'Girlboss' Season 2 Renewed or Cancelled: Unlikable Character, Bad Reviews Risk Renewal Chances?
"Girlboss" on Netflix debuted its first season in April but the streaming service has yet to confirm if the show will return for a second-season run. The young adult series, which stars Britt Robertson as online seller Sophia Marlowe, received scathing reviews that called out the show for its unlikable character.
Robertson's character is based on vintage fashion seller Sophia Amoruso, who founded the shopping site Nasty Gal after eBay kicked her out. Amoruso wrote the book "#GIRLBOSS," which detailed her rise and fall as an online retailer. Award-winning actress Charlize Theron became interested in the book and produced the TV show, with Amoruso also providing creative inputs.
Amoruso's Nasty Gal was last decade's go-to website for fashion-savvy women. Entrepreneurs hailed her as a shining example of starting a business from scratch to end up building an online empire. Her story was supposed to inspire and empower women but by 2015, Amoruso stepped down as the company's CEO and her company filed for bankruptcy.
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A review from the Observer stated that the main problem with "Girlboss" is in its lead character or source material, despite Robertson's performance. Amoruso/Marlowe had such a strong personality that her flawed character only made viewers hate her and not empathize or relate with her issues.
Because Sophia came across as an unpleasant and terrible person, some saw her character as a bad representation for women. Variety called the show's lead character as a "frustrating hero." In discussing the hate viewers had for the Sophia character and the series in general, one Redditor described "Girlboss" as a "cringey, unfunny, San Francisco hipster version of Kimmy Schmidt," the titular character of another Netflix series.
With such negative feedback, speculations are that Netflix won't likely give "Girlboss" a second season. But showrunner Kay Cannon remains hopeful because the lessons from the show are just beginning to unravel. When the story was first pitched to Netflix, Cannon already clued them in on where season 2 could go.
If "Girlboss" gets another shot, the writers will also definitely touch on Amoruso's bankruptcy. "That's a wonderful story to tell. I hope Netflix lets us tell it and we get enough seasons to do that," Cannon told The Hollywood Reporter.
