Why Prime Video Canceled My Lady Jane

Remember when premature TV show cancellations were rare enough to inspire massive fan movements and force their home networks to bring them back? In the streaming era, the water cooler "monoculture" is no more, and streaming shows with plenty of fans seem to be canceled every single week. 2024 has seen the premature death of several notable titles, and some of them were canceled not long after they aired. "My Lady Jane," an Amazon Prime Video original, was among this season's casualties, and despite an outcry from fans, it doesn't seem to be coming back any time soon.

A historical romance with a fantastical twist, "My Lady Jane" is one of the weirder outings Prime Video has offered in recent years. As Erik Kain's Forbes review explains, the show "involves people known as Ethians who can change into animal forms and who are oppressed and outcast by the Verity, the normal humans that tend to rule everything and have bigoted opinions about their at-times furry friends." Animal transformations aside, the series focuses on Lady Jane Grey (Emily Bader), a sixteenth-century English royal who ends up in an arranged marriage with Lord Guildford Dudley (Edward Bluemel). The show is based on a book by Jodi Meadows, Brodi Ashton, and Cynthia Hand.

"My Lady Jane" premiered in June, and news broke that it had been canceled by August. No official reason was given for the show's ending, but outlets including The Hollywood Reporter theorized that it "didn't catch on" with Prime subscribers, as it reportedly never made into the Nielsen ratings' top 10. The show also received middling reviews from critics and viewers alike. Though Forbes called it "one of the best shows of 2024," only a little over half of the critics who reviewed it gave the show a seal of approval, per Rotten Tomatoes. About three-quarters of the viewers who rated "My Lady Jane" on the aggregate site were into the series, which has a not at all bad 7.4 rating on IMDb.

According to ScreenRant, the best aspect of "My Lady Jane" was its strong enemies-to-lovers storyline. The arranged marriage at its center both calls to mind and stands in sharp contrast to the one on another period dramedy, "The Great." However, while the royal couple on that Hulu series spend most of their screen time trying to kill one another, the newlyweds on "My Lady Jane" actually develop strong romantic tension. They also have to cope with the fact that one of them might be an animal shapeshifter, but that's neither here nor there.

The show's existing fan base was understandably miffed by its cancellation, and it turned out that "A Song of Ice and Fire" author George R.R. Martin was among them. Martin shared a petition to bring the show back on his Not A Blog website, explaining: 

"I have always loved alternate history and Jane Grey, England's nine-days queen, has always fascinated me. Small wonder, then, that I really enjoyed 'My Lady Jane,' a clever and original historical fantasy on Amazon Prime, set in an England full of witches and shapechangers, where Jane lasts more than nine days." 

Martin noted that he worked with co-showrunner Meredith Glynn on a shelved "Game of Thrones" spinoff (though it's not clear which one), and compared the show positively to "The Great."

The real Jane Grey was only Queen for nine days and was ultimately beheaded, but "My Lady Jane" wasn't on track to take the same route. In a June 2024 interview with Entertainment Weekly, series creator Gemma Burgess said a second season was "always a possibility." She added, "If we are fortunate enough to get a season 2, then we are going to be exploring all of them growing up and moving on and figuring out how to survive in the world where Jane is free, but the kingdom is not." But like so many shows born into a crowded streaming market, "My Lady Jane" ultimately wasn't fortunate enough to live that second-season dream.