I just finished binging The Gentlemen season 2 on Netflix over the course of a few days, and I thought it might actually be better than the first. But this is streaming, and this is Netflix, and often the quality of returning series does not matter. Why? Because audiences seem content to abandon even shows they may have enjoyed previously.
The Gentlemen season 2 lost 45% of its viewership between seasons over the course of its opening weekend. That’s 12.2 million views down to 6.7 million. While that’s very bad, it is also not exactly a surprise. This happens with many streaming series and with Netflix more than most, given that it pumps out so many shows and has more cancellations as a result.
It is not exactly a great mystery as to what contributes to these drops. Sure, a show can just be bad, and people don’t want to return, that certainly happens. But an obvious culprit is that some streaming series take so incredibly long to return, and The Gentlemen is a prime example. There were two-and-a-half years between seasons 1 and 2 of the show, long even by streaming-era standards. Why? The main factor cited was how busy series creator Guy Ritchie was with other projects in the interim, so The Gentlemen took a back seat when it perhaps should have been a higher priority.
The obvious question is what this means for season 3 of The Gentlemen. In a normal situation, you might imagine that this is the end, the show ends on a cliffhanger and is cancelled because of dramatically lower viewership. That is not the case here. The Gentlemen was already renewed for season 3 before season 2 aired, so unless there is a dramatic reversal, it will return. It will also attempt to cut its wait time in half. Star Theo James says that filming is “imminent” for season 3, and if production timetables stay the same, that could mean a December 2027 release, or about a year and a quarter this time around. Whether that’s enough to avoid another big drop is unclear, but it’s certainly better than what fans just endured with the most recent interminable wait.
Season 2 of The Gentlemen improved its critic score and held its audience scores steady on Rotten Tomatoes. On IMDb, season 2 episodes scored higher than those in season 1 on average. The show, which was already quite good, is improving. But what this means for season 3 is that it will almost certainly have to be a wrap-up, as ending on a cliffhanger meant for a fourth season seems like a terrible idea at this point.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
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