First Kill Showrunner Blames Netflix Marketing Strategy for Cancellation

Earlier this week, Netflix brought the ax down on yet another new series, cancelling First Kill after just one season. The series took place in a world of monster hunters and followed a teenage vampire who fell in love with a vampire hunter. Netflix didn’t see enough from the series to keep it going for a second season, but the showrunner thinks a big part of the problem came from Netflix’s own marketing strategy. 

According to showrunner Felicia D. Henderson, Netflix went all-in on only advertising one element of First Kill, billing it as a lesbian vampire series and nothing more. She argued that there were many more sides to the show, but Netflix only focused on one thing in the posters and trailers, ultimately keeping some people from tuning in.

“I so enthusiastically signed on to this show [because] it has something for everyone,” Henderson told the Daily Beast in a recent interview, “strong women leads, supernatural intrigue, an epic, Shakespearean battle between warring families, and a prominently featured Black family in the genre space, something Black viewers crave and a general audience needs to be treated to.”

“The art for the initial marketing was beautiful,” she continued. “I think I expected that to be the beginning and that the other equally compelling and important elements of the show – monsters vs. monster hunters, the battle between two powerful matriarchs, etc. – would eventually be promoted, and that didn’t happen.”

First Kill was a moderate success for Netflix, debuting as the third biggest show in its first week, behind only Stranger Things and Peaky Blinders. In its first month, First Kill had more than 100 million hours viewed. Unfortunately, the series didn’t have a very high completion rate, meaning that subscribers who started watching it didn’t always see it through to the end of the season.

“When I got the call to tell me they weren’t renewing the show because the completion rate wasn’t high enough, of course, I was very disappointed,” said Henderson. “What showrunner wouldn’t be? I’d been told a couple of weeks ago that they were hoping completion would get higher. I guess it didn’t.”

Were you disappointed to see First Kill cancelled at Netflix? Let us know in the comments!