Diabolical Was Canceled By Amazon

For all its spinoffs, The Boys is beginning to resemble the cinematic franchises it initially set out to cannibalize. But fans clearly can’t get enough of Prime Video’s satirical superhero universe, which is set to expand with more spin-offs in the near future. All of this raises the question of what happens to the first offshoot, “The Boys Presents: Diabolical.” Well, it’s not looking good for the series, because according to co-creator Eric Kripke, the viewing characters weren’t where they needed to be during its first and only season.

Ahead of the Season 3 premiere of “The Boys,” fans got their first spin-off in the form of “The Boys Presents: Diabolical.” The anime anthology series debuted in March 2022 and is set in the same universe as the Mothership series, telling standalone stories, each with their own animation style and flair. “The Boys Presents: Diabolical” was an experiment that mostly worked, and appears to have been a hit, garnering positive reviews and successfully expanding the world of “The Boys” relatively early on in the main run. Unfortunately, it looks like the audience numbers weren’t quite what Prime Video was hoping for.

In an interview with The Wrap, Kripke was asked if “The Boys: Diabolical” would return, saying:

“I don’t think there will be a second season of ‘Diabolical’. It’s not because there aren’t any of us paying. I think ultimately the viewership numbers weren’t there to justify a second season, unfortunately. Although we love him and Simon,” [Racioppa]”Broadcaster, it would be appropriate to do that, but we haven’t gotten the green light on this.”

Aside from the official announcement from Prime Video, it appears that “Diabolical” is about as close to cancellation as possible.

Everything about The Boys Presents: Diabolical suggests it will be a hit. Aside from crafting the stars of “The Boys,” the show has benefited from some serious writing talent, with Evan Goldberg, Seth Rogen, Awkwafina, Andy Samberg, and co-creator of the original “The Boys” comic book series, Garth Ennis, contributing, among others. This dream team produced eight episodes of The Boys: Diabolical, including Homelander’s origin story in One Plus One Equals Two. It all ended up with a 97% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

In June 2022, three months after the series dropped, Vernon Sanders, head of global television at Amazon Studios, seemed optimistic about a potential second season, telling Deadline, “There’s absolutely a possibility,” and explaining that there was a “two-pronged” goal for the show. “One of them was to get The Boys fans excited,” he said.[…] But we also wanted to see if there would be another bite at the apple once the mommy show came back, and we were seeing real engagement and growth for the show there.

Unfortunately, although Prime Video has not officially canceled the show, Eric Kripke’s comments to The Wrap are as close as they’ll come to confirming that “Diabolical” is finished. The co-creator didn’t elaborate on viewership numbers, so it’s hard to know exactly what happened behind the scenes, but it certainly looks as if Prime Video is moving forward with producing live shows for “The Boys” — which may have something to do with “Diabolical” falling by the wayside.

Following the success of the spin-off “Gen V”, which focuses on young adults at Godulkin University’s crime-fighting college, Prime Video has begun developing two major spin-offs in the form of the 1950s-set murder mystery prequel “Vought Rising” and the Diego Luna-starring film “The Boys: Mexico”. As such, it’s not as if the media spinoff for “The Boys” will lack fans, and it may just be that live-action spin-offs have been a factor in Prime Video neglecting to give “Diabolical” a chance to improve viewership.

However, it’s not as if the animated show wasn’t without any problems of its own. “Diabolical” was somewhat confusing in the sense that not all of its episodes took place in the same universe as the Mothership series. Eric Kripke has since claimed that he and the producers only considered three episodes as canon for “The Boys” but even these episodes did not impact the main show in any significant way, and as such, fans did not need to see the series to follow the central story. This will likely sound familiar to Marvel Cinematic Universe fans who are well aware of the risks that come with an episodic streaming series that doesn’t advance the main plot but provides tangential context to the franchise as a whole. Prime Video executives were probably thinking the same thing.

Other than that, there’s just a general trend of streaming services being canceled early due to a variety of factors. As with most of these cancellations, much of the logic remains a mystery to those of us on the outside, but we can at least be excited for the continuation of “The Boys” and “Gen V” and for the arrival of “Vought Rising” and “The Boys: Mexico.”