I just recently finished watching Our Flag Means Death, a comedy series revolving around pirates in the 18th century that features several LGBTQ+ characters. I really enjoyed the two-season-long series and was saddened to discover that it will not be returning for a third season. This got me thinking about a multitude of other shows I have watched that only ran for one or two seasons—many of which also feature queer leads and storylines. If this trend is something you’ve noticed as well, you’re not crazy! Just in the past couple of years, fans have had to say goodbye to several LGBTQ+ shows, including First Kill, The Wilds, Sort Of, Q-Force, Our Flag Means Death, and so many more. There has been a steady decline in the renewal of queer shows and characters—a concerning realization for communities that already face media underrepresentation.
The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) is an organization that tracks and analyzes queer representation in the media. Each year, they come out with a report called “Where We Are on TV,” which examines several aspects of this representation, including a reflection on which queer characters will be returning and which have been lost to deaths, series endings, or cancellations. In the 2023–24 report, GLAAD noted that 36% of LGBTQ+ characters will not be returning to our screens and that 24% of these losses are due to series cancellations. Oddly enough, US Weekly estimates that out of 271 series up for renewal in the same 2023-24 timeframe, about 58% were renewed. The budget to be renewing shows is there. So why are so many queer-centered shows being given the boot?
There are a variety of different possibilities and suggestions as to why certain shows have been canceled in recent years. Obviously, the COVID-19 pandemic had a major impact on production rates during and after 2020. The Hollywood writers and actors’ strikes in 2023 also played a major role in halting production. However, this doesn’t necessarily explain why we are still seeing these trends now—or why shows targeted toward an LGBTQ+ audience are so disproportionately affected. One explanation that has been offered is simply that recently canceled series aren’t reaching high enough viewership levels. This may be true, but there are caveats to this line of thought. Marketing plays a huge role in viewership rates, and these rates suffer when shows either aren’t getting the budget to advertise or their advertising is being muffled. For example, Them magazine mentions lesbian drama Gentleman Jack may have been doomed to limited audience engagement by its late-night Monday airing time slot on HBO.
To fully describe this phenomenon, it’s important to understand Bury Your Gays. If you’ve never heard this term, it refers to a literary trope involving writing fatal or otherwise horrible endings for gay characters. This trend originated in the 19th century and was initially used by gay authors as a way to legally publish their books about queer characters during a time when this type of writing often faced heavy backlash. However, this trend seems to persist today—not as a form of resistance but rather as a suppression of LGBTQ+ representation. We see a disproportionate number of deaths of queer characters, specifically queer women—so many so that this trope has also historically been referred to as the Lesbian Death Syndrome.
So how does this relate to series cancellations? Well, the tendency for queer shows to be canceled has become so common that the Bury Your Gays trope has been revamped into Cancel Your Gays. This is a less explicit but equally harmful form of minimizing representation, especially for highly vulnerable demographics such as trans and non-binary folk and people of color. Similarly to the Lesbian Death Syndrome, cancellation often strikes queer women harder than queer men. This issue is particularly evident when it comes to Netflix. Several Netflix series featuring queer and trans women have been canceled in recent years, including Everything Sucks, I Am Not Okay With This, Atypical, and First Kill. These losses cut especially deep when compared with the smashing success of Netflix’s Heartstopper, which revolves around a gay male couple and was renewed for its second, third, and now fourth season shortly after its initial release. Even more shocking is that First Kill, which was canceled after only one season, “logged approximately 15.8 million more hours of collective viewing time within its first week than Heartstopper did” (Them magazine). It is upsetting for queer female audiences to know that their representation is not as highly valued as their male counterparts.
So, to answer the question: Why are so many queer TV shows getting axed? Ultimately, what it comes down to is biases that have been deeply rooted in our society and media production processes. GLAAD urges that, going forward, it is essential for networks and streaming platforms to give LGBTQ+ shows greater support from the beginning. It is not enough for shows to be greenlit—they must be given the necessary budget and resources to ensure their long-term success. What’s streaming on TV may not seem like such a big deal, but advocating for representation on these types of platforms could have a vast positive impact on the queer community as a whole.