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Anne With an E returns to Netflix today with its third — and allegedly final — season. In this age of Peak TV, we’re used to popular shows getting an ignoble early cancellation, but there’s something different about Anne With an E‘s case. That is, fans have not only rallied to the show’s cause with utter abandon, but the fans might actually win this round.
To understand why Anne With an E still might have a chance to come back from the dead, you have to know all about the show itself. The series reimagines Lucy Maud Montgomery’s classic heroine for a modern audience. Young Anne Shirley (Amybeth McNulty) isn’t portrayed simply as an odd duck, but the victim of years of institutional abuse. Her friends and her grapple with heavy issues like racism and classism, you know, as well as the perils of green hair dye bought from untrustworthy peddlers. Anne With an E is a bold take on traditional material, and it only exists thanks to a now defunct partnership between the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Company) and Netflix. When that alliance broke apart, so did Anne With an E‘s funding…or did it?
WILL THERE BE A SEASON 4 OF ANNE WITH AN E? COULD ANNE WITH AN E RETURN FOR A FOURTH SEASON?
Sadly, at this time, Anne With an E has been officially cancelled. That means that the third season, now streaming on Netflix, is intended to be the show’s final season.
However, fans of the show have taken to Twitter (with the #SaveAnneWithAnE), Change.org, and even Netflix support with their pleas of mercy for the fallen series. While Netflix has been on something of a cancellation tear this year — pour one out for Tuca and Bertie, The OA, GLOW, and a ton more — fans of Anne With an E have some cause for optimism. And we mean “some,” not a lot. It all has to do with the mysterious reasons why the show was cancelled in the first place…
WHY WAS ANNE WITH AN E CANCELLED? CAN ANNE WITH AN E BE UN-CANCELED?
To understand why there’s a bit of controversy over Anne With an E‘s untimely demise, you need to know the backstory of the show’s third season.
All the way back in August 2018, Deadline reported that CBC and Netflix were moving ahead with a third season of the show ahead of it’s linear Canadian debut on CBC. The comments from CBC’s General Manager of Programming, Sally Catto, at this time appeared to signal that CBC was signed onto the show for the long run. Catto said, “We have no doubt that Canadians will continue to fall in love with this beautiful and heartwarming series for seasons to come.”
Now that could have just been spin to hype the third season, but something odd happened about a year later. CBC’s president and CEO Catherine Tait revealed in October 2019 that CBC would no longer partner with Netflix on big co-productions, like Anne With an E. Financial Post reported that Tait shared on the Content Canada podcast that “we’re not going to do deals that hurt the long-time viability of our domestic industry.” Essentially, she felt that Netflix got more out of the deal than the CBC.
This conversation came smack in the middle of Anne With an E‘s third season run and on November 25, 2019, Netflix announced that January 3, 2020 as the premiere date for the third and final season of Anne With an E.
The CBC claimed that they and Netflix came to a joint decision regarding the show’s future, but curiously both companies have dealt with the fan campaign to revive the series in different ways. The CBC published an article suggesting that the fan campaign to save the show was fueled by fake bots, while Netflix support offered fans a link to their homepage where they could request the show be renewed.
HOW CAN I SAVE ANNE WITH AN E?
Well, it’s a long shot, but Netflix definitely seems curious about possibly resurrecting it. Hence why there are persistent rumors they’ll be looking at the Season 3 viewing numbers. Since we know that Netflix does make a lot of their programming decisions off of data collected in the first few weeks that a title is live, it would help for Anne With an E fans to watch the series ASAP.
Again, if fans want to voice their concerns to Netflix directly, they can use the following official form to request a fourth season of Anne With an E.
Season 3 of Anne With an E is now streaming on Netflix.
