Bonding, the dark comedy series that first premiered on Netflix back in April 2019 will not be returning for a third season on Netflix.
The mature comedy came from creator Rightor Doyle who wrote the series based on his own experience of becoming a bodyguard to a dominatrix. The series starred Zoe Levin, Brendan Scannell, Micah Stock, and Theo Stockman.
Naturally, with the themes of the show, the first season struck up controversy from multiple fronts. Most notably, the BDSM community didn’t take kindly to their portrayals in the series which was set to be addressed in season 2. However, controversy seems to only spur the show along and although we don’t have any stats, the series clearly pulled in enough viewership to justify a future season.
Season 2 was announced in January 2020 before eventually releasing a year later in January 2021. It joined without much fanfare this time around. Netflix didn’t promote the show through the show’s verified Twitter page beyond changing the bio after the release. The show’s Instagram page did receive some love before going dark on February 10th, 2021.
The second season trailer only managed to get around 250,000 views compared to the 1.7 million exhibited on the season 1 trailer. According to multiple sources, Netflix’s trailer viewership often then goes onto correlate with the show’s viewership.
Worse yet, Netflix’s top 10 feature which was introduced in March 2020, failed to register the show at all in the United States. That’s right, Bonding didn’t feature at all in the US top 10 even the day after the release which is when shows tend to have their biggest bump in viewership.
Netflix announced to Deadline that it had canceled Bonding in July 2021 alongside a number of other comedy series although Bonding was the only show that wasn’t family aimed to be canned.
There is good news however. Rightor Doyle is working on future Netflix projects as part of a new development deal.
Speaking personally for a moment. The first season was a true delight. It came seemingly out of nowhere and was in a format that was bingeable over the course of a few hours and wasted no time. At least for me, the same couldn’t be said about its second season.
We’ll keep this post updated with reaction from cast and crew as and when we get it.
Will you miss Bonding now it’s been confirmed it’s not returning for season 3? Let us know in the comments.