Crystal Dynamics announced that the Netflix animated series Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft will receive a second season despite negative reviews and seemingly poor viewership.

Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft (L to R) Earl Baylon as Jonah Maiava, Hayley Atwell as Lara Croft and Allen Maldonado as Zip in Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft. Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2024

In a blog post on the Tomb Raider website it announced, “We’re thrilled to announce that Season 2 is confirmed.”

Furthermore, the company shared a logline for the second season, “When adventurer Lara Croft discovers a trail of stolen African Orisha masks, she joins forces with her best friend Sam to retrieve the precious artifacts. Lara’s thrilling new adventure takes her around the globe as she delves deeper into the hidden secrets of Orisha history, dodges the machinations of a dangerous and enigmatic billionaire who wants the masks for herself, while discovering these relics contain dark secrets and a power that defies logic. Power that may, in fact, be divine.”

Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft (L to R) Earl Baylon as Jonah Maiava and Hayley Atwell as Lara Croft in Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft. Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2024

Of note the announcement does not say that the season was renewed, it just says that it is confirmed. It’s quite possible that a second season was always planned and was even part of the initial deal to begin with.

That appeared to be the case with Netflix’s deal with Mattel where they ordered a total of 52 episodes for the She-Ra and the Princess of Power reboot that ran for 2 years and 5 seasons.

Entertainment analyst and host of Clownfish TV, Kneon shared on X back in September, “She-Ra got canceled after its initial episode order, which was pretty generous. 52 episodes is pretty much the norm for a show that they intend to push to syndication. The toys flopped. Mattel is not revisiting Dreamworks She-Ra, only Classic.”

He added, “There is no movie or S6 in the works. And nobody talks about or thinks about that show in 2024. It was here and gone, like most Netflix shows.”

 

Nevertheless, this confirmation of a second season comes in the wake of seemingly poor viewership for the show. In the week that it released, the show failed to chart on Netflix’s Top 10 most watch English-language TV shows.

The show failed to generate even 1.8 million views, which was the amount of views that Prison Break: Season 1 generated for the week of October 7 – October 13, 2024. Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft debuted on Netflix on October 10th.

Netflix’s Top 10 English language TV shows for the week of October 7 -13, 2024

Not only did the show not chart in its first week, but it failed to chart in its second week as well.

Of note, the animated series Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance: Season 1 did chart with 2.4 million views, which was good enough for 7th place.

Netflix’s Top 10 English language TV shows for the week of October 14 -20, 2024

Not only did the show have poor viewership, but it also received a ton of negative reviews. On IMDb, the show has a 5.3 out of 10 rating from over 4,600 reviews. The unweighted mean is lower at 5.0.

Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft IMDb reviews

On Rotten Tomatoes, the show has an even worse score from viewers. It currently has a 32% on the website’s Popcornmeter, which is what they renamed the Audience Score.

Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft Rotten Tomatoes reviews

YouTube critic Critical Drinker also lampooned the show. He said, “Aside from the god awful Resident Evil series that I’m still having therapy for I don’t think I’ve seen any show misuse its source material in such spectacular fashion before. Tomb Raider is a f***ing embarrassment that shames the very name of Lara Croft, sacrifices character and story integrity to work in the tedious and cringy tropes of modern writing, wastes its talented voice cast on clunky dialogue, and rams it all home with s***ty animation that looks about 20 years out of date.”

“In short, it’s a boring and pandering mess that proves once again why Lara Croft absolutely cannot be adapted for modern audiences,” he added.

What do you make of Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft getting a second season?