This Forgotten Supernatural 93% Rotten Tomatoes TV Show Was Cancelled Before It Got a Chance To Thrive

High school is hard enough. Add cat-like superpowers on top of bad guys trying to kill you, and it can be a nightmare. It’s too bad The Nine Lives of Chloe King didn’t get as many lives to live as its main character, because it was just starting to bloom when it got cancelled after one season by ABC Family back in 2011. A clever spin on a superhero origin story before they were all the rage on television, the series was ahead of its time. Starring a pre-Scream Queens Skyler Samuels, she’s got endless charm as a chatty 16-year-old who turns out to have feline capabilities that prove very dangerous.

The Nine Lives of Chloe King was a quirky, upbeat coming-of-age series for the network at a time when it was being ruled by soapy teen dramas, like Pretty Little Liars and Switched at Birth, and embraced action-packed fight scenes across San Francisco led by a female heroine. It’s a blast from the past that celebrates the best and worst of the 2010s, and received positive reviews across the board for its lead performances, twisty plot lines, and endearing premise about misfit kids finding their place. Though The Nine Lives of Chloe King brought its combination of fantasy and teen drama to new heights, the series’ ratings dropped due to low viewership by the Season 1 finale, which was its nail in the coffin. It was ultimately cancelled after 10 airtight episodes, but developed a cult following, with dedicated fans distraught over the decision. In the end, The Nine Lives of Chloe King didn’t get a chance to thrive, but while we had it, it was claws-to-the-wall fun.

What is ‘Nine Lives of Chloe King’ About?

Alyssa Diaz and Skyler Samuels as Jasmine and Chloe fighting on the dirt with their claws out in 'The Nine Lives of Chloe King.' — Alyssa Diaz and Skyler Samuels as Jasmine and Chloe fighting on the dirt with their claws out in ‘The Nine Lives of Chloe King.’

A 16th birthday is a big step for any teen, and for Chloe King (Samuels), it means she can now push out claws on her fingers and leap across skyscrapers. After getting shoved off the top of a building on her birthday by a murderous man with claw marks on his face, she survives and discovers she has nine lives to live. Before the fall, Chloe was an anonymous girl at school hanging out with fellow eccentric outcasts, Amy (Grace Phipps) and Paul (Ki Hong Lee), and now the three of them find themselves fighting crime in the city of San Francisco.

As Chloe also deals with the shameless flirting from the British, popular kid, Alek (Benjamin Stone), it turns out he and his cousin, Jasmine (Alyssa Diaz), have cat-like superpowers too. All descendants of the Mai race, Chloe is revealed to be the “Uniter,” the person meant to save the Mai from extinction. Now, it’s Alek and Jasmine’s job to protect Chloe from their enemies, who would love nothing more than to kill her. When Chloe meets the mysterious college student, Brian (Grey Damon), she begins to fall in love with him while also developing feelings for the stuck-up Alek. But what Chloe doesn’t know is that Brian’s been sent by his father (David S. Lee) to steal intel on Chloe, who is a member of the Order, a dangerous organization dedicated to bringing about the extinction of the Mai.

Skyler Samuels Gave a Star-Making Performance as a Bubbly, Awkward Teen Superhero Battling Bad Guys

The Nine Lives of Chloe King is charming for many reasons. That starts with Samuels’ performance, as an empowered young woman coming into her own, whose star quality is protecting the ones she loves. Samuels has all the charm of old-timey actresses of the screwball era, by talking too much at lightning speed to her love interest, Brian, or tripping over trash cans. The Nine Lives of Chloe King is packed with dry humor and never misses a chance to be witty, and Samuels gets to deliver unapologetically cheesy punch-lines that she practically purrs before jabbing at bad guys. Her fight scenes have the feel of an old B-horror movie, with over-the-top practical effects, from jagged claw-like fingernails that shoot out several inches too big, foaming fangs. Samuels’ performance is split between being part comedic and part melodramatic in her drive to save her friends and family.

Sklyer, Phipps, and Lee are like a modern-day The Three Stooges trio who trip and stutter all over San Francisco as amateur sleuths, busting corrupt cops and superman entities. They add a lot of comic relief to the series, including the shtick of Paul’s obsession with the fact that his best friend is a superhero straight out of the comic books he reads. As Amy and Paul bicker and fight while Chloe trains, they have their own romantic woes, including Paul stabbing himself with a fork while Amy performs at a café so that she feels good about her performance. It’s outrageous, but it’s outrageous fun. For a 2010s teen series, it was refreshing to see a high school series not focus on the cool kids, but instead on three awkward, yapping teens who wind up helping to save the world. But we’d be remiss not to mention the juicy love triangle on top of all the extracurricular activities Chloe participates in, which is why the show garnered such a devoted fan base. The love triangle that the series takes its time to develop between Chloe, Brian, and Alek drove fans crazy, and the cliffhanger it left off on was a brutal way to end the series, with audiences never knowing who Chloe ends up with.

‘The Nine Lives of Chloe King’ Has a Slow-Burning Love Triangle That Devasted Fans With Its Abrupt Cancellation

Grey Damon as Brian wearing a grey shirt and dark blue long sleeve in 'The Nine Lives of Chloe King.' — Grey Damon as Brian wearing a grey shirt and dark blue long sleeve in ‘The Nine Lives of Chloe King.’

The Nine Lives of Chloe King knew exactly what it was doing where romance was concerned. Debuting just a bit after fellow teen fantasy romance series, The Vampire Diaries, it developed an equally frustrating love triangle that all comes down to the bad boy versus the good guy. Stuck between chasing Brian and Alek, sometimes the romance between the two men fizzles out and flounders. The scenes are all kept PG though, in part due to Chloe’s belief that she can’t kiss Brian due to her lips being poisonous to human men, which made it hard for the series to conjure up sultry moments that the fans yearned for. So, where Chloe’s love triangle simmers is with Alek, in a juicy enemies-to-lovers subplot that always shines in fantasy. Samuels and Benjamin Stone have a playful energy that is a much more welcome flirtation than her somber scenes with the reserved Grey Damon, which can feel like a real downer sometimes.

While the love-triangle has remained a defining part of the show, the character of Alek can teeter on the edge of cringy, with his womanizing ways that often demean women. After their much-anticipated make-out session on Chloe’s front porch in the aftermath of Alek getting bloody and bruised to save her life, it doesn’t go as planned. The two have an argument the next day when Alek feels entitled to have Chloe now that he risked his life for her, and Skyler gets to deliver one of the series’ best lines when she remarks, “And you think that earns you, what? Me?” Watching it back now, it seems remarkable and rebellious that a show in 2011 had a line like that, and featured the female lead rejecting the bad boy to choose herself instead. However, it’s still impossible to deny how satisfying it was to see them finally kiss, after a torturous slow-burn all season long. Just when they were starting to embrace their spark, it was curtains for the show, which infuriated viewers across the board. We’ll never know who Chloe chose to be her boyfriend, but that’s not really what the show was ever about. It was ultimately a show about a teenage girl stepping into her own powers by embracing her strengths, and its premature cancellation stopped what could have been a fresh, exciting kind of series for the network.

The Nine Lives of Chloe King is available for purchase on Amazon Video in the U.S.