Days after cancelling fantasy drama Dominion, Syfy has cancelled sci-fi series Defiance. Our page of Defiance‘s season three ratings tells most of the story. Defiance lost viewers from season to season. For season one, Defiance averaged 0.7 in the 18-49 demographic and 2.09 million viewers. Season two averages were 0.46 in the demo and 1.56 million viewers. Compare those to season three: 0.25 in the demo and 1.13 million viewers.
Defiance is set in the year 2046. It’s a new Earth and there are new rules. It’s been more than 30 years since various alien races started arriving on our world. The landscape has been completely altered — terraformed nearly beyond recognition. The Defiance cast includes: Grant Bowler, Julie Benz, Stephanie Leonidas, Jaime Murray, Tony Curran, Graham Greene, Mia Kirshner, and Fionnula Flanagan.
Deadline reports:
Defiance was a big financial investment and a content experiment for Syfy; it was developed in a partnership with Trion Worlds as a convergence of television and online gaming. After a solid ratings start, the show has been sliding, with its most recent third season averaging 1.1 million viewers in Live+same day, down 28% from Season 2. Still, Defiance qualified as Syfy’s most watched drama series this year, making its cancelation clearly a financial decision. […]
From Variety:
Drama vet Kevin Murphy served as exec producer and showrunner of of “Defiance,” which wrapped its 13-episode third season late this summer.
“I got to collaborate with a group of stunning artists operating at the top of their game, and together we built a world. Because of that, there is no room for anything other than joy in my heart,” Murphy said.
In a statement, Syfy commented: “‘Defiance’ was a truly groundbreaking series, delivering an immersive, cross-platform experience that transcended the television screen in a way that viewers had never seen before. We are incredibly proud of the work of the extraordinary cast, writers, artists and designers — and especially showrunner Kevin Murphy — who together brought the rich world of ‘Defiance’ to life over its three season arc.”
Defiance marks Syfy’s fifth recent cancelled or ended show. Add it to the list with Dominion, Haven, Lost Girl and Continuum.
What do you think? Did you watch Syfy’s Defiance? Do you play the online game? Do you think the Defiance TV series should have been cancelled? Would you have watched a fourth season?
I was looking forward to the next season of Defiance. If the networks keep canceling shows that I like I might just save myself money and cancel my cable subscription.
That’s pretty much why we did cancel our satellite. We were paying a fortune for unreal reality shows, shopping channels-ewwww-and a lot of low quality sitcoms and rehashed cops and docs. We binge watch every quality show we come across on Netflix and Amazon. Defiance could have gone on for a good long run, but then I have been peeved with network decisions since Firefly. Arrrrgh!
I too have switched to Netflix and amazon. also added hula. very few things I cant see right away with them. I am sad this show is gone but glad atleast the online game is still going.
Really sad to hear that this great series has been canceled. i have watched the first 2 seasons and the story developement was really good in both seasons, and i am looking forward to the third series which i have still to watch. what is sad is i felt the stories had a lot of scope and could have lasted for at least 5-6 seasons at least and give it a proper ending which this series deserves which they never seem to do at all
Well, Syfy admits it wasn’t the ratings, it was the budget. Hello???? to have a good series you need to sink money into it! So I guess that’s why we get wrestling and horrible shark movies. I signed the petition to save Defiance on Netflix at: Change.org
Really? Defiance? Really? Come on now, it was a good show and there was no reason to cancel it. You’ve cancelled all your top shows so back to BBC channel for me! You are going to lose a lot of customers now!
I think it’s a shame that on top of Dominion being canceled, Defiance is also being canceled, no wonder why SyFy is losing viewers, whoever is in charge of these cancellations, really needs to be replaced, a lot of the shows that have and are being cancelled, were the shows that were renewing people’s attention to the SyFy network, I guarantee you that popularity will drop after these cancellations, everytime you air a show that brings a new group of people actually paying attention to the SyFy network, you guys cancel it much too quickly and replace it with a… Read more »
Sad to see it go; at least they tied it up nicely. Really enjoyed watching the Tarr family evolution. Had a bad feeling about it at the start of season 3 considering the die off at the start. Considering the garbage that’s on TV in general, I really liked this show; although I think Caprica getting cancelled after 1 season was the worst offence by far.
You suck SyFy. BBCA has better sci-fi than SyFy.
Should not been cancelled best show on syfy even said that on imbd, just like firefly syfy needs to not cancel this show, or bring back firefly
Very disappointing. This was a series that had so much potential, and although some of that potential wound up being rushed through, I always enjoyed the various plots and characters.
wow, so apparently stable ratings all season even gets a show cancelled nowadays. Man, not everything can be an over marketed CBS/NBC type piece of crap. I know networks only care about ratings and viewers, it would just be nice if they somewhat cared about the non braindead, mindless drones who only watch shows based on who’s in it and how hot they are.
Wow, I think they gave up on this show to soon and it brought me to their channel. It was groundbreaking in many ways and I wish Netflix would take a chance on it but after investing 3 years into this great show, the channel has left me little confidence in ever watching a new series again with them. I am definitely disappointed it was not given another year.
Keep it going, change the night and ratings will soar. A television masterpiece, best thing Syfy ever made.
A television masterpiece, best thing Syfy ever made. Keep it going, change the night and ratings will soar.
Just like SyFy to end a good program. The ratings dropping were their own fault. Everyone knows when a show moves to Friday night there’s a good chance it won’t succeed . You’d think they would of learned this from what NBC did to Star Trek back in the sixties. Not much on SyFy I really care for now. SyFy seems to be going backwards instead of forward.
this was and is one of my favorite shows. Can’t stand that it is being cancelled
Season 1 was pretty good, but season 2 was a drag and I nearly gave up on it. I stuck by due to the limited number of shows. I haven’t seen season 3 yet, waiting for it to stream on Amazon, but didn’t expect much following season 2. It had a great premise and interesting side stories.
Season 3 was the best one yet imo.