Picture Credit: Netflix
Nine years ago today, on Friday, October 13th, 2017, Netflix dropped McG’s The Babysitter (not to be confused with Tubi’s upcoming R.L. Stine adaptation in 2027) — a gleefully gory horror-comedy that turned Samara Weaving into a genre icon and spawned a sequel three years later. That sequel ended by teasing more, and McG has spent the years since insisting a trilogy-closer is still on the cards. So, whatever happened to The Babysitter 3?
Here at What’s on Netflix, we constantly get asked about the fate of Cole and Bee. Short answer: Netflix has never officially announced it, nothing has entered production, and the last public update from McG is now nearly three years old. But the full story is a bit more interesting than a flat “no,” so let’s dig into everything we know.
From New Line Castoff to Netflix Cult Favorite
It’s easy to forget that The Babysitter was never meant to be a Netflix Original movie. Brian Duffield’s script topped the 2014 Black List, was snapped up by McG’s Wonderland Sound and Vision, and was shot in late 2015 for New Line Cinema. With New Line’s slate crowded, the film was sold on to Boies/Schiller and Wonderland, and Netflix picked up global distribution rights — releasing it on Friday the 13th, just in time for Halloween 2017.
The premise was simple: 12-year-old Cole (Judah Lewis) stays up past bedtime and discovers his dream-girl babysitter Bee (Samara Weaving) is leading a satanic blood cult with her friends, played by Bella Thorne, Robbie Amell, Hana Mae Lee, and Andrew Bachelor. Critics were kinder than usual to Netflix’s 2017 output, and it quickly became a sleeper hit for the streamer.
Netflix fast-tracked a follow-up in 2019, with McG back in the director’s chair and American Vandal‘s Dan Lagana on script. The Babysitter: Killer Queen arrived on September 10th, 2020, jumping ahead two years to a high-school-age Cole, bringing back almost the entire cult, and adding a pre-Wednesday Jenna Ortega as newcomer Phoebe. Weaving returned for the finale, and a mid-credits stinger showed Bee’s devil book very much intact.
Reviews were rougher this time — it sits at 46% on Rotten Tomatoes against a warmer audience score — but the door was left wide open for a return.
Picture Credit: Netflix
What McG Has Said About The Babysitter 3
McG has never been shy about wanting a third film, he’s just never been able to confirm that Netflix officially wants one too.
Days after Killer Queen launched, McG told Bloody Disgusting’s Boo Crew podcast that the story had always been built in three beats following Cole’s arc. He refused to reveal the third, but said that if audiences liked the sequel, “we’re ready to do the third one.” Around the same time, he told CBR he wanted to conclude Cole’s story and had “a couple of big surprises left for the third one.”
The cast was up for it too. Judah Lewis said he wanted to see where Cole and Phoebe’s relationship went, and Robbie Amell noted he hoped he’d be considered for a third outing if the sequel performed well.
Promoting Family Switch three years later in 2023, his fourth Netflix feature, McG told ComicBook.com the conversations were still ongoing. “Yeah, we’re still talking about it,” he said, adding that the first film gave the world Samara Weaving, the second gave it Jenna Ortega, and he hoped a third could find another star of that caliber.
That’s where the trail goes cold. We’ve found no new public comment from McG, Netflix, or the cast on The Babysitter 3 since that late 2023 interview.
What do Netflix’s Engagement Reports say?
Netflix’s twice-yearly Engagement Reports don’t cover either film’s launch window. They began with the first half of 2023, by which point Killer Queen was already two and a half years old. What they do show is two movies that have never really gone away.
| Period | The Babysitter (2017) | The Babysitter: Killer Queen (2020) |
|---|---|---|
| 2023 H1 | 5,300,000 | 7,100,000 |
| 2023 H2 | 4,500,000 | 4,600,000 |
| 2024 H1 | 3,100,000 | 2,900,000 |
| 2024 H2 | 3,200,000 | 3,500,000 |
| 2025 H1 | 2,900,000 | 2,900,000 |
| 2025 H2 | 3,100,000 | 3,200,000 |
| 2026 H1 | 2,700,000 | 2,500,000 |
| Total | 24,800,000 | 26,700,000 |
Views = hours watched divided by runtime. Source: Netflix Engagement Reports, H1 2023 – H1 2026.
Across three and a half years, the pair have racked up 51.5 million views between them. That works out to roughly 81 million hours watched: about 45.4 million for Killer Queen and 35.5 million for the original. Since 2024, both have settled into a remarkably steady groove of around 3 million views each per half-year, rising slightly in the second half of each year as Halloween comes around.
The most interesting detail is that Killer Queen has outperformed the original, despite the worse reviews. Its biggest period by some distance was the first half of 2023, with 7.1 million views. That arrived just after Wednesday made Jenna Ortega one of Netflix’s biggest stars, and it’s hard not to see a connection.
So, do these numbers warrant a sequel? On their own, probably not. These are the numbers of a dependable library title, not a breakout hit. For comparison, Netflix’s biggest original films can pull in more views in their first week than either Babysitter movie has managed in a year. Netflix sequel decisions are also made on launch-window performance, which these reports don’t capture.
Why Hasn’t The Babysitter 3 Happened?
Netflix rarely explains why a sequel doesn’t move forward, but a few factors stand out to us:
- The sequel didn’t land like the original: McG was clear that a third film hinged on Killer Queen performing. Critics were noticeably cooler on it, and without Netflix publishing official top 10 numbers back then, the lack of a greenlight in the six years since serves as its own answer.
- Netflix’s film strategy has changed: The 2017–2020 era saw Netflix buying and fast-tracking mid-budget genre fare by the dozen. Since former film chief Scott Stuber’s departure and Dan Lin taking over the film division in early 2024, the streamer has publicly shifted toward fewer films period and strayed away from lots of sequels with even some of Netflix’s biggest hits still awaiting their follow-ups despite public announcements like The Gray Man and Red Notice. That’s not to mention Netflix has really struggled to get horror titles to land in recent years.
- The stars got big: McG himself points out that Weaving and Ortega became genuine household names. Bringing either back — let alone both — would cost far more today than it did in 2019, and Judah Lewis is now in his mid-20s, a long way from the kid Cole.
- McG has been busy: Since Family Switch, he directed Netflix’s YA dystopian adaptation Uglies (which dropped in 2024) and Apple TV+’s Chris Pratt family film Way of the Warrior Kid, which arrives globally on November 20th, 2026. Next up for Netflix is Spy Duo, starring Kevin Hart and Henry Cavill.
We should also note that Netflix doesn’t fully own the original movie. It was Wonderland and Boies/Schiller and was acquired by Netflix, rather than developed entirely in-house. We can reveal Netflix currently holds the original rights through 2037 but holds the sequel rights indefinitely.
So, is The Babysitter 3 Dead?
Not officially — but it’s not front and center or even in active development. Netflix has never confirmed it, there’s been no casting, script, or production listing, and the director’s last “still talking about it” update was in late 2023. Nine years on from the original, we’d file it alongside the long list of Netflix sequels that were teased but never ordered.
That said, McG clearly still has the story in his back pocket, and Netflix has shown it’s happy to revisit older properties when the timing’s right. If the streamer ever wants a cheap-ish Halloween event built around a newly famous cast, the devil book is right there.
Would you still watch The Babysitter 3? Let us know in the comments down below.