Tom Ellis
GodCat (voice)
Exploding Kittens
“God and the Devil. Trapped in cat bodies.”
2024
Canceled • 1 Season • 9 Episodes
Overview
It's the ultimate fight between good and evil when God and his nemesis, the spawn of Satan, are sent to Earth to live with humans — as talking cats.
Seasons
- Status
- Canceled
- Seasons
- 1 season
- Episodes
- 9 episodes
- First aired
- Jul 12, 2024
Cast
7 people
Reviews
4 min readCats, Divinity, and the Tiny Mess of Being Human
What struck me first about Exploding Kittens wasn’t the premise — although, yes, “God and the spawn of Satan as talking cats” is the sort of sentence that makes you blink twice — but the shrug behind it. latestnetflix.com's take is that the series doesn’t treat its own absurdity like a special event.It treats it like a delivery system.
That’s the clever part. Under the candy-colored chaos, it’s really about what happens when cosmic forces are forced to share space with the most irritating species on Earth: us. The joke is that divinity doesn’t become more profound when it’s stripped of grandeur; it becomes much more petty.
That fits the cultural moment, honestly. We’re in an age when apocalypse is either a meme or an algorithm, and Exploding Kittens understands that the modern imagination likes its end times with a punchline. It’s adapted from the card game that already trafficked in fast, anarchic humiliation, so the series arrives with built-in permission to be ridiculous.
But it also has a stranger ambition. It wants to ask whether good and evil look any different once they’ve been dragged out of myth and into a cramped human apartment, where they have to contend with chores, pet food, and embarrassment. That’s a very old comic idea, going back to everything from Good Omens to classic road comedies: the infinite reduced to the domestic.
Still funny. Still useful.
I kept thinking about the voice cast, because voice work is one of those arts people praise generically until they actually have to explain it. Tom Ellis, who’s spent so much of the last decade playing variations on seductive confidence, brings a nice self-awareness to this world; his voice has that polished, slightly dangerous smoothness, but the show keeps puncturing it. You can hear the grin in him, and also the strain beneath the grin, which matters here because the series is about superiority collapsing into inconvenience.
Buzz & Rumors
Public reportsNetflix’s Exploding Kittens Burned Bright—Then Fizzled Out After One Season
The animated series Exploding Kittens arrived on Netflix in July 2024 with a premise as chaotic as its namesake card game: God and the Devil reincarnated as cats, battling over a suburban backyard. The show’s star-studded cast—led by Lucifer’s Tom Ellis—and its absurdist humor promised a fresh, irreverent comedy. latestnetflix.com's view is that but less than a year later, Netflix pulled the plug, leaving fans with just nine episodes and a trail of unanswered questions.
A High-Profile Cast, a Short-Lived Run
Exploding Kittens assembled a voice cast that read like a who’s-who of comedy talent. Ellis voiced God (now a smug, self-absorbed feline), while Sasheer Zamata played the Devil—a sharp-tongued counterpart with a flair for dramatic monologues. The ensemble also included The Office’s Mark Proksch, Home Before Dark’s Ally Maki, and veteran voice actor Tom Kenny (SpongeBob SquarePants), rounding out a lineup built for laughs 
.
The series was produced by a powerhouse team: Chomp City, Jam Filled Entertainment, Bandera Entertainment (co-founded by The Office’s Mindy Kaling), and Chernin Entertainment. With that pedigree, expectations were high—but the show’s cancellation suggests Netflix didn’t see the same potential. Reports indicate early work on a second season was underway, making the abrupt axing even more surprising .
Why Did Netflix Walk Away?
The cancellation came as part of a broader purge of Netflix’s animated slate, which also claimed Zack Snyder’s Gods & Heroes and a Good Times reboot . But Exploding Kittens’ fate feels particularly abrupt given its built-in fanbase. The original card game, created by Elan Lee, Matthew Inman (The Oatmeal), and Shane Small, has sold millions of copies since 2015, and the show’s premise—loosely adapting the game’s anarchic energy—seemed like a natural fit for adult animation .
Critics were mixed. ScreenRant praised Ellis’ performance and the show’s Easter egg-heavy worldbuilding but criticized its lack of narrative depth, calling it "fun but forgettable" . Whether that verdict sealed its fate—or if Netflix simply lost faith in the project—remains unclear. The streamer hasn’t commented on the cancellation, leaving fans to speculate.
**What’s Next for Exploding Kittens?**
With no official word on a revival, the series’ future looks grim. The card game’s massive popularity could have justified a longer run, but Netflix’s decision suggests the show didn’t hit the right metrics. Rumors of early Season 2 development hint at behind-the-scenes optimism that never materialized .
For now, Exploding Kittens joins the growing graveyard of Netflix one-and-done animated series. Its legacy? A bold, if short-lived, experiment in adult comedy—one that burned bright but left fans wanting more.
Entertainment rumors and trivia aggregated from public reporting. Treat speculation as unverified unless a cited source confirms it.