Status: Cancelled
Aired: 2024, One Season Totaling 8 Episodes
Series Premiere: April 25, 2024
Network: Netflix
Starring: George Rexstrew, Jayden Revri, Kassius Nelson
Series Website: www.netflix.com
Description: Edwin and Charles are best friends, ghosts… and the best detectives on the Mortal plane. They will do anything to stick together – including escaping evil witches, Hell and Death herself. With the help of a clairvoyant named Crystal and her friend Niko, they are able to crack some of the mortal realm’s most mystifying paranormal cases. Netflix.com
Trailer:
You can see the current schedule of sci fi and fantasy shows at this link.
Why Was It Cancelled? This supernatural drama spent three weeks in the Netflix Top 10 but that proved not enough to reach the completion rate expected from an original on that service. That stat tracks the number of people who watch the entire season within a set period of time, and Netflix execs have been paying close attention to those numbers over the last few years. Other shows from the streamer that spent a similar amount of time in the Top 10 but also suffered the same fate include Fate: The Winx Saga, The Imperfects, and The Midnight Club. The average viewership per week for Dead Boy Detectives was on the low side compared to other genre entries on Netflix during the 2023-24 season. But the show is tied to the same universe as The Sandman, so I was thinking that might help keep it going. And, it did score well with critics and viewers, currently holding a 92% Fresh Rating and 90% Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Showrunners Steve Yockey and Beth Schwartz had plans for a second season with the latter commenting in an interview with Deadline on what direction she saw it going (SPOILER ALERT):
Now that [Crystal] has all her memories back, and they’re going back to London, and she’s going to have to face her family, I think her biggest fear is going to be, ‘Am I going to return to this old person that that I don’t like [and] that other people didn’t seem to like very much? Are my new friends going to dislike me because of it?’ So I think there’s so much territory to be played there. If we do get to Season 2, how her parents would react to the new Crystal, the one who’s been working for the detective agency, and has been changed by meeting this group?
Yockey also said that while the show would continue with its season arcs, it would also keep up with the case-of-the-week stories. But with the cancellation, it looks like that may not happen. Fans are staging a Call to Action to save the show, and you can follow the progress of that and find out how to help at their campaign page.
You can keep up with the renewal/cancellation status of this and all the current sci fi and fantasy shows at our Cancellation Watch Page.
