Will There Be A Zero Chill Season 2?

The first season of Netflix's young adult sports drama, Zero Chill, comes out on March 15, 2021 and will consist of ten episodes. The story focuses on the lives of 15-year-old twin Canadian athletes who are most at home on the ice. Mac (Dakota Taylor) wins a spot at a prestigious ice hockey academy in the U.K., and his family decides to follow him across the pond. Kayla (Grace Beedle), who is distraught at having to have her figure skating dreams interrupted in favor of her brother's sport, must find her own place and figure out how to navigate her ambition in a new country.

Zero Chill comes from writers Kirstie Falkous and John Regier, the same folks that brought teen-focused, horse-friendly Free Rein to Netflix. This new series was filmed in Sheffield, U.K., and arrives on the streamer a bit late, as it was originally scheduled to air in late 2020, according to The Star. As some viewers have pointed out, it seems a bit odd for a potential hockey star to move from Canada to the U.K. to get better at a sport that Canada considers part of its cultural identity — but hopefully, the plot will explain that away to fans' satisfaction. It definitely has potential as an engaging teen drama that features a coming-of-age story for both siblings.

If you're excited about this series, you might already be wondering if there will be a second season of the show. After all, if it's like Free Rein, it'll run for less than 30 minutes per episode, which doesn't give it a lot of time to tell a complete story. It wouldn't outside of Netflix's standard operating procedure to order a show for two seasons right off the bat, but unfortunately that isn't what happened here. Here's what know so far about season 2 of Zero Chill.

While Netflix has occasionally renewed shows fairly early, as it did with Bridgerton about three weeks after that show's December 25, 2020 launch, Zero Chill hasn't even aired a single episode yet. Wired previously reported that the first 28 days of a Netflix series are critical to its later prospects, so it's possible we could have some sense of Zero Chill's future prospect by the end of April.

The network's review process looks at viewership versus cost of renewal: Is the cost of making another season proportional to the number of viewers the show receives? And will Netflix subscribers, specifically, watch it? Netflix reported to the U.K. Parliament that, when making these decisions, it looks at the first seven days the show is available and the first 28 days the show is available. It counts the number of people that watch one episode, the number that finish a whole season, and the number of subscribers who watch a show to completion within a month (via Vulture). Netflix has not revealed exactly how much weight these numbers carry in the overall bump-or-dump decision-making process.

Even though a Netflix original might be renewed relatively early by the streaming giant, not all of them are. Grand Army, another teen-focused (but much darker) show, has been waiting since October for news of a possible second season. Free Rein, Lime Pictures' previous outing, launched its first season in June 2017 and it wasn't until late November that season 2 was announced by actor Bruce Herbelin-Earle over Twitter. So, fans of Zero Chill could be in for a lengthy wait.

In the meantime, it's probably best to enjoy the series when it comes out, rewatch a few hundred times if you love it, and keep an eye on the news.