Netflix has been receiving pushback for its creative decisions from all sides, and every success seems to be a new minefield for the once-powerful streaming service. WithThe Sandman, a new extremely popular comic book adaptation hanging in the balance, Netflix’s analytics have been called into question by fans and critics.
The Sandmanwas long consideredunfilmable, but the recently released adaptation has been almost universally beloved by longtime fans and newcomers. Its first season received rave reviews and prompted immediate calls for more. Unfortunately, the source material’s writer Neil Gaiman has raised the possibility of the series ending after just one season.
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Netflix’s analytics are a tricky game. They’re not always willing to talk numbers and the ones they put out tend to only tell part of the story. By the numbers that fans do have access to,The Sandmanwas watched for over 69 million hours in its first six days. The show doubled that impressive number and racked up 127 million hours of watch time in its first full week. It became the number one show on the service across English-speaking territories and remained in the top 10 for weeks. To an uninformed observer, this wouldsound like an outstanding successand would warrant the production of the second season. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple and the more complex elements of the streaming service’s analytic structure cast the series' future in doubt.
To hear Neil Gaiman tell it, Netflix isn’t prepared to greenlight a second season for anything that doesn’t see unbelievable unobtainable success standards. These standards don’t just require tons of people to watch the show, it also measures when and how people watch. Netflix prioritizes binge-watching to an almost unfair degree. Long series and films watched in a single sitting will see the most positive recognition from the streaming service. Fans who watched one or two episodes ofThe Sandmanper day and finished it over a week weren’t offering as much aid as those who binged it on the first night. Netflix demands overwhelming success immediately, the service won’t sit back and wait for a slow-burn series to become beloved. This myopic obsession with short-term success at the expense of any other metric results in theuntimely death of tons of good shows, despite huge fanbases.
The Sandmanhas a pretty clear strategy moving forward. The first season adapted the first two arcs ofthe comic book series, following seasons would undoubtedly continue that trend. Fans were already wondering how they’d complete the beloved narrative within three seasons, but, if they only get one, they’ll be left wanting more. Netflix will be receiving continued demands from fans, not just aboutThe Sandman, but about the countless other series it’s threatening with cancelation. The tools that Netflix uses to measure success have led to the death of a ton of great content and could spell the end of the service as a whole.
