When Does American Vandal Season 3 Come Out? Is It Renewed?

What is American Vandal about?

American Vandal is a mockumentary about two high school students making a true crime documentary within their own school. The first season investigates who drew penises on the hoods of every car in the school parking lot, a premise so deliberately stupid that it works as both genuine satire of the true crime genre and an actual mystery that somehow sustains itself across eight episodes. If you've ever watched a Serial or Making a Murderer and thought the breathless investigation felt overwrought for its subject matter, this show is laughing at the same thing you are.

What makes it distinctive is that it commits fully to the bit without winking at the audience. Peter and Maldonado (Tyler Alvarez and Griffin Gluck) conduct real interviews, follow dead ends, develop theories, and create suspect profiles with the same intensity you'd see in actual documentaries about unsolved crimes. The tone stays consistent even when the show ventures into genuinely dark territory, and there's real narrative craft holding together what could have been a one-note joke. The second season shifts to a new mystery involving tainted cafeteria food, which doesn't land quite as well but shows the creators weren't interested in simply repeating the formula.

The show found an audience online despite modest viewership numbers, and critics appreciated both the satire and the willingness to take its central joke seriously. It never became a cultural phenomenon, though it developed devoted fans who respected that it had actual jokes beyond "look at this absurd premise." The cancellation after two seasons seemed partly down to Netflix's typical indifference to mid-tier comedies, even ones that worked.

American Vandal sits apart from most parody because it doesn't make fun of its characters for caring about trivial things. It makes fun of the genre for treating everything as equally important, while simultaneously delivering on the promise of a real mystery. That contradiction is what keeps it interesting across multiple episodes.

Created by Dan Perrault, Tony Yacenda

Is American Vandal renewed or cancelled?

Why was American Vandal cancelled?

American Vandal arrived on Netflix as a mockumentary about high school crimes, mixing the style of true crime documentaries with teenage delinquency. It found an audience, enough that Netflix renewed it for a second season, but that momentum did not last. The show's premise, which relied on the novelty of applying serious documentary conventions to absurd and petty misdemeanors, had limited shelf life. By the end of season two, which aired in September 2018, the creative well had mostly run dry. There were only so many ways to stretch the joke before it became repetitive.

Netflix's decision to cancel came down to simple economics. The show was not drawing the large or sustained viewership numbers the platform needed to justify continued investment. Netflix in the mid-to-late 2010s was still experimenting with what kinds of comedy would hold audiences, and American Vandal, despite critical affection, did not prove it could maintain ratings across multiple seasons. The platform was also shifting toward prestige drama and high-budget spectacle, leaving less room for niche comedies that appealed mainly to younger viewers.

There is no evidence the creators had a definitive endpoint in mind when season two wrapped. The show simply ran out of runway at Netflix, another casualty in the streamer's ongoing culling of underperforming series, regardless of their artistic merit or cult following.

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