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The day before releasing Season 4, Amazon Prime Video has revealed that The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is coming to an end.
Production is currently ongoing of the next season of the Emmy-winning comedy, which will be the show's last, meaning fans have approximately 16 more episodes to go before they say goodbye to Midge (played by Rachel Brosnahan) and the rest of the cast.
Brosnahan also announced that the show was ending, writing on her Instagram: "A few days ago we started shooting Season 5 (!) of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. It's bittersweet. The band is back together again and we can't wait to share season 4 with you starting tomorrow...it's also going to be our last rodeo. Rest assured our t*** are up and it's going to be a hell of a final chapter. Stay tuned."
Why is The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel ending?
Per previous interviews with the show's creators, the series always had a set end in sight. Executive producer Dan Palladino, for example, told The Hollywood Reporter: "We have an idea emotionally where we want the Midge character to end...The first year was her discovery, the second year things unravel, the third season she goes on tour. Amazon...had already heard the bullet points for what the seasons were going to be."
The show's creator Amy Sherman-Palladino, meanwhile, told TVLine: "We don't want to overstay our welcome. Midge has a journey she has to take. It's the struggle that is fun [as opposed to] 'I'm sitting in a penthouse and I'm really rich and I've got a lot of chihuahuas.' We know emotionally where we want to end her and at what point we want to cut it off, we just don't know how many episodes it's going to take to get there."
The series seems to be coming to an organic end—after all, five seasons is a pretty impressive run for a streaming show, the vast majority of which bow out at Season 3 or earlier.
Assuming that the final season of Mrs. Maisel is eight episodes (like Seasons 1, 3 and 4), this will take the show to 42 episodes. In terms of episode count, this puts it ahead of other big Amazon Prime shows like The Man in the High Castle (40 episodes) and Transparent (41), and makes it the third longest-running live-action series after Bosch (68) and Annedroids (52).
As Netflix once revealed in an investors' call, the average streaming show ends after Season 3 because at that point, it stops attracting as many new subscribers (the key metric for streaming services). Which makes sense—how many of us had wanted to start a new show, only to be daunted by the four or five seasons we have to catch up on?
With The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel gone, Amazon Prime Video has no shows left that have made it past their third season (though Jack Ryan has already been renewed for Season 4). As a streaming service gets older, it tends to order less seasons of its shows. That's because, with more and more content on the service, a streamer becomes less reliant on an individual show to attract viewers.
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Season 4 trailer gives us some hints about why the streamer or the showrunner thought the time was right to end the show. In the promo, we see Midge declare to Susie (Alex Borstein) that she no longer wants to be a support act, she wants to be a headliner—and once she achieves that, there is not much further her career in comedy can go, much as fans may enjoy watching her become a talk show host or a movie star.
In a statement, Amazon Studios head Jennifer Salke said of the show ending: "Amy, Dan, and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel have blazed an unparalleled path, elevating the stories we tell about women, challenging the norms in our industry, and forever altering the entertainment landscape with their one-of-a-kind storytelling.
"The dozens of awards cement Maisel's legacy in many ways, but what's even more enduring and poignant are the characters Amy created and the joyous, brilliant, singular world she and Dan brought to life. This series has meant so much to Prime Video and the effects of its success will be felt long after its final season. I can't wait for fans and our worldwide Prime Video audience to savor each moment as we embark on the culmination of this groundbreaking and unforgettable series."
The showrunners declined further comment on why the show was set to end after Season 5.
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Season 4 premieres Friday, February 18 on Amazon Prime Video, with two episodes airing weekly for the next four weeks. Season 5 is coming soon.
