You may not watch it and you may not have ever even heard of it, but Freeform’s Shadowhunters is a very popular show with a very active and vocal fanbase, as evidenced by the fact that it was named the best TV show of 2018 at the People’s Choice Awards in November—not Killing Eve, not The Good Place, and not The Americans, since none of those were even nominated. Freeform decided to cancel the show earlier this year after three seasons, with the final episodes to air in February, but Shadowhunters fans aren’t going to let it go down without a fight and have resorted to pleading with the Freeform Twitter account to save the show (as fans often do with stuff like this).
Fortunately, Freeform has heard the cries of the Shadowhunters fans. Unfortunately, it responded to them in a way that doesn’t inspire much hope for the show’s future. During a “POPnKnowledge” airing of Toy Story recently on Freeform that had fun little gags pop up on the screen along with the movie, the network paired the question “Will Freeform save Shadowhunters if I keep tweeting about it?” with the scene where Woody shakes a Magic 8 Ball and receives the snotty response: “Don’t count on it.”
It is—no offense to Shadowhunters fans—hilarious. However, Freeform seems to have forgotten that the fanbase it is poking fun at is a fanbase that had enough power to make a canceled show be named the best of 2018, and it turns out that Shadowhunters fans don’t think it’s as funny as we do. The network has been forced to issue an apology, dismissing the joke as a “mistake” in a tweet that has been viciously ratio’d.
Seriously, Freeform. What were you thinking? This would be like The CW telling its viewers to stop ‘shipping every character on every one of its shows or Fox News telling viewers to stop being racist.