Has 'Sister Wives' Been Renewed for Season 16 at TLC?

The Sister Wives Season 15 finale airs Sunday night on TLC, which will lead viewers to wonder if the show will be renewed for the 16th season. TLC has not announced anything, but there has been a hint that cameras will continue to follow Kody Bown and his four wives for another year. The most recent episodes of Season 15 have shown the Brown family in turmoil, as the sister wives have clashed over the family's future in Arizona.

Unlike other networks, TLC usually doesn't announce when a show has been picked up until weeks before new episodes will premiere. The Season 15 premiere date was not announced until Jan. 21, just weeks before the episode aired on Feb. 14. The show racked up so many seasons in just 10 years because TLC aired two seasons a year between 2011 and 2016. Since Season 12 debuted in January 2018, TLC has only aired one season a year. Therefore, Season 16 would likely not air until January or February 2022.

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Last week, Kody and Christine Brown's daughter Mykelti Padron appeared to accidentally confirm a Season 16 is in the works. During an Instagram Live session, Padron took questions from fans, notes Cheat Sheet. She told fans that TLC did film the birth of her daughter, Avalon, earlier this month. However, Sister Wives Season 15 has not featured Padron's pregnancy. The action seen in the season was filmed in 2020, during the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

When it comes to ratings, Sister Wives Season 15 has not been doing as well as in past years. The Season 15 premiere drew 1,429,000 viewers, a drop from the 2,394,000 who watched the April 5, 2020 episode, notes The Sun. The Feb. 21 episode drew 1,482,000 viewers, while the Feb. 28 episode logged 1,565,000 viewers. The show does typically see more viewers tune in as the season continues though, which was the case during Season 14.

Of course, live ratings also probably do not play an outsized role in TLC's decision to keep the show going. The series is available to stream on the new Discovery+ platform. TLC might keep the show, which clearly already has a fanbase, alive so it has more content for the platform. Back in January 2018, InTouch Weekly reported that TLC considered canceling the show after Season 11 because of low ratings, but that was long before Discovery+ was launched.

The Sister Wives Season 15 finale promises to be a tense one, as Kody's wives are split on their future. Preview scenes from the finale show a meeting between Kody and wives Christine, Robyn Brown, Meri Brown, and Janelle Brown as they break down the issues in communication. "I'm coming to this whole conversation very cynical," Kody told the camera. "I'm extremely discouraged that I can't get my wives to all agree on one simple thing - preventing the spread of COVID in our family. So it's pissing me off." Fans will see how that meeting played out in the finale, which starts at 9 p.m. ET on TLC Sunday.