On April 8, many children of all ages wept at “Watching And Dreaming,” the series finale of the beloved animated show “The Owl House.” First airing in January 2020 and having since garnered quite a large fan base, “The Owl House” (TOH) can be found on Disney XD or the streaming service Disney+. It follows a quirky tween named Luz Noceda who discovers a portal into a magical world called the Boiling Isles, which is inhabited by witches and ruled by the evil Emperor Belos. 

The show did not get picked up for a fourth season, and the third and final season of the show was only three episodes long, unfortunately. Why was it cut short, despite its good ratings? The most popular theories among fans were that Disney took issue with the show’s LGBTQ+ representation or that the company didn’t have enough money to keep funding the show as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, but according to an article on Distractify, TOH showrunner Dana Terrace revealed via Reddit that the reason for the show’s cancellation was simply that it didn’t mesh with the taste of some Disney executives. “At the end of the day, there are a few business people who oversee what fits into the Disney brand and one day one of those guys decided TOH didn’t fit that ‘brand,’’ Terrace wrote. “The story is serialized, our audience skews older, and that just didn’t fit this one guy’s tastes. … Really grinds my guts, boils my brain, kicks my shins, all the things. It sucks but it is what it is.”

Madeleine Brose ‘24, a fan of TOH and other animated shows, was shocked when she found out about the cancellation of this show. She said, “At first, I was like, What? That can’t be right.’ Because it was very popular, at least from what I had seen on the internet, but it was, and I was really disappointed. It’s very much my kind of show, and I’m very sad that it didn’t get to reach its full potential.”

“The Owl House” isn’t the only cartoon that’s been canceled recently, either; this past January, Hamish Steele, the creator of the Netflix original animated series “Dead End: Paranormal Park”, posted a Tweet announcing the cancellation of his show and leaving myself and its other viewers both sad and confused.  Steele mentioned in this Tweet that they did, in fact, do a writer’s room for season three of the show and that he had always planned to give these characters the happy ending they deserved, but sadly the powers that be put an end to that. The show aired for two seasons and followed two teenagers and a talking pug who fought demons in a haunted amusement park, and I binged the whole first season last summer. Other animated shows that have been canceled include “Inside Job,” “Q-Force,” “Tuca & Bertie,” “City of Ghosts” (which actually won a Peabody award) and “Bad Crimes”, which was canceled before it could even become a series. 

There isn’t much that we can do as regular people to prevent these cancellations; it seems that even animated shows that are acclaimed are at risk of getting the ax. What I can suggest to you, though, is to watch these shows to see how great they are. Maybe you will even agree with me that they did not deserve to be canceled.