Highlights
After Warrior Nun was unceremoniously cancelled by Netflix in December 2022 after the release of its second season, the SaveWarriorNun movement was born from the cult show’s ashes.
As a fan of the show who had been in the middle of bingeing both seasons when the news broke (literally, I checked my phone and everything), I was happy to see it being rallied behind so quickly. I knew it would be a tough battle; shows that get saved after fans make a ruckus on social media usually don’t find much success. If anything, we’re simply delaying the inevitable heartbreak of moving on.
When Fox cancelled its beloved Brooklyn 99, the social media outcry was so great that NBC picked the show up after just a single day. NBC cancelled Manifest in November 2021, and after it gained a following on Netflix for its first three seasons, with enough people online rallying behind it, Netflix picked it up for another season ten weeks later.
Warrior Nun fans, however, had a bit more than just social media outcry and trending hashtags in mind. In January 2023, after fans pooled together the money, a SaveWarriorNun billboard was put up directly across the street from Netflix’s L.A. headquarters. This was an impressive feat and gave myself and others hope that at this point, only a month after cancellation, Netflix would be forced to accept its mistake (the show’s second season had received their highest audience rating for any original show on the service) and pick Warrior Nun back up.
Netflix, unfortunately, was silent, and so fans began giving up on the streaming platform. But not the show, as they organised different daily trends on social media platforms such as Twitter, each day angling for a different streaming service to pick the show up. There’s even a website for the SaveWarriorNun efforts that goes into detail about all their separate campaigns which include a petition, GoFundMe, market surveys, and guides on how to properly produce traction for trending keywords. I was often seeing trends such as ‘Apple TV Save Warrior Nun’ and ‘Prime save Warrior Nun’, which were gaining big numbers, but getting no response.
Warrior Nun seemed dead and buried, but after more than six months of rallying against its December 2022 cancellation, Barry made the announcement that Warrior Nun had been saved. SaveWarriorNun became WarriorNunSaved as fans celebrated around the world the resurrection of a show with so much left to give.
For months, questions were raised surrounding why Netflix would drop such a popular show, especially one that would end up rising from the ashes due to the dedication of its fans. Spoilers ahead, but at the very end of season two, a sapphic ship between two main characters became canon, with many fearing Netflix was once again putting the pin in a show featuring distinct queer characters.
The corporation has a long and infuriating history of cancelling sapphic shows seemingly for no reason. Before Warrior Nun, came the cancellation of shows like Teenage Bounty Hunters, First Kill, I Am Not Okay With This, and Everything Sucks, which all had explicit sapphic representation and were cancelled after one season. It’s hard not to notice this pattern, especially when it disproportionately affects queer stories in need of a platform.
Rival streaming services like Amazon Prime are also guilty of this, with its cancellation of Paper Girls after one season and its renewal of the extremely popular A League of Their Own for only four more episodes. Because of its similar pattern to Netflix when it comes to sapphic shows, I highly doubt it will be the service that has picked up Warrior Nun.
Streaming services such as Hulu and Apple TV have a much better reputation, and are my picks for where Warrior Nun ends up; they both have a much less active trigger finger on cancellations in general. Hulu keeps alive shows from other networks and streaming services, as well as giving its own decent runs: The Handmaid’s Tale will be ending with a total of six seasons, Solar Opposites has its fourth season coming up and has already been renewed for a fifth, as well as it having picked up The Orville after leaving Fox.
For Apple TV, its original shows are rarely cancelled, having only seven cancellations out of its entire original library. It also has a clear interest in Sci-Fi/Fantasy shows (Severance, See, Silo) making it a good candidate to be interested in Warrior Nun.
No matter which streaming service has picked up the show, fans are just glad that it’s been revived. It’s clear that without the SaveWarriorNun movement, the show would more than likely have succumbed to its cancellation and faded from existence.
If you’re excited for more news on the future of the show like I am, Simon Barry shared a link to what appears to be a countdown website for further announcements. The future of this show exists because of the fans, and we can’t wait to see what’s next.