Cr. Emily V. Aragones/Netflix © 2023
The Tina Fey-produced series Girls5eva moved to Netflix in early 2024 after two seasons at Peacock. Sadly, season 4 will not be coming, and one of the main actresses confirmed that Netflix has opted to cancel the show.
Throughout the year following the debut of season 3, there has been much discussion about Girls5eva‘s future, with most predicting or suggesting that the show is unlikely to return. We did this ourselves in our season 4 renewal status article, delving into the stats (or their lack of them) and determining that it’s unlikely that the show will be back. That’s despite the third season still being critically acclaimed. In fact, the show even appeared in several end-of-year best round-ups, with IndieWire including it as their honorable mention.
The news came via the Busy Philipps is Doing Her Best podcast, which the actress uploads once a week and in which she speaks to various guests. On December 4th, she spoke to actor Danny Pellegrino.
Pellegrino asked explicitly about the future, to which Phillips answered, “It’s dead. Yeah. I’m just saying it because, f*** it, if Netflix won’t, I will.” She added, “I guess not enough people watch, watched it or watched it the way that counts or I don’t know. I actually just don’t know.”
Phillips stressed that Netflix hasn’t announced the cancelation (they rarely confirm/announce cancelations publicly) but was ultimately optimistic about the future, with the actress saying, “Netflix isn’t saying it’s dead, and they don’t say anything about how the deal was structured when it went to Peacock for the second season, or about a third season. So there’s time. I don’t think it’ll ever be dead-dead. The characters are too good. I’ve even joked with the cast, like, we should do Radio City or turn it into a live stage show—a musical, maybe even Broadway someday.”
Cr. Emily V. Aragones/Netflix © 2023
The discussion turned to why the show struggled to find a bigger audience on Netflix, and multiple conclusions were drawn. The duo discussed whether it could be because of the platform switch and also mentioned that Netflix’s algorithm could’ve struggled to understand the show.
They also mentioned the possibility of it being a systemic industry problem with biases against women-forward content. Philipps said, “I think the name Girls5eva is amazing and totally right, but I think it’s possible it alienates men—like straight f***ing dudes. Has anyone ever done a study on how women-forward titles affect the success of shows?”
“I feel like a little bit of the Girls5eva thing is the same as what happened with Cougar Town. Critics wrote Cougar Town off as a show about ‘older women dating younger men,’ and it took forever for people to realize how good it was. Girls5eva is so sharp and funny, but people may have dismissed it because of preconceived notions,” Pellegrino said.
How well did Girls5eva perform on Netflix?
Sadly, we don’t have any weekly or daily top 10 data for Girls5eva season 3 because the show ultimately failed to rank in the global top 10s that Netflix publishes. Worse still, when seasons 1 and 2 dropped in 2023, the show didn’t feature in any daily top 10s in a single country beyond Ireland. It featured there for a single day before dropping out.
The Netflix Engagement Reports shine some light on the picture of viewership. These reports, which currently stretch from January 2023 through June 2024, suggest the show’s first two seasons, being added to Netflix in international regions in early 2023, started off very slowly and dropped dramatically in the second half of the year.
For most countries, all three seasons dropped on Netflix in early 2024, meaning that the viewership was staggered across the seasons, ultimately not giving season 3 a chance in the top 10s. To put the number into context, 1.3M views in the first half of 2024 put season 3 of Girls5eva as the 1,788th most-watched show for the first half of the year.
Picture Credit: What’s on Netflix
What do you think? Did Netflix botch the rollout of Girls5eva? Was the name to blame, as Philipps suggested, or is the show just too niche? Let us know in the comments.
Netflix Synopsis: "A one-hit wonder '90s girl group attempts a comeback while hilariously navigating family and relationships -- plus the joys and pains of middle age."
