Adapted from Sally Green’s Half Bad series of novels, Half Bad: The Bastard Son & the Devil Himself is a young-adult fantasy original series to debut on Netflix. Fans of the books were easily anticipating it, even if the streamer didn’t exactly go out of its way to promote it, and the finished product is a surprisingly engaging eight-part series that filters Harry Potter through the Hostel movies. However fans will be surprised to find out that Netflix cancelled Half Bad, and it will not return to the streamer for Season 2.
Netflix Cancels Half Bad: The Bastard Son & The Devil Himself for Season 2
January 27th, 2024 Update
It was confirmed in December 2022 that Half Bad: The Bastard Son & The Devil Himself will not be returned for Season 2 – Netflix has canceled it. It shocked fans, believing that Netflix had found their own “Harry Potter” on the platform. However, as reported on What’s on Netflix, it was likely the performance of the show that contributed to the cancelation, coupled with bad title practices (they added Half Bad to the title later).
October 29th, 2022 Update
As ever there hasn’t been any official confirmation so soon after the first season’s release. Given how few marketing dollars seem to have been put behind this in the first place, it’s likely that Netflix are waiting to see how it performs before they make a concrete decision. There are a lot of teen dramas on the platform, many of them with supernatural elements, so the Big N won’t want to pay through the nose for an IP that nobody seems to be interested in when they have other, more easily marketable properties to handle.
However, several of those shows got multiple seasons. If stuff like The Order, Fate: The Winx Saga, and Warrior Nun — the second season of which is coming very soon — can be renewed, there’s no reason why this can’t too, especially considering that The Bastard Son & the Devil Himself is actually better than basically all of those shows.
There’s artistic justification too, since the ending of The Bastard Son & the Devil Himself left things very open. Perhaps it’s just wishful thinking since I enjoyed the characters and story a lot, but we predict that The Bastard Son & the Devil Himself will be renewed for Season 2.
