Netflix Cancelled Its Underrated Terminator Anime After Just One Season
There is no fate... and no more Terminator Zero.
It’s not every day that an animated spinoff brings a beloved (if defunct) franchise back to life, but Netflix has a knack for it. With Castlevania Nocturne, Tomb Raider: Legend of Lara Croft, and Terminator Zero, the streamer has carved out its own cottage industry for anime-esque revivals. If only those shows weren’t so short-lived.
Netflix has been quietly pulling the plug on its most underrated animated shows. The future of Castlevania remains uncertain after its second season aired in 2025; Tomb Raider was canceled after two seasons, and Terminator Zero has reportedly met a similar fate. Creator Mattson Tomlin recently revealed as much on X, telling curious fans that the show has officially met its end.
“It was cancelled,” Tomlin wrote. “The critical and audience reception to it was tremendous, but at the end of the day, not nearly enough people watched it.”
Terminator Zero was poised to reinvent the saga entirely.
Tomlin stressed that producers at Netflix were “good partners” for Terminator Zero, allowing the filmmaker to explore — and even reinvent — the sci-fi saga in unconventional ways. That’s definitely felt in the show’s gutsy first season, which introduced a new idea of time travel and created a parallel reality to play in. Netflix gave Tomlin “tremendous creative freedom,” but the streamer might have failed to promote Terminator Zero enough to draw the ideal crowd. The series never cracked Netflix’s Top 10, much as it deserved to, which means that Tomlin’s vision will go unexplored.
“I would’ve loved to deliver on the Future War I had planned in Seasons 2 and 3, but I’m also very happy with how it feels contained as is,” Tomlin said of Terminator Zero’s ending.
If Tomlin had his way, Terminator Zero might have been a six-season affair, charting a dizzying time-hopping narrative about a new Chosen One, a new Terminator, and a very different soldier from the future. Season 1 was set partially in the “future” of 2022, and partially in 1997. It also focused on Malcolm Lee (Andre Holland), a scientist developing a rival to the notorious AI system known as Skynet. By the end of the season, he’s able to get Kokoro (Rosario Dawson) online, but he has to sacrifice himself to do it. Fortunately, that selfless act establishes Kokoro’s faith in humanity and gives the world some protection against Skynet.
Malcolm’s story was really just beginning at the end of Terminator Zero.
Though the immediate storyline for Malcolm and Kokoro is resolved at the end of Season 1, Terminator Zero laid the groundwork for a suitably trippy future. Malcolm, it’s revealed, hails from a future timeline, far further than 2022. He travels back in time to prevent a very different Judgment Day from happening. Zero also reveals that Eiko (Sonoya Mizuno), the warrior sent back in time to save him, is actually his mother.
Future seasons of the series undoubtedly would have explored just how she wound up even farther in the future than she originated, along with the “Future War” that haunts Malcolm’s dreams. It’s a shame that we’ll never get to see it: Netflix reportedly offered Tomlin the chance to wrap up his plans with a mini-season, but he declined. “I felt the story I wanted to tell was much longer, and the finale of season one actually left things in a good place,” he revealed.
It’d have been nice to see a little bit more of what Tomlin had planned, but without a real-life time machine, there’s probably no way to alter Netflix’s decision.
