Netflix Canceled This Chilling '90s-Set Horror Show Before It Could Find Its Footing

• Television
• Horror Shows

Netflix has many canceled TV shows that are still worth watching, but few of them are creepier than "Archive 81." Rebecca Sonnenshine's eight-episode horror series seemingly popped up out of nowhere and crept its way onto Netflix's Top 10 charts, but its success was short-lived. The streamer has yet to offer a reason for dropping the show, but it probably didn't meet the platform's data expectations.

A shame, really, as "Archive 81" is a haunting supernatural series that's garnered a solid fan base who now mourn its death. Based on Daniel Powell and Marc Sollinger's podcast of the same name, it tells the story of Dan (Mamoudou Athie), an archivist who gets hired to piece together footage from a recovered documentary concerning events that took place in the 1990s. Without getting too spoilery, his subsequent discoveries involve a cult, cosmic entities, and an alternate universe. As you can imagine, things don't bode well for Dan after that.

Netflix's decision to cancel "Archive 81" isn't just frustrating because the show is a solid creeper. Season 1 also ends on a massive cliffhanger that may or may not involve time travel. Sonnenshine had big plans for the show's future, and fans will now have to spend the rest of their lives wondering what could have been. Be that as it may, though, the creator has shared some details about what Season 2 would have entailed.

What would have happened in Archive 81 Season 2?

"Archive 81" Season 1 set up a bunch of interesting possibilities for the future, such as the mystery surrounding the death of Dan's family. The series doesn't reveal who caused the fire that took their lives, but that storyline would have been explored in Season 2. Here's what Rebecca Sonnenshine had to say about it while speaking to Entertainment Weekly in 2022:

"There are a lot of little Easter eggs or little things like that, that if you're like, 'I wonder if that's something that is part of the mythology and that will be explored further?' And, yes. Some things just didn't actually make it into the season. When you build a mythology series, you build out all this mythology, and then you're like, 'Oh, we don't have room for all that.'"

"Archive 81" ends with too many unanswered questions, which makes its cancelation even more frustrating. The show boasts some tremendous world-building, yet the first season barely even scratches the surface. On the plus side, the original narrative podcast has three seasons currently available to stream on Spotify, Apple, Audible, and other platforms, so horror fans should check that out if they want some closure.