Can you believe Netflix is robin us of a second season of Tuca & Bertie?? We’re really in a fowl mood. This should be illeagle.
Tuca & Bertie, the irreverent animated comedy about two female birds navigating changing lives and friendship in their 30s, has been canceled at Netflix after just one season. It’s a major disappointment for a promising show that taught us as much about birds and boobs (and sex bugs) as it did about ourselves.
In a thread on Twitter, creator Lisa Hanawalt (Bojack Horseman) announced that Netflix has declined to pick up Tuca & Bertie for a second season. She shared how proud she was of the cast — which featured Ali Wong (Always Be My Maybe), Tiffany Haddish (Girls Trip), and Steven Yeun (The Walking Dead) — that latter of whom tweeted a couple weeks ago how he “hoped” to make more of Tuca & Bertie in the future.
Tuca & Bertie is everything I wanted it to be: beautiful, funny, fresh, loving, horny, weird, experimental, comforting, and deep. The whole team put our hearts and asses into this show, and I’m so proud of it.
— Lisa Hanawalt (@lisadraws) July 24, 2019
Hanawalt also noted how often she receives feedback from fans on how much the show has meant to them. Unfortunately, it seems like the views and engagement weren’t high enough for Netflix, as she partially blames the “algorithm” for the fact that it wasn’t renewed.
Netflix has been losing customers lately, especially in the United States, as companies like Disney, Warner Bros., and others have begun pulling content from the streaming platform to make way for their own streaming services.
Best of all, I still get daily messages and tweets from viewers who connect personally to the characters and stories. The birdsona & plantsona fan art is SO incredible, are you kidding me! And the show is still being discovered by new fans every day!!
— Lisa Hanawalt (@lisadraws) July 24, 2019
Thank you to everyone who loves and supports T&B, and to everyone who was comforted and felt like this show gave you a voice. I’m hopeful we can find a home for Tuca & Bertie to continue their adventures. #TucaandBertie pic.twitter.com/xmrAV7Ooyq
— Lisa Hanawalt (@lisadraws) July 24, 2019
The cancellation of Tuca & Bertie definitely surprised me, and kind of hit me hard. Everybody I’ve talked to who’s seen Tuca & Bertie has something about it that resonated with them, whether it was a scene, an episode, or just a mood that echoed long after the season was over. For me, it was the episode when Bertie was having a panic attack at the grocery store — as that’s the place where I tend to get anxiety attacks, albeit for different reasons. It’s hard to find shows from a female perspective that handle complex issues in a thoughtful but still irreverent way. This was one of them.
One season doesn’t feel like enough. I would love to see the show end up on another network in the future but that seems doubtful as it’s usually Netflix saving canceled series from other networks versus the other way around (except that one time). Though fans have started using hashtags like #SaveTucaAndBertie (started by our own Jill Pantozzi) and #RenewTucaAndBertie, so you never know.
The 10-episode debut season of Tuca & Bertie is available to watch on Netflix.