to a vampire family and a family of vampire hunters, respectively. The two teen girls are both encouraged to make their first kills, but find themselves falling in love with each other instead.
In classic Netflix fashion, the first season ended with a bunch of cliffhangers, which viewers will now never see resolved unless the show is picked up by another network or streamer. The ultimate fate of Netflix shows is typically decided by weighing viewership against cost, and First Kill reportedly did not meet thresholds for viewing and completion of episodes, according to sources who spoke with entertainment site Deadline.
But in that same article, the entertainment publication reported that within three days of the series’ release, First Kill broke into the Top 10 for English-language TV series. In its first week of release, it peaked at number three in that category, with nearly 50 million hours viewed, and Deadline stated that it “easily cleared 100 million hours viewed in its first 28 days of release.”
The numbers justification makes even less sense when comparing First Kill’s streaming figures to those of Heartstopper, the gay Netflix teen rom-com series based on the webcomic by Alice Oseman. First Kill racked up over 97 million viewing hours while in the top 10, whereas Heartstopper garnered about 53 million viewing hours, according to Netflix data. And yet, Heartstopper was renewed for not just one, but two more seasons, mere weeks after its initial release. While we love that for Nick and Charlie, Netflix’s justification to cancel the show based on viewership doesn’t really add up when you consider that First Kill had double the views as Heartstopper.
Series creator V.E. Schwab, who uses both she and they pronouns, shared her feelings in an Instagram post on Tuesday writing that the day she found out that her first TV project was being picked up “was one of the best days of my life.”
