Paper Girls won’t be returning for another season on Amazon Prime. The time-traveling sci-fi series is based on the graphic novel by Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang. Paper Girls follows a group of young girls who are hurled ahead in time on their morning newspaper route. As they struggle to get back home, the girls encounter older versions of themselves, become refugees in a mysterious time war, and witness a battle between giant robots. Paper Girls played to excellent critical acclaim and audience reception, and scored highly on both IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes. But instead of continuing with the series, Amazon has canceled Paper Girls after just one season.
Despite the show’s cancellation, Legendary Television, one of the Paper Girls producing companies, will look around the show or trying to find a new home for the series. Legendary Television still believes the show can be successful, largely because it revolves around strong three-dimensional female characters. It seems to be piggybacking on the success of shows like Euphoria and The sex life of college girlsalthough it is geared more towards families than these shows.
Paper Girls likely suffered in ratings not only because of this demographic struggle, but also because it competed with much bigger shows at the time with massive marketing campaigns. Despite Paper Girls Since it’s a good show, maybe the release is just a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. There’s a possibility it could do better on another streamer.
Why was Paper Girls cancelled?
Paper Girls was canceled despite putting out all the right signs that it was a good TV show. It scored 90% on Rotten Tomatoes with a surprising Audience Score of 88%. IMDb gave it a 7.3 out of 10. It had some strong comedic actors like Ali Wong and Jason Mantzoukas. And it fell into that genre of cult comedy adaptations that contribute to the success of shows like The boys, Umbrella Academy, and Invincible. But still, Paper Girls ago in the ratings.
In fact, it failed to reach the Nielsen ratings at all. It’s impossible to say for sure why, but it’s possible it was just released at the wrong time. The show competed with another Amazon original, The rings of power. This one Lord of the Rings spin-off series dominated the front page of Amazon, trying to drown everything else in the media because of its own competition with the Game of Thrones spin-off series House of the Dragon. Paper Girls was probably swept under the rug by Amazon’s massive marketing campaign on its own site to LOTR series, which made much less room for Paper Girls being seen.
The rings of power also affected Paper Girls A different kind of. Stephany Folsom, who made the series for television, was intended to be the showrunner of the series, but left during production to work on the LOTR series. While leaving the series doesn’t seem to have had much of an effect on the show’s quality, it serves as an example of how much The rings of power dominated Amazon’s priorities. It also illustrates how much a quality series can suffer from a lack of attention from the producers. Still, Legendary Television retains its rights to shop around for the show, meaning it could find a home with another streamer. If Amazon is not willing to invest the time in a quality product, the show could easily be more successful if it were given to another producer.
Could Netflix be the answer?
Paper Girls had everything it takes to be a really good TV show, but failing it may have just been a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. If Legendary Television successfully moves the show to another streaming site, that company can invest time and marketing. Those are the only two things the series may have missed and needed to be successful.
Where we saw big shows catch up Paper Girls on Amazon, a streamer like Netflix may be able to market the show better. Not only because Netflix is a platform dedicated specifically to streaming content, but also because of the well-done marketing algorithm that could put the show in front of the right users.
What Amazon could drown its entire site in Rings of Power ads, Netflix is targeting more specifically users who are more likely to watch the show. It would give the series more room to be seen rather than the company prioritizing 100% of its ad space on another show. The streamer may more directly reach demographics that would be more likely to watch Paper Girls rather than the ones who probably won’t be watching an anchor show the entire site is based on.
It would also give Paper Girls a chance to be released out of competition, to be held in the merits of its own style and genre, making it more likely to be watched as well. But if we have a Paper Girls season 2, it won’t be long.