Exploding Kittens, Twilight of the Gods and Good Times Won’t Return for Second Seasons at Netflix

Picture Credits: Netflix

While Netflix has had plenty of successes in animation over the past few years, What’s on Netflix has learned of a trio of adult animation series that won’t be returning to Netflix for a season 2, despite early work on at least two of them. 

All of these probably won’t come as huge surprises, given that each premiered over a year ago at this point, and as we’ve covered before, if you don’t hear about the future of a show within a year, more often than not, it’s done. Still, it’s nice to have closure on these titles, so let’s run through each now and see what we can learn about why they’re not set to return. 

Exploding Kittens

Based on the card game of the same name, Exploding Kittens launched on Netflix in July 2024 as a comedy set in a suburban battleground where God and the Devil find themselves living in cat bodies, while an ordinary family gets caught in their cosmic feud. Chaos follows as divine grudges, neighborhood drama, and feline mayhem collide. Tom Ellis, Abraham Lim, Lucy Liu, Ally Maki, Mark Proksch, and Sasheer Zamata were amongst the voice cast for the 9-part series. 

Some early development work did take place on a second season of Exploding Kittens, allowing the animation team to hit the ground running should they get a formal season 2 renewal, but it wasn’t to be. On the bright side, Netflix Games still hosts the mobile version of the classic card game and remains one of my favorites in Netflix’s entire gaming lineup. 

Twilight of the Gods

One of the bigger swings for 2024’s animation slate was Twilight of the Gods, a new series from Zack Snyder, Jay Olivia and Eric Carrasco with Stone Quarry Animation and Xilam Animation leading. The epic animated saga was inspired by Norse mythology, following a mortal king and a shield-maiden who are pulled into a brutal clash with gods whose power is slipping. Their quest sets off a chain of vengeance, prophecy, and cosmic upheaval that pushes the Nine Realms toward ruin.

While we have heard that some early development work took place and that plans were put in place for a second season, they’re not coming to fruition. Jay Oliva confirmed in an interview with us that they had hoped for a second season. 

The series failed to enter Netflix’s weekly global top 10s, but did spend up to several weeks in the daily top 10s across over 60 countries. 

It’s no secret that Zack Snyder’s projects didn’t quite connect with the way that Netflix had hoped, with the director now working on projects away from the streamer, and his Army of the Dead and Rebel Moon projects put on ice for the foreseeable future. There were plans for a new LAPD crime thriller, although more recent reports suggest that the movie may never hit our screens either.

Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2024

Good Times

Lastly, and probably the least surprising of all the cancellations, is Good Times. Whether you fall into the camp that it was deeply misunderstood, or in the larger camp that suggested the series fell into unsavory stereotypes or was offensive, it’s hard to argue that it was a wise idea to try to bring back a rebooted version of the well-known sitcom of the same name. 

Featuring a voice cast of J.B. Smoove, Marsai Martin, Yvette Nicole Brown, and Jay Pharoah, the series did spend a few days in the US top 10s as well as a number of other countries and went onto pick up 3.3M views for the period of January to June 2024, making it the 680th most-watched show for that period since then picked up another 2.1M views through mid-2025 making the total views tally so far for 5.4M views. Still, that wasn’t enough to justify a second season. 

Netflix’s animated TV slate is jam-packed with other shows in the years to come.

Just in recent weeks, we’ve learned of two new projects from the United Kingdom, including Alley Cats from Ricky Gervais and Living The Dream from the creator of Cartoon Network’s Apple & Onion. That’s in addition to Strip Law, due out in February; The One Piece; Magic: The Gathering; Midnight Sun; Stranger Things: Tales from ’85; Mating Season; Clash of Clans; Ghostbusters; Motel Transylvania; and Minecraft, amongst a bunch of others yet to be announced.  

While those are the new shows on the way, that doesn’t mean Netflix doesn’t have renewals either. A new season of Tomb Raider is coming up in December, Devil May Cry is returning in 2026, plus new seasons of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, Long Story Short, Haunted Hotel, Splinter Cell: Deathwatch, and Blue Eye Samurai are on the way. 

Netflix declined to comment for this article. 

Are you disappointed that any of these series won’t be returning for a season 2? Let us know down below, and we’ll soon include these on our list of all 20+ cancellations for 2025 so far.