With Love, Meghan Didn’t Crack Netflix’s Top 10 List. Does the Streamer Care?

On August 26, Meghan Markle returned to Netflix with another eight episodes of her lifestyle show, With Love, Meghan. Though the show garnered less negative attention this season, it was also greeted with fewer viewers. While season two debuted before the end of the month, it didn’t make the list of Netflix’s top 10 shows in August. (Forbes points out that this means the series likely got fewer than 2.1 million viewers in its first week.) By contrast, season one’s March premiere netted about 2.6 million viewers in its first week—landing just inside the top 10 list.

This is not great news for Meghan; her husband, Prince Harry; and their production company, Archewell. But it’s not necessarily a tragedy, either. In early August, Netflix announced that it would continue to work with Archewell—though unlike its first partnership with Meghan and Harry, the new one is a first-look agreement rather than an exclusive, overall deal. And while Netflix hasn’t announced whether With Love, Meghan will return for a third season, it did share that a With Love, Meghan: Holiday Celebration special will air in December. (Vanity Fair has reached out to representatives for Netflix and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.)

Other Archewell productions—a documentary short called Masaka Kids, A Rhythm Within and Meet Me at the Lake, a romance based on Carley Fortune’s 2023 novel—are still in active development. The streamer also still has a stake in As Ever, the lifestyle company Meghan launched alongside the show this spring. As Ever has continued to release new products seasonally, including a new orange marmalade featured in season two.

Meghan and Harry’s foray into television began five years ago with that initial massive overall deal. Though Harry would later say that they hadn’t ever planned on starting a production company, the deal came about eight months after Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said in a public interview that he would be interested in signing the pair.

When their six-episode docuseries Harry & Meghan premiered in December 2022, it got a staggering 23.4 million views in its first week; to this day, it remains Netflix’s most-watched documentary. But most of Archewell’s productions have drawn smaller audiences. Their first documentary, Live to Lead, aired just weeks after Harry & Meghan—and though it included one of the final interviews with late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, it failed to get much attention. In 2023, they returned with Heart of Invictus, a look at wounded servicemembers who competed in the Invictus Games, and Polo followed in December 2024.

Netflix hasn’t shared any specifics about their initial deal with the Sussexes, though in January 2025, a spokesperson told Vanity Fair it was “not correct” that the pair had gotten $100 million, a widely reported figure. In July, Page Six reported that signing a new first-look deal would likely mean less money upfront for the couple. But Harry and Meghan aren’t alone: other high-profile Netflix talent like Michelle and Barack Obama, who have a deal with the streamer through their Higher Ground Productions, have also been moved from lucrative overall deals to less pricy first-look deals. Evidently, things have changed since the heady days of Peak TV.

If With Love, Meghan does return for another season, it’s at least sure to get plenty of earned media in the form of backhanded compliments from the British press. This week, Sandi Toksvig, a former host of The Great British Bake-Off, got in on the fun. The show “looks like a great tribute to beige, which I think is nice,” the comedian said on Good Morning Britain Wednesday. She’s only one viewer—but at least someone’s watching.