diff --git a/src/backends.jl b/src/backends.jl
index c932afe73..57e6c75fe 100644
--- a/src/backends.jl
+++ b/src/backends.jl
@@ -1073,6 +1073,8 @@ _post_imports(::PythonPlotBackend) = @eval begin
 
     PythonCall.pyimport("mpl_toolkits.axes_grid1")
     numpy.seterr(invalid = "ignore")
+
+    PythonPlot.ioff() # we don't want every command to update the figure
 end
 _runtime_init(::PythonPlotBackend) = nothing