Why Netflix Canceled Its Controversial Series Messiah

In 2017, the producers of the Netflix series "Messiah" issued a statement about their show, which had not been cast or shot yet: "'Messiah' is a series that will have the audience asking big questions. What if someone showed up in 2018 amid strange occurrences and was thought to be the Messiah? What would society do? How would the media cover him? Would millions simply quit work? Could governments collapse? [...] It's a series that could change everything."

"Messiah" debuted on January 1, 2020, and with the benefit of hindsight, it's safe to say the show did not, despite the lofty hopes of its creators, "change everything." The series, which starred Mehdi Dehbi as a controversial figure who may or may not be a new messiah in the modern era and Michelle Monaghan as a CIA officer investigating his rise, failed to make waves upon its release; "Messiah" was canceled less than four months after its first season hit Netflix. As usual, the streaming service did not explicitly explain why the decision was made to pull the plug on the show, but after poking around a little, it becomes easy to make some educated guesses about why the show was not renewed.

There are several potential reasons "Messiah" was canceled after just one season, ranging from religious to practical. 

Deadline reported that two days before the show premiered, the Royal Film Commission of the country of Jordan, which had previously granted the show a tax credit to film there, asked Netflix to avoid releasing "Messiah" in their country, a majority of whose citizens are Muslim. According to DigitalSpy, the show courted controversy by having Mehdi Dehbi play a character who is referred to as Al-Masih ad-Dajjal, which essentially translates into The Antichrist, but because the show wondered whether he was the true messiah, thousands of people signed a petition to cancel the show that referred to it as "anti-Islamic propaganda." The Royal Film Commission issued a statement, which acknowledged that "the story is purely fictional and so are the characters," but said "the content of the series could be largely perceived or interpreted as infringing on the sanctity of religion, thus possibly contravening the laws in the country."

Deadline also reported that a scene shot on Jerusalem's sacred Temple Mount was "raising eyebrows in the Middle East."

Meanwhile, a source told The Hollywood Reporter at the time of cancelation that Netflix was not confident about making another season of the show given the state of the world in the early days of the pandemic. (The show was canceled in late March, just a few days after the United States ground to a halt as it tried to figure out how to deal with the health crisis.) This was a period of immense uncertainty, so you can see how executives might have looked at a show that filmed in both New Mexico and Jordan and decided that it wasn't worth the headache of figuring out how to produce another season under the restrictions that were in place at the time.

Ultimately, though, it's possible that Netflix pulled the rip cord on the show simply because not enough people were watching it. If the controversy wasn't driving eyeballs to the series, it may have made more sense to avoid possibly playing with fire if the payoff wasn't there for the streamer. It seems the only "Messiah" audiences want to see these days is the one of the "Dune" variety.

Season 1 of "Messiah" is still available to watch on Netflix.