Why Did Nailed It! Disappear?

Nailing a cooking show is not as easy as it sounds. It needs a likable host, a fun concept, and interesting guests or contestants. This is what keeps shows like "Guy's Grocery Games" and "Chopped" running on the Food Network. Netflix has had some success in the cooking show world, and "Nailed It!," which premiered in 2018, was one of the best. A baking competition for woefully underskilled bakers, the show played with a concept many home cooks understand: failing miserably even while following a recipe. It delighted audiences for seven seasons, and then vanished. No official reason was given to brokenhearted fans.

Season 7 was limited to just four episodes, while previous seasons had six to eight each. At the time, reports said that the crew walked off set and went on strike as they tried to unionize. Deadline reported the next day that the show was being put on hold indefinitely, and it never returned. Netflix aired the four finished episodes and the series seemingly ended there.

Host Nicole Byer has offered limited information about the state of the show since it ended. In 2024, she appeared on the Las Culturistas podcast and was asked if "Nailed It!" still existed. "I don't know if it's coming back, I simply don't know. I don't know. I would love for it to come back," she said. Two years later, there's still no indication that Netflix has plans to bring it back. There was a spinoff in 2023 called "The Big Nailed It Baking Challenge," which had a different format more akin to The Great British Baking Show. Only one season was aired.

In 2024, Entertainment Weekly said that Nicole Byer "hosted ['Nailed It!'] for seven seasons, from 2018 to 2022," referring to her time in the past tense. Online speculation suggested Netflix canceled the show rather than letting the crew unionize, and the timing lent itself to that theory. "They'd rather lose a successful show than have a unionized one? Hopefully everybody involved gets a better position soon," said one Reddit user. There's also evidence that the production company Magical Elves has faced scrutiny in the past, and been picketed by unions on sets of shows like "Top Chef."

The blog Reality Blurred came right out and said "Nailed It!" was canceled to prevent the crew from unionizing, but this seems to be based on the same speculation as Reddit commentary. It's very unlikely that any official source would ever go on record agreeing that this is the reason the show ended. Instead, neither Netflix nor the production company offered any statement in the years since the show went dark.

Amidst all this speculation, an interesting thing to note is that, at the end of "The Big Nailed It Baking Challenge," the credits say it was "made under the jurisdiction of IATSE." That stands for the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, the union the workers went on strike to join. It was still produced by Magical Elves, so the crew may have achieved their goal. Despite being one of the most popular cooking shows ever, Netflix may have decided to stop production of "Nailed It!" for other reasons entirely.