The Midnight Club – Cr. Eike Schroter/Netflix © 2022
The Midnight Club, Mike Flanagan’s latest Netflix Original horror series was the first that could’ve gotten a season 2 as part of his deal. However, it’s been confirmed that Netflix has opted not to renew the show for a second season.
The Midnight Club is a Netflix Original teen-horror series created by Mike Flanagan and the adaptation of the novel of the same by Christopher Pike. The series is the fourth Netflix Original series by Mike Flanagan and his sixth project for Netflix overall.
Over the past several years, Mike Flanagan has been one of Netflix’s best content creators, starting with and every year, subscribers look forward to his latest endeavor in the horror genre.
A group of terminally ill teenage patients resides at Rotterdam Home, and together they create the Midnight Club. They meet in secret at midnight to tell horror stories. Together the group forms a pact that whoever dies first would make the effort to contact the rest of the Midnight Club members from beyond the grave.
The Midnight Club season 2 Netflix renewal status
Has the show been renewed or canceled?
Official Netflix Renewal Status: Canceled
Of the four Mike Flanagan shows made for Netflix, this is the first that we expect to see a second season, which the creator has already confirmed they were looking to do throughout several seasons.
Almost two months after its initial release, The Wrap confirmed that Netflix had not renewed the series citing poor performance (more on this in a second).
It came on the same day that Mike Flanagan and Trevor Macy (who had been working with Netflix under an overall deal) had shifted over to Prime Video (via Amazon Studios), moving forward with their last project for Netflix being The Fall of the House of Usher.
Mike Flanagan directing on the set of The Midnight Club
The Fall of the House of Usher is now in post-production and is expected to be released on Netflix sometime in 2023 and will conclude Flanagan’s output in the so-called Flanaverse on Netflix.
How well did The Midnight Club perform on Netflix?
A renewal will almost certainly come down to performance on the streamer so let’s dive through that now.
The show had one of the weakest first weekends on Netflix that we’ve noted for quite some time. In the official data from Netflix, it only scored 18.79M hours watched globally.
If we compare it to other dramas in 2022, here’s how that stacks up:
- The Lincoln Lawyer – First three days: 45.09M
- The Sandman – First three days: 69.48M
- Partner Track – First three days: 16.66M
Its performance in its first weekend was so bad in our top 10 report for the week ending October 9th, we called it a flop, citing that it had a poorer CVE (Complete Viewings Equivalent) than Dive Club, Partner Track, Archive 81 but did beat Brand New Cherry Flavor and Cowboy Bebop.
The Midnight Club vs other launches in 2022
The show featured for three weeks in Netflix’s top 10s before dropping out entirely. Between October 2nd and October 23rd, 2022, the show clocked 90.31 million hours viewed on Netflix.
Critically, however, we saw The Midnight Mass face a nearly 60% drop in viewership in weeks 2 to 3. That kind of drop has often spelled failure for any now-canceled Netflix Original.
| Week Period | Hours Viewed(M) | Rank | Week in Top 10 |
|---|---|---|---|
| October 2nd, 2022 to October 9th, 2022 | 18,790,000 | 4 | 1 |
| October 9th, 2022 to October 16th, 2022 | 49,870,000 (+165%) | 3 | 2 |
| October 16th, 2022 to October 23rd, 2022 | 21,650,000 (-57%) | 5 | 3 |
Netflix Top 10s provided by FlixPatrol does suggest that in week 2, we saw a big jump in viewership but, like the viewing hours, dropped off dramatically in week 3.
On day 1, the show only managed to get to be the 18th most popular title on the service. On day 2, it rose to rank 5. On day 3, rank 4 and day 4 (which would’ve been outside the metric above), it hit position 2.
Looking at external data, The Midnight Club was the weakest-performing Flanagan show thus far.
Google Trends states that it only managed to garner 34% of the total demand that Midnight Mass demanded only a year prior.
Google Trends for Mike Flanagan’s shows on Netflix
Demand tool, TelevisionStats.com, also paints a gloomy picture, with the show peaking as the number 6 biggest show in the world in early October 2022 but having since plummeted. It pulls data from Google Trends, Wikipedia, Twitter, Reddit and other sources.
What we expected from another season of The Midnight Club at Netflix
The first season’s ending left us with a major cliffhanger, revealing that Doctor Stanton is not only a survivor, but the tattoo on her neck means she is a former member of the Paragon.
We would expect to see Doctor Stanton’s backstory fleshed out in full, revealing the origins of her illness, how she joined the Paragon, how she came to leave the group, why she is at odds with Shasta aka Julia Jayne, and whether or not her motives for running Brightcliffe are well-intentioned or sinister.
How much is Doctor Stanton hiding from The Midnight Club?
As for Ilonka and Kevin, they are the only two current members of the Midnight Club who can see the ghost couple of Brightcliff. Little is known about the pair, however, the end of the first season may have revealed that they are in fact Stanley Oscar Freelan and Vera Freelan, Brightcliff’s original owners. But why are Ilonka and Kevin able to see them? And, is Keving being possessed at night, forcing him to wander the halls of Brightcliff?
Star-crossed lovers Ilanka and Kevin are haunted by the ghosts of Brightcliff
Shasta, aka Julia Jayne, failed in her attempt to conduct the ritual in the basement, almost killing three young women in the process. Considering how determined Shasta is to conduct the ritual, we definitely haven’t seen the last of her.
What does Shasta aka Julia Jayne have planned for Brightcliff?
Lastly, a second season also begs the question of how long the remaining members of The Midnight Club have to live. And whether or not we expect new members to be inducted into the club.
With the series canceled, these scenarios will not be playing out on our screens.
Flanagan, however, has teased that we may get closure via Twitter.
Speaking to The Wrap, Flanagan told them “I promised everybody at Comic-Con yesterday that I’d put up all the all the answers to the central mysteries on Twitter, which I will honor,” adding “we made the decision in the writers room not to reveal two of our kind of bigger existential secrets of the show so that we’d have something to say in the second season.”
Would you like to see a second season of The Midnight Club on Netflix? Let us know in the comments below!