Netflix cancels the Resident Evil series after just one season

(Image credit: NEtflix)

Just over a month after the release of its debut season, the Netflix Resident Evil series starring Ella Balinska, Tamara Smart, and Lance Reddick has been cancelled.

News of the cancellation comes from Deadline, which said that the series did not perform particularly well. It debuted in second place on Netflix's top 10 with 72.7 million hours viewed (which sounds like an awful lot to me), but it didn't see a meaningful rise in week two, drawing 73.3 million hours viewed for a third-place finish, a sign that it was not getting a word-of-mouth bump. In week three, it fell out of the top ten entirely.

The Resident Evil series also performed poorly with critics and viewers. It's got a 55% critical rating at Rotten Tomatoes, and just a 27% average audience score.

It's an unfortunate conclusion to a series that—okay, I can't say it had promise, strictly speaking, but it did have Lance Reddick as the iconic villain Albert Wesker, and that's a pretty strong start in my book. The final trailer had a certain "generic zombie flick" vibe to it (although that giant spider was pretty awful) but that's not necessarily a bad thing if Netflix was looking to move meaningfully beyond the boundaries of the existing Resident Evil fanbase. I guess that's not happening now.

This was actually Netflix's second Resident Evil series, following Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness. It sucked too, but hasn't been formally cancelled yet.

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.