Disney Axes Fan-Favorite Horror Anthology Series Despite Strong Reviews
It’s official, Goosebumps won’t be coming back for a third season. Sources told Deadline that Disney+ has canceled the horror series based on R.L. Stine’s classic books.
The show came from Disney Branded Television and Sony Pictures Television, and each season told a brand-new creepy story with a fresh cast. The second season, titled Goosebumps: The Vanishing, followed a pair of teenage siblings who stumbled onto a strange threat. As they dug deeper, they found themselves caught in a mystery about four teens who vanished back in 1994.
Unlike the original 1995 Goosebumps show, which featured a different spooky tale in each episode, this modern version told one long story over an entire season. It still brought in some of the monsters and objects from the books, but the storytelling was more serialized.
The series was developed by Rob Letterman and Nicholas Stoller. Letterman, who directed the first Goosebumps movie in 2015, also directed the pilot episode for the Disney+ show. Sony Pictures Television, Original Film, and Scholastic Entertainment, the same group behind the two Goosebumps movies, helped produce the series.
Disney+ and Hulu launched the first season together on October 13, 2023, as part of their Halloween streaming events “Hallowstream” and “Huluween.” It quickly grabbed attention. According to JustWatch, Goosebumps ranked seventh among all shows in the U.S. during the week of October 9–15, 2023, and jumped to third place the next week. Reelgood listed it as the ninth most-watched program in mid-October, and TV Time ranked it as one of the top original series for several weeks that month.
The first season scored a 76% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with the critics consensus reading, “Wickedly inventive enough to give viewers the creeps if not nightmares, Goosebumps solidly transplants R.L. Stine’s spooky stories into a serialized format.” On Metacritic, it earned a 60 out of 100, showing mixed reviews.
Season two premiered on January 10, 2025, and earned a 77% Rotten Tomatoes score along with a 65/100 on Metacritic, which is considered “generally favorable.” Still, in August 2025, Disney+ decided to end the series.
Neither Disney+ nor Sony has explained why the show was canceled, especially since reviews and fan interest remained strong. For now, the spooky adventures have come to a halt after two seasons, leaving viewers to wonder if Goosebumps might one day rise again on another platform.
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