For many of its established series, Netflix commissions writers rooms for another cycle ahead of the upcoming season’s debut to get a jump on production in the event of renewal. The streamer is taking a more cautious approach with Sweet Magnolias, which launched its fifth season on June 11. It does not have a Season 6 writers room open yet as Netflix is opting to see how the romantic drama performs before making any decisions on its future.
In its opening week, Sweet Magnolias drew 2.8 million views, ranking as No. 4 on Netflix’s Weekly Top 10 for English series. That was a drop of 30% vs. the premiere week viewership for Season 3, which delivered 4M views.
This is not an isolated phenomenon; a lot of Netflix’s series came back recently with their new seasons posting big double-digit drops in their opening week, including The Four Seasons (-63%), A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder (-76%), Beef (-58%), A Man On the Inside (down more than 66%), Running Point (-43%), The Night Agent (-40%), The Witcher (-51%).
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Romantic shows like Sweet Magnolias have held up significantly better, with Bridgerton Season 4 off by 12%, veteran Virgin River‘s most recent seventh season also down by 12%, and comedy Nobody Wants This off by 17% between Seasons 1 and 2.
Sweet Magnolias had been sturdy before, with Season 4 down only 13% from Season 3 in Week 1. (Season 2 launched on a Friday vs. a Thursday start for Seasons 3-5, making comparisons skewed.)
Netflix has renewed series with steeper declines this year, including Four Seasons, Man On the Inside, Running Point and The Night Agent. For The Night Agent, Netflix made the upcoming fourth season a last one, with The Witcher also set to end with its upcoming installment.
The streamer could do the same, giving Sweet Magnolias a sixth and final season.
While there were several cliffhangers, there weren’t major jaw-dropping twists in the South Carolina drama’s Season 5 finale, which once again ended with the eponymous Sweet Magnolias (JoAnna Garcia Swisher, Brooke Elliott & Heather Headley) doing a margarita toast. Deadline asked developer and showrunner Sheryl J. Anderson whether the closer was crafted to also work as a potential series finale in case there is no Season 6.
“I actually think some of our cliffhangers are pretty big but, beyond the ritual of ending with a toast, we always strive to give our audience a balance between the tension of the open questions: Who’s leaving, Who’s coming back, Who’s staying together, all of those, with emotional satisfaction,” she said. “I think maybe in some cases, the emotional satisfaction and the joy is greater than the open questions, but the open questions are certainly there, and we certainly have big thoughts about, if we are lucky enough to get another season, the stories that we will tell.”
