Matson Tomlin, the creator and showrunner for Netflix’s Terminator Zero series, shared that the show was canceled after a single season due to poor viewership.
In a post to X, Tomlin not only confirmed the series was canceled, but that it was canceled because of low viewership.
He wrote, “It was cancelled. The critical and audience reception to it was tremendous, but at the end of the day not nearly enough people watched it.”
“I would’ve loved to deliver on the Future War I had planned in season’s 2 and 3, but I’m also very happy with how it feels contained as is,” he concluded.
In a follow-up post he elaborated revealing that the show’s cost did not match up with the viewership numbers.
He wrote, “Netflix was really great about supporting the show and giving me tremendous creative freedom to do what I wanted to do. Good partners. The show was expensive and very time consuming. The only way they could justify it was if the audience showed up for it, and they just didn’t.”
Additionally, he shared that he declined an offer to wrap up the show in 2 to 3 more episodes.
“I’ll also say they offered to let me do 2, maybe 3 episodes more to wrap up the story, which I declined,” he said. “I felt the story I wanted to tell was much longer, and the finale of season one actually left things in a good place. But they didn’t have to offer that. Good partners here.”
On the the week of the show’s release back in August 2024 it charts on Netflix’s Top 10 Non-English shows with 1.7 million views and 6.4 million hours viewed.
It added another 1.3 million views and 5.1 million hours watched the next week.
It fell off the chart three weeks after its debut. On Netflix’s What We Watched 2024 Engagement Report, the show had a total of 4.8 million views and 18.2 million hours watched. It was the 12th most watched anime and the 413th most watched program overall on Netflix from July to December 2024.
The series only garnered 800,000 views and 3.1 million hours watched through all of 2025.
Tomlin also defended Netflix when one individual claimed that streamer didn’t do enough to market the show.
“At the end of the day, you can’t reach everyone,” Tomlin explained. “We did big, in-person premier events in NY and LA, a pretty robust press junket for an animated series, and it lived on the front page of Netflix for 2+ weeks. I feel like NF did right by the series…”
While the show has been canceled, Tomlin did indicate he’d like to return to the franchise, but shared it would be “a live action, lower budget full-fledged horror movie.”
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I’ve never heard of that show. I guess that’s part of the problem.
I think Terminator has been done to death at this point. There is nothing new to say and each iteration only makes what came before it worth less. Are there no new original ideas worth exploring?