Remember when Altered Carbon debuted back in 2018 and pretty much blew sci-fi fans away with its stunning visuals and high production value? Well neither do I. But jokes aside though, the first season of Altered Carbon was actually pretty good. A TV series with cyber-punk themes? Yes please!

That being said, the Anthony Mackie led second season sort of disappointed and even though it scored higher on the tomatometer on Rotten Tomatoes, the fact that the audience score for season 2 stands at a mere 36% speaks volumes.

Before I veer off into a full blown review of the series though, it turns out that Netflix is canning the series altogether. Variety has sourced someone with “knowledge on the decision” and apparently Netflix is cancelling the show because the company just didn’t feel like the series built enough of an audience to justify its high production budget.

This is hardly surprising given that Netflix has a tendency to abruptly cancel TV shows that aren’t necessarily bad but cost too much to produce. Sense8 is just one example of this. In spite of its less than stellar second season, the Altered Carbon lore was interesting and easy to buy into. They even made an anime spin off called Altered Carbon: Resleeved back in March.

Whatever it is, fans of the show will most definitely feel hard done by this cancellation. It’s bad enough that Netflix missed out on The Expanse to Amazon Prime, but now they barely have any sci-fi titles of their own on the platform. Of course, Altered Carbon could still be picked up on another platform just like The Expanse was but given its high production cost.. it’s not looking likely.

RIP Altered Carbon. You weren’t that bad, really.