Our Flag Means Death (OFMD) fans have made their displeasure with Max’s decision to cancel the period romantic comedy abundantly clear, bombarding Max’s social media posts with demands for renewal.
Though it’s been roughly a day since OFMD‘s cancellation, the series’ passionate fanbase wasted no time rallying efforts to sail the high seas adventure through to a third season. Creator and showrunner David Jenkins had previously expressed hopes for the series to run three seasons if possible and mourned the news alongside fans on Tuesday. However, much like Izzy Hands, the OFMD community refused to go down without a fight.
Nearly every post on Max‘s social media, from Golden Globe’s congratulations on X to winter scheduling updates on Instagram, has been met with a deluge of comments about OFMD‘s cancellation. While some fans chastised the streamer for contributing to the tiring streaming trend of short-changing queer and POC-led programming, others were simply baffled at the business decision to cancel a successful series that only required one more season to close out its narrative. Whether fans were shaming, pleading, or a combination of both, the call to action remained the same: a request for Max to reverse its cancellation decision.
OFMD fans are no strangers to renewal campaigns, as the community deployed similar efforts between Season 1’s finale and Season 2’s eventual renewal announcement. Season 2’s renewal was not swift, and many fans felt that Max intentionally delayed the announcement until Pride Month. As it turns out, these initial frustrations proved a fitting precursor to the fandom’s cancellation response. The wait for Season 2’s renewal likewise demonstrated the tenacity of the OFMD fanbase, something Max is now bearing the full heat of on its social media pages.
Though renewal campaigns are a practice practically as old as television fandom itself, there are few instances in which such efforts have achieved the desired effect of a network reversing its decision. However, shows that have died on one platform have sometimes been shopped around and granted a second life elsewhere, with some recent examples including One Day at a Time and All Rise. Whether or not Max reconsiders its decision in the aftermath of the recent outcry or not, the ship may not have entirely sailed on a third season for OFMD.
For now, no one involved in OFMD has yet discussed shopping the series to other networks or reviving the story outside of the confines of Max itself. The only comment Jenkins has made on Season 3 since the cancellation news was in an X post where he shared that Blackbeard star and Executive Producer Taika Waititi was “fully on board and behind” a third installment.
