Boots outperformed Nobody Wants This. So why did Netflix cancel it?

Fans who felt upset and/or confused about Netflix's Boots getting canceled — and not renewed for a second season, as announced by Netflix in mid-December — are unlikely to feel any better after reading Netflix's most recent Engagement Report, which adds even more question marks to this puzzling decision.

Netflix released its latest Engagement Report earlier this week, which showed viewership stats for the second half of 2025 (July through December). The report separates projects into two main categories — movies and TV shows — and examines several data points about each of those titles.

For context: The two most important data points in the report are "Hours Viewed" (total amount of hours that subscribers spent watching a particular film or TV show) and "Views" (total number of times a film or TV show was clicked on and played). Overall, Netflix subscribers spent 96 billion hours watching movies and TV shows on the streaming service, and most of the top titles are easy to guess: Wednesday, Squid Game, Stranger Things, and Monster, for instance.

Things get much more interesting, eye-opening, and confusing (given the context of which other projects were renewed for a new season) when assessing the titles that placed below number 20 on the streaming service's official report.

Notably, Netflix itself has just published data showing that Boots was the 23rd most-watched TV series in its catalog between July-December 2025, with a total of 30.7 million hours viewed. Following a pretty striking Deadline report by Nellie Andreeva (which identified many of these stats), let's compare the success of Boots using other shows as reference points and context.

Editor's note: The comparisons below are not intended to discredit another project's success and renewal, but to highlight the puzzling decision to not renew Boots season 2.

Boots vs. other high-profile Netflix shows (Viewership Comparison No. 1)

Before we get into more specific viewership comparisons between Boots and other high-profile shows on Netflix, it's worth outlining the wider scope that was noted in the Deadline report.

Boots drew in 30.7 million views during the second half of 2025. While release dates and other factors matter (and we'll get to those), Boots had more views during that tracking period than all of the shows below.

• The Witcher season 4; total of 25.4 million views; already renewed season 5
• The Diplomat season 3; total of 20.8 million viewers; already renewed for season 4
• Tyler Perry's Beauty in Black season 2 part 1; total of 24.2 million views; already renewed for season 3

Other Netflix shows included in this report of top-performing projects during the second half of 2025 — and that indeed had a significant moment in the zeitgeist — include House of Guinness season 1, the award-winning limited series Adolescence, The Sandman season 2, and The Waterfront season 1.

The report shows that Boots had significantly higher viewership than all of them.

Nobody Wants This vs. Boots (Viewership Comparison No. 2)

• Premiered in October 2025 (same as Boots, with just a two-week head-start)
• Season had 10 episodes (vs. eight episodes from Boots)
• 30.4 million viewers (vs. 30.7 million for Boots)
• Appears as No. 24 in the "Views" column (vs. No. 23 for Boots)

Nobody Wants This season 3 was greenlit on Netflix.

The Hunting Wives vs. Boots (Viewership Comparison No. 3)

• Premiered in July (three months before Boots, thus considering six months of viewership on this report)
• Season had eight episodes (same number of episodes as Boots)
• 31.3 million viewers (vs. 30.7 million for Boots)
• Appears as No. 22 in the "Views" column (vs. No. 23 for Boots)

The Hunting Wives season 2 was greenlit on Netflix.

Boots vs. Netflix original productions (Theory No. 1)

Another potential reason brought up by Andreeva on Deadline was that "both Boots and The Waterfront come from outside studios, Sony Pictures TV and Universal Television, respectively, while "the vast majority of series" renewed for more seasons are original productions from Netflix itself.

Yet, Netflix shows such as Untamed and The Hunting Wives are also outside productions and were renewed for new seasons.

Production delays and reshoots turned Boots into a very expensive project (Theory No. 2)

Production delays and gaps for Boots have prompted media outlets to question how expensive this show must've been to create. There are two points worth noting here:

• The production hiatus that started in 2023 was a result of the SAG-AFTRA/WGA strike that shut down Hollywood for months. Rescheduling dates and conflicts contributed to the show taking a long time to be released.
• The other production gap in the Boots filming timeline has been attributed to the overall storyline of the series being tweaked and shortened based on studio notes. Multiple actors have talked about these changes on Boots, such as Sachin Bhatt referencing a storyline about his character that was never seen in the final product, and Jack Cameron Kay discussing that he joined the Boots cast as a new character that already reflected those newer changes.

Boots might've been canceled due to political reasons, such as the Pentagon calling it 'woke garbage' (Theory No. 3)

Remarks that Boots was canceled due to political reasons come from an official at the Pentagon referring to the Netflix series as "woke garbage." However, it is unrealistic that anyone could find a direct correlation between those two factors.

At its core, this theory comes from pop culture pundits speculating that going against the Pentagon could hurt Netflix's chances to acquire Warner Bros Discovery due to potential retaliation from President Donald Trump's administration. With that said, calling a show "woke garbage" is far from the tactics that allegedly led to the cancelation of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert and the hiatus imposed on Jimmy Kimmel Live.

Out has reached out to Netflix for comment. Sony had no comment.