The Resident Evil Netflix series debuted earlier this year to almost universal panning. Now it will not see a conclusion to its cliff-hanger ending.
Netflix is notorious for canceling series for questionable reasons, but there’s few who would disagree with their decision, revealed today (August 26th), to cancel their Resident Evil adaptation. The news was revealed by film and television news site Deadline earlier today.
The cancellation marks the end of a brief but highly maligned run for Resident Evil. The show, which opted to drastically depart from the story of the Resident Evil games focused on the daughters of Albert Wesker, Jade and Billie. The show was lauded for its diverse and inspired casting. But highly criticized for the large amount of differences between the show and its source material.
What’s more, many criticized the fact that Netflix already had several perfectly serviceable Resident Evil adaptations on their platform. These include the Milla Jovovich headed movies and Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness. This entry into the Resident Evil universe just didn’t cut the mustard for fans though. Ultimately, the show floundered with low viewership before being cancelled today.
One Resident Evil adaptation too far?
When the platform has numerous highly successful video game adaptations, such as Castlevania, Arcane, and most recently, Tekken: Bloodline, Resident Evil seemed like a safe bet. But changing so much about the core premise clearly rubbed many the wrong way.
At the end of the day, the Resident Evil netflix series was a perfectly fine piece of television—it just shouldn’t have been called Resident Evil. It’s also unknown whether the show would have stood on its own merit without the Resident Evil name behind it. Either way, we’ll never know, as the series is no more for now.