Terminator Zero showrunner Mattson Tomlin revealed that the series was canceled following its first season, posting to X (formerly Twitter):
“It was cancelled. The critical and audience reception to it was tremendous, but at the end of the day not nearly enough people watched it. I would’ve loved to deliver on the Future War I had planned in season’s 2 and 3, but I’m also very happy with how it feels contained as is.“
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Tomlin added in follow-up posts, “Maybe I will return to that world in a different form. I really do love it, and it was extremely gratifying to see so many people connect with it the way they did.” He’d originally planned for a “full five season run,” before going on to say, “The series finale was special and it was part of my pitch to get the job. I’ve written all of the season two scripts and outlined pretty much all of season three.“
Tomlin also defended Netflix, which took heat for canceling the series. “Netflix was really great about supporting the show and giving me tremendous creative freedom to do what I wanted to do. Good partners. The show was expensive and very time consuming. The only way they could justify it was if the audience showed up for it, and they just didn’t.” He described them as “good partners here” when he said they offered to let him do a further “2, maybe 3 episodes more to wrap up the story, which I declined. I felt the story I wanted to tell was much longer, and the finale of season one actually left things in a good place. But they didn’t have to offer that.“
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Released on August 29, 2024, Terminator Zero ranked 413thth most viewed on Netflix (total hours watched divided by runtime) in the second half of 2024 with 4.8 million views (18.2 million hours watched). In the second half of 2025, it ranked 3457th, with 500k views (1.9 million hours watched). Tomlin created and served as showrunner for Terminator Zero. Masashi Kudo directed the series. Production I.G was responsible for animation production. Skydance and Production I.G produced the series.
You can check out our Terminator Zero interview with Tomlin and Kudo here.
Source: Tomlin’s X (formerly Twitter)
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