‘The Brothers Sun’ Season 2: Will Netflix Renew or Cancel?

Michelle Yeoh as Mama Sun in The Brothers Sun – Picture: Michael Desmond/Netflix Netflix kickstarted the year with a new action comedy series headlined by Oscar-winning actress Michelle Yeoh that follows a family deeply embedded in crime.  Filmed over a period of four months, the new series came from Brad Falchuk, who is best known for collaborating with Ryan Murphy on a slew of shows. This serves as his first major breakaway, and the show was one of the first major TV releases of 2024 for Netflix, launching on January 4th, 2024. The Brothers Sun has been a hit with critics, with an 85% RottenTomatoes score at the time of publishing, allowing it to get a Certified Fresh rating. Audience scores are equally as impressive, with a 93% on RT and 7.7/10 on IMDb. The Brothers Sun isn’t currently renewed for a season 2 Official Renewal Status: Not Yet Renewed Our Renewal Prediction: 50/50 As it stands, the series is currently awaiting an official renewal for season 2 at Netflix. For more on how Netflix decides whether to renew or cancel a show, we’ve got you covered in our guide to renewal decisions. The short of it is that the show needs to meet or exceed certain expectations on Netflix’s own internal metrics, which are then compared against the cost of a second season. Performance, as we’ll come onto in just a second, hasn’t been particularly strong thus far, but we’ll likely need to see more data from weeks 2, 3, and 4 before knowing whether the show will be getting a thumbs up for renewal. The story certainly leaves room for more, at the very least. How well is The Brothers Sun performing on Netflix so far? Using various sources, we can look into how well the show is performing on the streaming service. Let’s begin with Netflix’s top 10 data, which is released every Tuesday. Releasing the Thursday means that in week 1, it qualified for four days in the top 10s, where it ranked fifth on the TV English side, getting 30.2M hours watched or 4.1M views. Week Period Hours Viewed Views / CVE Rank Week in Top 10 December 31st, 2023 to January 7th, 2024 30,200,000 4,100,000 5 1 Let’s stack that up with other titles using the views (or, as we refer to it, completed viewing equivalents) and see how it’s comparing in its first week. When compared to other debut shows released on a Thursday, we can see that the show falls very much towards the bottom of the pack, getting slightly more viewership than Survival of the Thickest and Unstable but less than Obliterated (also waiting for a season 2 renewal) and My Life with the Walter Boys. Week 1 for The Brothers Sun versus other shows Data from FlixPatrol suggests the show is sticking around in the top 10s past the first week’s viewership figures released, but we’ll be keeping an eye on their data to see how and where the show remains sticky in the charts. Top performing countries, according to their data, include the US, Canada, France, Australia, South Africa, and some Asian territories. Ultimately, we’re going to need lots more data in the coming weeks to assess how the show is progressing, but based on initial impressions, it’s a slow start. How about looking at external signals on performance? The YouTube trailer for the show performed well for the series, with just over 2M views, which has often been cited as indicative of performance on Netflix. TelevisionStats.com has the show peaking as the third biggest TV show between January 6th and January 7th and is now at number 8 at the time of publishing. It gives the series a “High Engagement” score. Google Trends suggests the show is on the come down after a week on the platform already, with interest on the search engine dwarfed by Fool Me Once but more comparable to the likes of My Life with the Walter Boys and Obliterated. Google trends data for The Brothers Sun, Fool Me Once, My Life with the Walter Boys, and Obliterated. What to Expect From The Brothers Sun Season 2 Warning: Spoilers below – don’t read if you haven’t watched all eight episodes.  Picture: Netflix By the end of episode 8, titled Protect the Family, things had come to a head with the Sun family, with Charles having received the order to kill his young brother, but he ultimately decides to stand with his mother and Bruce. With the ensuing shootout, Bruce then confronts Big Sun, who gives him the opportunity to betray his family and join the family gang, but he, too, stands by his sibling and shoots Big Sun but not fatally. The ending of the episode sees Big Sun in hospital with insulin being slowly pumped into him, likely leading to his demise as he’s been incorrectly marked as diabetic, leaving Eileen as the likely successor to the throne. She decides to take the opportunity and announces that she’ll be headed to Taiwan to take the reigns of the family business. The end sees Charles and June joining Eileen and setting the stage for whatever season 2 will hold. Do you want to see The Brothers Sun return for another season? Let us know in the comments down below.