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We may receive a commission on purchases made from links. The thing with television is that it can be fickle, particularly in the modern era. Gone are the days when a show could make it to five seasons with relative ease. Shows that people love are unceremoniously canceled all of the time. Many shows have had to suffer the fate of cancellation more than once. On the plus side, AMC's "Into the Badlands" was only canceled once, but that cancellation stuck as the show has been off the air for going on six years, as of this writing. Created by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, of "Smallville" fame, the series first hit the airwaves on AMC in 2015. Taking place centuries from now, the series centers on a warrior named Sunny (Daniel Wu) and a young boy named M.K. (Aramis Knight) who must travel across the Badlands controlled by seven barons in a post-apocalyptic America. Unfortunately for fans, though, in early 2019, the show was canceled. As reported by Deadline at the time, the move came as little surprise, as season 3 had been filmed for some time and the cast had been released to pursue other projects. That was that. The bigger question is why? Was the story simply done? Had Gough and Millar run out of ideas? It isn't as easy to swallow as all of that. Rather, as these things often do, it came down to the business of it all. In the land of television, it's about viewership versus expense. The equation stopped making sense for the network. The show's impressive ensemble also included the likes of "Shaun of the Dead" star Nick Frost as Bajie, Emily Beecham ("1899") as The Widow, and Ally Ioannides ("Parenthood") as Tilda, among others. It also boasted impressive production value and lots of fighting. The sort of action doesn't come cheap, which was a big part of the problem. AMC was no stranger to spending big on the right shows, as this was right around the time that "The Walking Dead" was at its peak as far as viewership was concerned. The network also had beloved dramas like "Mad Men" and "Breaking Bad" to its name. They were a big name in peak TV. But as star Daniel Wu explained to Den of Geek in 2020, the financial realities of the show had to come into play. Here's what he had to say about it: "It was expensive to make our show. We had two crews shooting at the same time — action and drama at the same time—so you have each crew of 150 people. So it's like making two TV shows at once. And the budget was high. We were like in the $6-7 million range. Season 3 was almost $100 million to make that. So it's a big commitment for a studio, right? And I think that's what probably scared other studios away because they didn't necessarily see the return on that value. But to do it well, you have to really commit to it." In the streaming era, we're used to seeing budgets for shows balloon. "Severance" costs a reported $20 million per episode, as one example. But AMC doesn't have the cash to burn like Apple does. They have to make business decisions based on numbers. The numbers weren't kind to a show that was this expensive to produce. Things get tricky when trying to measure streaming viewership, in no small part because each streamer has its own way of measuring such things. That's another conversation altogether, but the point is, in the realm of cable TV, it's far more cut and dry. A show that costs X amount of dollars needs to bring in X amount of viewership to justify the cost. Those viewership numbers are easier to come by and easier to measure. In the case of "Into the Badlands," the show shot out of the gate hot with more than 8 million total viewers, per The Hollywood Reporter. By the end of season 2, the show was averaging around 3 million viewers per episode, according to AMC. By the time season 3 wrapped up its run, those numbers had plummeted to below 1 million per episode, according to TV Series Finale. Taking that into account, season 4 would have made little sense. As for why the show's ratings dropped? The reviews were relatively consistent, so it wasn't a perceived quality issue. As Wu told it in that same 2020 interview, he believes they never reached the target audience as well as they could have. "I wish we had gotten more Comic Cons because the show was built for Comic Cons. We went to one before the show even aired so that didn't make much sense because nobody knew what it was. And then we went to one right as the show was ending, as it was cancelled. So I wish we had a better presence at Comic Con and had more merchandise and all that stuff. We designed this show for all of that and I think a lot of the potential for that didn't get realized because we didn't have much marketing behind it." You can grab "Into the Badlands" on Blu-ray or DVD from Amazon.
