‘GLOW’s Renewal Reversed: Netflix Dramedy Not Returning for Fourth & Final Season

GLOW Season 2 Episode 1
Erica Parise/Netflix

Like other shows, including others on Netflix, GLOW is not returning for an already picked up season due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The female wrestling dramedy had been renewed for a fourth and final season in September 2019, but Netflix reversed that decision, Deadline reports. GLOW is one of the many TV shows that had been in production (for three weeks) when the coronavirus pandemic shut it down. That’s also why filming will not resume and the series has been canceled. “Shooting this physically intimate show with its large ensemble cast [is] especially challenging,” Netflix said in a statement.

“COVID has killed actual humans. It’s a national tragedy and should be our focus. COVID also apparently took down our show. Netflix has decided not to finish filming the final season of GLOW,” creators Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch added in their own statement. “We were handed the creative freedom to make a complicated comedy about women and tell their stories. And wrestle. And now that’s gone.

“There’s a lot of s**tty things happening in the world that are much bigger than this right now. But it still sucks that we don’t get to see these 15 women in a frame together again. We’ll miss our cast of weirdo clowns and our heroic crew.”

The problems facing GLOW‘s production included its filming location (Los Angeles) and the close, physical contact and heavy breathing — both of which are to be avoided as much as possible to not risk spreading the virus — of the wrestling scenes. And if the cast and crew had been able to return to set to complete the season, the episodes would not have been released until 2022. (The third season dropped on August 9, 2019.)

This decision comes after Netflix previously canceled the previously renewed The Society and I Am Not Okay With This and ABC did the same with Stumptown, all due to reasons related to production and the pandemic.