Unpopular game tie-in will not return for a second season.
Resident Evil, the drama inspired on the long-running gaming zombie phenomenon, was canceled after eight episodes just 44 days after it made its Netflix premiere, according to Deadline(opens in new tab).
As far as Netflix cancellations go, this one shouldn’t be all that shocking considering the show didn’t succeed in garnering either critical praise or dominating the list of most streamed shows. According to Deadline, the show’s promising beginning quickly faded out, and by its third week, it had fallen outside the top ten on the platform.
Nor did the reviews show signs of a sleeper hit in the making. While the critics at Rotten Tomatoes(opens in new tab) were pretty evenly divided with 55% finding it ‘fresh’, the audience score is far more clear: a damning 27% rating from nearly 3,000 reviews.
For what it’s worth, our own senior editor Henry T. Casey was one of the positive voices, describing it as “like a Fast & Furious movie, in a good way,” praising the “entertaining storytelling” and “utter hilariousness of the dialogue.”
Kayla Cobb at Decider(opens in new tab) was also a fan. “Packed with humor, heart, and some of the coolest action scenes of the year, it’s a show that will leave you alternatively screaming at and cheering for your television,” she wrote.
But others were harsher. “It’s a show that’s “light on action and gore, and heavy on cliches,” according to The Daily Beast(opens in new tab). “Consider this another failed Umbrella experiment,” writes Brian Tallerico at RogerEbert.com(opens in new tab).
Part of the problem is the challenge of making a much-loved gaming franchise both authentic for existing fans, and accessible to those who have never even picked up a gamepad in their lives. “For those unfamiliar with the fabled video game series, this will feel like little more than a muddled, and somewhat tacky, zombie serial, saddled with the baggage of pre-existing lore,” laments Nick Hilton at The Independent(opens in new tab).
The show was split between the start of the apocalypse in 2022 and the 2036 present where the consequences are felt. It followed Jade Wesker (Ella Balinska) as she fought for survival in the new world, dogged by both her father’s connections to the shady Umbrella Corporation and her twin sister’s fate.
With two distinct plotlines separated by 14 years, it means that the show ends with not one, but two different sets of cliffhangers unsettled. Unfortunately, with Netflix cancellations for 2022 well into double figures, this is just an occupational hazard of starting any new show: there’s a good chance you’ll never get the satisfying resolution you want.