Our Flag Means Death’s Cancellation Is the Latest in a Long Line of Streaming Tragedies

Warning: The following article about how Our Flag Means Death‘s cancellation is the latest in a long line of streaming tragedies contains spoilers.

In 2019, a woman named Emperial Young staged a hunger strike outside of Netflix’s offices in response to the streamer’s cancellation of The OA. Though her actions were seen as hyperbolic to most, anyone who has ever deeply loved or connected with a television narrative that was cut short can probably empathize with her to a degree. I’m certainly reminded of her in the wake of Our Flag Means Death’s cancellation.

Where to start? So much of it has been said already, particularly when it comes to the exhaustive cycle of queer audiences having to fight tooth and nail to keep their stories on screen. Netflix retains a seemingly bottomless capability to dispose of queer narratives, like Special, Sense8, Everything Sucks!, Uncoupled, Q-Force, First Kill, and 1899, with other recent streaming blows including A League of Their Own’s cancellation at Prime and Willow and Rise of the Pink Ladies getting completely jettisoned off their respective streaming platforms. Of course, The Revenge’s on-screen and behind-the-scenes crew brought a panoply of diversity to its period setting beyond just Our Flag Mean Death’s representation of sexuality and gender, making its cancellation a further devastation to those who felt celebrated in its story.

Audiences have grown so accustomed to seeing stories like Our Flag Means Death cut short that the energy in the fanbase between Season 1’s finale and Season 2’s renewal was that of a pirate crew preparing for battle. The camaraderie and passion among Our Flag Means Death during that stretch truly inspired me – this fanbase revived mail-in campaigns in full force – but their mobilization almost operated with the built-in expectation of cancellation. While it was a little patronizing that Max seemingly stretched out the renewal announcement to win brownie points during Pride Month, there was still a sense of relief among the fanbase when the show earned a second installment.

Good Omens provided another positive benchmark. Attracting a similar audience to Our Flag Means Death, Good Omens also presented a genre comedy centering queer characters. The creators of both series expressed hopes of a three-season run, and it was announced last month that Good Omens would receive that opportunity. Pose and Reservation Dogs provided two further instances of diverse, ensemble series that were able to successfully execute three-season narratives, with the latter sharing an Executive Producer with Our Flag Means Death in Taika Waititi. In terms of viewership, engagement, overall budget/scale, and critical reception, Our Flag Means Death came across as aligned with its three season-long predecessors and contemporaries.  

Between Our Flag Means Death sailing into a successful second season and allied series receiving green lights on their own third and final seasons, Our Flag Means Death fans may have felt the streaming tides had begun to shift slightly in their favor. These factors compounded the disappointment felt this week when the series was canceled, just as the shoreline seemed in sight. The subversion of this hope is precisely what brought my mind to Emperial Young and her cancellation-induced hunger strike.

Though the continued cancellation of diverse shows is certainly disheartening, I’d be remiss not to celebrate some of the successes that often get lost in this discussion. From long-running hits like How to Get Away with Murder and Orange is the New Black to young adult series like Heartstopper and Sex Education, queer and intersectional characters have earned some longevity in the current television landscape. While it would be encouraging to see even more stories like this granted the opportunity to complete their runs, it’s not the only factor that contributed to my ongoing exhaustion with a streaming landscape where entire audiences feel disposable.

To me, Young is the poster child for the many types of vibrant fan communities left in the lurch by the unforgiving churn of the streaming marketplace. She’s the Dominican girl who would have fallen headfirst into comic books after seeing herself represented in Leslie Grace’s Batgirl. She’s the Grishaverse reader who only got a taste of seeing their favorite world on-screen before Netflix pulled the plug on Shadow and Bone. She’s Mike Flanagan, who had to outline the entire plot of Midnight Club’s second season on his Tumblr after cancellation. She’s Kristen Schaal crowd-sourcing a means to burn The Mysterious Benedict Society onto DVD before Disney+ removed it from existence so that she could show it to her daughter one day. And she’s me, who desperately wanted to see Izzy Hands avenged in a final season of Our Flag Means Death.