‘Shameless’: Cameron Monaghan’s Final Episode to Air Sunday

Cameron Monaghan’s last Shameless episode will air on Sunday night at 9 p.m. ET, the actor announced on Monday.

The episode is titled “Face It, You’re Gorgeous.” According to the Showtime episode description, the episode centers on Frank (William H. Macy) asking Liam (Christian Isiah) to help him find a romantic connection. Lip (Jeremy Allen White) tries to help an actress as her sober companion, while Fiona (Emmy Rossum) is struggling to keep up with her investments. Kev (Steve Howley) and V (Shanola Hampton) have trouble at their twins’ preschool after a show-and-tell presentation goes wrong.

The plot for Monaghan’s character, Ian Gallagher, is not teased.

“The next episode will be my last. I have known since last year, but I didn’t want to give it away too early as I wanted this season to be a surprise for the audience, allowing them to experience Ian’s unsure journey with his character,” Monaghan wrote in a long Instagram post. “This role has been a joy to inhabit, a wild and special ride, and I’d like to thank Shameless as well as you, the viewers, for being there with him.”

Monaghan, who also stars on Fox’s Batman prequel series Gotham, pointed out that he has been on the show for almost a decade and was cast at age 15.

“Experiencing so many firsts, maturing as an actor, a professional, and a human. In the process gaining friends, family, and the best coworkers a very lucky actor could ask for, and for this I can be nothing but gracious,” Monaghan wrote. “All good things come to an end. An old cliché, but one that rings true with a sincerity and clarity especially in moments like these. Everything ends.”

Monaghan is the second major Shameless star to announce plans to leave. In August, Emmy Rossum said she would leave after the current season.

“My Shameless family is really my second family and I’ve spent so much time with them — 10,000 hours — that it really feels like we’ve all grown up together,” Rossum wrote on Facebook. “I started on the show when I was 23 and now I’m not. And it’s a wonderful, wonderful amount of time and I feel incredibly proud of everything we have created. I’m just filled with gratitude for everyone’s hard work.”

Showtime has not renewed the show for another season, but star William H. Macy and showrunner John Wells have both said there are plenty of Gallagher stories left to tell.

“There’s no end of stories about maturing in your own family and the pull that families have on us. Placing that within the structure of people who are struggling economically and who have to depend upon each other to survive provides endless story material,” Wells told The Hollywood Reporter in September. “It’s always a question of how long a cast is prepared to keep playing the characters. I could write this for another 10 years. The satirical underpinnings of this notion that there really is class in America is something that we could write about forever. Every day you pick up the paper and there are 10 other stories you could tell.”

Photo Credit: Showtime / Paul Sarkis