‘The Midnight Club’ Cancelled After One Season!!

2022 has been an amazing year for horror both in film and on television. One of the best pieces of horror on the TV side of the equation was The Midnight Club from modern genre mastermind Mike Flanagan. Like the director’s other Netflix series, the Christopher Pike adaptation was critically praised across the board when it debuted on the streamer in early October. Given the shocking cliffhanger ending, there were hopes that the series would be picked up for a second season. However, patrons of The Midnight Club will be sad to know that Netflix has officially canceled the YA horror series after just one season.

Despite the great reviews, viewership was the series’ biggest issue according to a report from The Wrap. The Midnight Club only stayed in Netflix’s Top 10 charts for three weeks. It debuted at number 4 with 18.8 million hours viewed and peaked at number 3 in its second week before dropping back down to number 5 in its third week. Because of shows like The Watcher and Dahmer, The Midnight Club fell out of the Top 10 completely in its fourth week. This all led to Netflix feeling those numbers didn’t justify the cost of a second season.

However, there’s another elephant in the room that can’t be ignored when it comes to this situation. This cancellation comes just hours after it was announced that Flanagan, along with his partner Trevor Macy, had signed a new exclusive deal with Amazon Studios that will have the director’s Intrepid Pictures develop new projects that would stream only on Prime Video. Flanagan’s current deal with Netflix is coming to an end with next year’s The Fall of the House of Usher being the last series the filmmaker will be producing with the streamer. While it’s likely the final decision on this series was made weeks ago, it does feel like this Amazon news was the final nail in The Midnight Club‘s coffin.

That’s a real shame because, like all of Flanagan’s past masterpieces, The Midnight Club was such a fresh take on the horror genre. With Pike’s great material as its template, this was arguably the director’s biggest risk to date due to its subject matter. This was a YA horror series, but it had all the delicious trauma and horrifically brilliant imagery that fans have come to expect from Flanagan. This was a very intimately dark and scary story about facing death. The backdrop of a hospice lead to some truly frightening scenarios while, at the same time, it was a wonderfully heartfelt love letter to storytelling and the life-changing human connections that give us a newfound purpose from the simple act of communication. That’s what made this genre-bending horror campfire story so magical besides its wonderful young ensemble cast that was supported by horror legend Heather Langenkamp.

The last reason why the news is so disheartening for horror fans is that this was Flanagan’s first show that wasn’t limited. The Midnight Club was meant to be a multiple-season affair which became really apparent in the season finale. Fans were left dangling on the previously mentioned cliffhanger involving Langenkamp’s Dr.Stanton and her mysterious connection to the Paragon cult. When talking to Collider this past October, Flanagan said:

“This is the first time we’ve ever designed anything to be ongoing. And it’s strange, it’s a whole new vibe, because you want the season to wrap up and be satisfying. But you need to leave enough on the field that people might want to come back. So that negotiation is tricky. And you know, usually we’re done with the show, we can talk about it, it’s in the past. With this one, we have no idea if it’s going to come back or if we’re going to be doing more. So it’s all very kind of suspenseful for us, we get to experience the tension for a change. It’s fun.”

Flanagan also promised, “If we don’t get a second season, we are going to put it all over Twitter and everybody will be able to see what we had in mind.” That’s sadly the reality that horror fans now live in, but nothing says Flanagan can’t go back into the Pike well with his new streaming deal. The Midnight Club was the fourth series from Flanagan and Netflix after the major success of Hill House, Bly Manor, and Midnight Mass. While we wait for Flanagan’s last hurrah on the streamer with The Fall of the House of Usher, you can stream The Midnight Club on Netflix now.