Cancel it? Not if we have anything to say about it!

Nothing can be more annoying than enjoying your favourite show when you open X and see it’s gotten cancelled! You may feel like you have even lost a part of yourself, a show that brought you comfort, gone in the blink of an eye. But we can do something about this, as fans, we have the power and influence to come together to help bring our favourite shows back. As fans we have entered our main character era, we aren’t just the consumers, we are major decision makers.

Streaming services are so competitive, even when we express our love for a show its hard to keep them from being cancelled, shows are only given a short amount of time to “go viral”, or they are kicked to the curb for some other new show, or more of their budgets are going into shows that should have ended long ago. Cough cough.. Grey's Anatomy. But when it comes to shows that should not have their moment cut short, we are the ones with the power to bring them back to our screens.

One of my favourite shows and a much-loved show by its fans that we almost lost is the devilish Lucifer, the show was originally cancelled by Fox in 2018, only to be picked up once again in the next month by Netflix after fans shared their outrage all over social media. The hashtags #SaveLucifer and #PickUpLucifer were everywhere on X, catching the attention of Netflix and with the help of the show's main actor Tom Ellis, they could not ignore it and the show came back to our screens for 3 more seasons. Helping to renew cancelled shows may be X’s only redeeming quality, even if Lucifer's last season was a bit of a rough ride.

I may be playing favourites here, but I also want to talk about Brooklyn Nine-Nine, another show cancelled by a cruel twist of fate. But our power as the fans gave us the opportunity to have it back and where it rightly belonged on NBC, which got picked up in record time with a little fan influence. Well, you could say that it actually wasn’t our campaign that got the show picked up again, as the network may have already had an eye on the show but you can't deny the power of our social media presence. The hashtag #Brooklyn99 was trending on X from the moment the cancellation was announced, so even if the show was not already on NBC’s radar it certainly still would have found another home in no time.

But let's be honest, not all revivals are needed or worth it. Take a look at Dexter, I can't speak from experience as I've not indulged myself in the show but fans hated how the original ended. Years later, the show came back with a revival after fans expressed their distaste for the ending, but that ending also left fans unhappy. Some shows should be left alone, as much as we love them, we can't revive every show me love as much as we may miss it. Just because we can revive something doesn’t mean we should.

So I'd say it’s pretty clear that fans are no longer sitting quietly on the couch and accepting the decisions that Networks throw at us over our favourite shows. We use social media to our advantage, make hashtags trend, we get the attention of streaming services like our lives depend on it. We aren’t just boosting the show's figures anymore, we are shaping their futures. Even if it may not always work out in the end.