Cancelled Heroes: Coming one week after the cancellation of Iron Fist, Netflix and Marvel have announced the demise of another hero as Luke Cage will not continue for a third season. This comes shortly after Netflix claimed that it was “super happy” with its remaining Marvel shows in its quarterly earnings call. The reason given for the cancellation was “due to creative differences and the inability to agree to terms for a third season of the show”, and there has been no indication that Luke Cage may stick around and show up on the other Marvel shows like Daredevil and Jessica Jones. I had previously thought that Iron Fist might be rolled into Luke Cage’s show because the two teamed up in the comics for a long run. But it appears that won’t be happening now as both heroes are on the outs with Netflix. This would also appear to kill the chances of a second season of The Defenders with the original Netflix line-up. Disney currently plans to take all of its Marvel movies over to its new streaming service which will launch in 2019, and its possible that Luke Cage and Iron Fist could shift to that platform as well. But there are no solid plans that we know of at this point for that happening. The Luke Cage series performed well for Netflix from what little viewership data I saw, though Iron First had a more modest following and particularly bad reviews for its first season. There is currently a petition to bring back Iron Fist which is approaching 30K signatures as of this writing, and another petition was launched this weekend to save Luke Cage that already has over three thousand signatures.
Full Season Order: CBS announced on Friday that its fantasy series God Friended Me has received a full season pickup. This modernized take on the Touched by an Angel concept debuted this Fall on Sundays and has drawn decent viewership on a night where CBS usually struggles. Its rating in the 18-49 demographic have been on the moderate side, but it has placed in the Top 25 based on total viewers each week so far this season. Older-skewing CBS tends to pay more attention to the total viewers stats, so I am sure they like the numbers they are seeing so far, especially on such a competitive night. Last year, ABC’s similarly themed Kevin (Probably) Saves the World failed to draw enough viewers to earn it a second season. But the CBS audience seems to be more receptive to this type of show and that network managed to get nine seasons out of Touched by and Angel which ran from 1993 to 2004. God Friended Me is executive produced by Greg Berlanti who has shepherded the DC superhero shows over on The CW which is co-owned by CBS.
The Fall season is just getting started so expect more updates and announcements to be made over the next month or so. Plus, there are still several Summer and Spring shows that we are waiting to hear word on such as Humans, Into the Badlands, and Reverie. Be sure to stay tuned to this site and the Cancelled Sci Fi Twitter Site for breaking news as well as the latest ratings results.
