The Real Reason These TV Shows Were Canceled In 2019

All things must end. Well, all television shows must end... except 60 Minutes and The Simpsons, that is. A handful of indefatigable shows that get renewed year after year because they still draw big viewership and the people involved want to keep doing what they do for the foreseeable future, but for the remaining 99.9 percent of all other television and streaming series, an ending is ultimately on the horizon, even if the show in question is a critically acclaimed smash hit.

Lots of shows have announced that they won't be around after 2019 — letting fans know in advance to start the process of saying goodbye to beloved characters, and giving writers a chance to prepare a fitting sendoff. Why shut down a well-liked series? Because actors leave, creators finish telling their stories, or a network is ready to move on. Here's a look at all the current TV shows that will have told all the stories they have to tell by the dawn of the 2020s.

Batman has never not been popular. After decades of comics titles, the Tim Burton-launched quadrilogy of films on the '80s and '90s, a slew of animated series, and Christopher Nolan's "Dark Knight" trilogy, fans of brooding Bruce Wayne and his rogue's gallery of colorful, Gotham City-terrorizing villains have become pop culture fixtures. Then there's Gotham, a clever reimagining of the Batman mythos, a, Muppet Babies-like approach that chronicles young Bruce Wayne, a not-yet-seeen-it-all Commissioner Gordon, and proto-versions of the Joker, the Penguin, and the Riddler. The show has to build to the creation of Batman, ensuring that it could never be open-ended and run forever; recognizing this, Fox renewed Gotham for a fifth and decidedly final season during its presentation of its 2018-19 programming slate

Gotham fans should feel lucky the show got another season at all. It ranked a not-great #129 in the 2017-18 TV ratings, and survived a cancellation massacre at Fox — execs got rid of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Mick, Lucifer, The Exorcist all in one fell swoop.

Along with the intricate, elaborate, interconnected big-budget films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the comics brand has developed a separate world of intertwined TV shows. In the same way that standalone movies like Thor and Captain America culminated in the team-up Avengers movies, Marvel launched four shows on Netflix's streaming platform: Jessica Jones, Daredevil, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist, which all led up to Marvel's The Defenders. The shows pushed the envelope on what a comics-adapted show could do — Daredevil racked up a 92 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and Krysten Ritter earned praise as alcoholic strongwoman/investigator Jessica Jones, for example. With so much comics material to explore, Netflix could've run all five shows (and post-Defenders entry The Punisher) indefinitely... but it's all been called off. Apart from the already produced third season of Jessica Jones, set to air in 2019, there will be no more Marvel shows on Netflix. Forbes speculates that it's just business: Disney owns Marvel, and, in advance of launching its own streaming service, Disney+, the House of Mouse has been pulling out of streaming deals (or not renewing them) with companies that will soon be competitors. 

On its surface, Broad City is merely a wild comedy about two young women dealing with nutty characters and situations in New York City, but its five seasons were low-key groundbreaking. It's arguably the first New York-based comedy that didn't glamorize New York; Abbi and Ilana (co-creators Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer) do battle with a grimy, confusing, apathetic and expensive Big Apple. Broad City is also the rare show to star two women, and the core of its story is the deep, unconditional love between these best friends — and how friendship propels a person through their twenties, particular when they're flailing in the big city, on their own for the first time. But now that the stars/creators and their characters have aged out of that period, the show must end. "The show was always really about what New York is like in your twenties, from these two specific points of view," Jacobson told TV Line. "But I think it didn't really click in that that was what the show was about until we were in our thirties. It's supposed to exist in your twenties. It's a flash-in-the-pan kind of thing, and we wanted to stay true to that."

Over the last decade, USA has established itself as a major player in quality cable television with a slate of breezy, light dramas usually involving some element of the law and starring attractive people. The network's slate of hits includes Psych, White Collar, Royal Pains, and Suits, the latter of which centers on Mike Ross (Patrick J. Adams), who's a brilliant attorney despite his lack of a law degree. Winning case after case while maintaining his secret, Mike meets his match in paralegal Rachel Zane (Meghan Markle). The show's juicy legal and romantic storylines brought in millions of fans... including Prince Harry of the U.K. He and Markle fell in love, and got married in a royal wedding for the ages in 2018. Because she'd have to live in England and devote her life to charity work and public appearances, Markle had to leave Suits at the end of the show's seventh season. Adams figured that was a good time for him to leave, too, and Suits writers crafted a nice exit for the couple: They got married and moved to Seattle to run a law firm. Suits returned without two of its main characters, which proved too much of a loss to weather. Producers called it a day, choosing to end the show in 2019 after season 8 and a 10-episode season 9 to focus on Pearson, a spinoff starring Gina Torres' character.

Transparent aggressively evolved over its three seasons. The quiet, subtle-to-a-point of introverted Amazon series began with a premise never before explored on American television: Jeffrey Tambor starred as Maura Pfefferman, a college professor who finally starts living his truth: that he identifies as a woman. She is, in other words, a "trans parent," and the show explores the effect on Maura's ex-wife and three grown children. Over its four seasons, Transparent ambitiously expanded into a show about not just gender identity, but sexual and cultural identity, too, particularly the Pefferman family's exploration of their Jewish faith and background. But Maura transitioning to life as a woman remained the core theme, which would be a tough angle to take, once producers and Amazon fired Tambor. The company launched an investigation after cast member Trace Lysette accused Tambor of multiple acts of sexual harassment, and one instance of assault; Tabor's assistant Van Barnes additionally accused the actor of inappropriate behavior. With Tambor gone, the show's writers decided to wrap up the series with a movie finale — and a musical at that — in which the death of Maura will figure prominently.

While the Marvel Cinematic Universe (with its various and assorted Avengers movies) dominated the multiplex, plenty of Marvel fare could be found on the small screen. ABC had Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Agent Carter, while Netflix had The Defenders and solo series like Jessica Jones, Daredevil, Luke Cake, and Iron Fist. Staring in late 2017, Hulu offered Marvel's Runaways. Based on an early 2000s comic by Brian K. Vaughn, it concerned a team of teenage superheroes who join forces stop a horde of villains who just so happen to also be their parents. Season 3 of the series, which debuted in late 2019, will also be the show's final season. 

Why would Hulu cancel a Marvel property in the same year that Avengers: Endgame became the biggest box office hit in history? Chalk it up to corporate reorganization. After its acquisition of Fox, Disney now totally controls Hulu. In November 2019, Disney launched streaming service Disney+, which will be the home of a number of series built around Marvel properties... another part of the Disney portfolio. The House of Mouse is actively working to get its shows off of rival streamers and onto Disney+, having already pulled the plug on the Marvel Netflix shows. It would seem that Disney, Marvel, and Kevin Fiege don't want Runaways, because it's a Hulu show.