This article contains spoilers for Warrior.
There are three universal truths in life: death, taxes, and the premature cancellation of your favorite show. Unless you are a fan of The Walking Dead – and only The Walking Dead – you’ve probably already had to say goodbye to a series that you swear had two or three seasons left in it. And sometimes, in the case of a show like Warrior, you’ve had to say goodbye more than once.
One week before Christmas, Warner Bros. Discovery offered us their version of a lump of coal: Warrior, their critically acclaimed show about rival Chinese gangs in 1880s San Francisco, has been canceled. Granted, the news didn’t come as too much of a surprise for Warrior fans. For as much as the show has slowly earned a devoted following due to its combination of violence and historical fiction, Warrior had teetered on the verge of cancellation for years.
So if this is truly and finally the final journey for Warrior, let us take a moment to appreciate the small miracle that we got to enjoy it in the first place. From the first episode to the final scenes, Warrior has raised the bar for what we could expect from the medium while also assembling one of the greatest groups of Asian American creators in television history.
The Series That Wouldn’t Die
From the beginning, Warrior danced with death.
When the show premiered on Cinemax in 2019, it joined shows like The Knick as proof of the cable channel’s ability to “do” prestige. Much like Gangs of New York – Martin Scorsese’s award-winning period piece about rival gang violence in New York City – Warrior wove together threads of immigration and cultural identity in turn-of-the-century San Francisco. The show also marked new heights for showrunner Jonathan Tropper, who reunited with series regulars like Langley Kirkwood and Hoon Lee from his critically acclaimed Cinemax series Banshee.
Almost immediately, however, challenges appeared. Season 2 would be the final season of original programming for Cinemax; the cable television streamer was a casualty of a series of mergers and acquisitions that occurred between 2020 and 2022 for parent company Warner Bros. While the show had already been renewed, the chances of Warrior being picked up by its new platform seemed slim, until HBO Max surprised everyone by renewing the show in 2021.
After a two-year delay, Season 3 would drop in 2023 – just in time to be impacted by two once-in-a-lifetime industry strikes. These strikes prevented the talent from promoting their new season, and the newly appointed Warner-Discovery leadership would eventually cancel the series, license the show to Netflix, and release the cast from their contract. For a show that could seemingly never die, this feels final, Netflix bump or not.
Warrior Raised the Bar for Action
Many shows don’t get second chances; in modern-day Hollywood, even some finished projects are killed before they see the light of day. For years, Warrior defied these odds by simply being too good to get rid of. In keeping to its origins as an original script from Bruce Lee, Warrior launched the career of a new action icon – Andrew Koji, star of films like Bullet Train and Snake Eyes – and put everything it had into redefining action on the small screen.
The series was helped by plenty of key figures along the way. One was actor Joe Taslim, whose background in martial arts and previous work in films like The Raid: Redemption imbued Warrior with a sense of gravitas that many shows strive for but few can obtain. Another figure was stunt coordinator Brett Chan, who worked with the cast to develop unique fighting styles and give the series an unmistakable visual language.
And so for its three seasons, Warrior was a pulp masterpiece – a historical fight club marked by kinetic storytelling and an incredible cast. Warrior was a show defined by violence; the battles between the rival Chinese gangs or with the Irish nationalists are a landscape of brutality, and Warrior carried itself with the reckless confidence of talented artists finally getting to tell stories the way they wanted to tell them.
Warrior Also Championed Representation
But for as much as we celebrated its choreography, Warrior was never a show limited to its chosen genre. By viewing the growth of America through the eyes of the Chinese laborers who helped build the country, Warrior also confronted some of the most pressing issues of the day.
In the aftermath of COVID-19 lockdowns – as hate crimes against Asian Americans rose hundreds of percent across the country – Warrior served as a rallying point for the Stop Asian Hate movement and drew pointed parallels between historical and modern racism. In some interviews, cast and crew have even suggested that Warrior’s surprise Season 3 renewal was in direct response to the offscreen violence affecting their community.
Meanwhile, the show’s slow march towards the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act – a congressional law banning Chinese workers from entering the United States – also held up a mirror to America’s rising hardline approach to immigration. The first season of Warrior was preceded by domestic Muslim bans and promises of building a wall across the southern border, and the promise of expanded detention camps for illegal immigrants is once again in national headlines.
Hidden behind all the violence and sex was a not-so-subtle reminder of how far we’ve failed to advance as a nation.
The Ending We Deserve
While the trades reporting on the cancellation make some concessions to renewal – it is possible, after all, that Netflix may choose to produce more seasons should the show take off in 2024 – one worries that the deck is stacked a little too much against Warrior this time . The cast has begun to pursue new projects – Andrew Koji, for example, is a Season 3 regular on Gangs of London – and the production landscape that gave rise to Warrior in 2019 has become unrecognizable for cast and crew alike.
If this is the end, fans can take some comfort in knowing that we were given more closure than most. The final episodes of the season walk a fine line between endings and opportunity; the series offered resolution to some of the biggest storylines while still not closing every path forward. Koji’s Ah Sam is forced to finally choose between his clan or his family, and each character arrives at a place that provides… if not full resolution, then an acceptable pause in their slow march towards a glorious death.
There are worse things in Hollywood than dying young and leaving behind a beautiful corpse. For three seasons, Warrior redefined what action could be on television. It also gave the creative reins to a group of Asian American creators at a time where that kind of representation – hell, that kind of historical reclamation – mattered more than ever. Perhaps Warrior deserved better than it got, but here at the end, we can only be grateful for the ass that was kicked, onscreen and off.
