NBC Promises ‘Great, Very Satisfying Ending’ for Canceled Show

Fans disappointed that Brilliant Minds was canceled after just two seasons at NBC can try to take solace in the fact that a good ending is on its way.

After the network canceled the Zachary Quinto-starring sophomore medical drama to clear up room for sports programming, Lisa Katz, NBC’s President of Scripted Content, NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, told Deadline that the show won’t fizzle out.

“I think we shot this season and … creatively we love the show, and are really proud of the show, and think that the fans deserve to see how the story ends,” Katz said. “It has a great, very satisfying ending. So we’d like to have the opportunity for the fans of the show, of which there are still many, to be able to see it and finish the story with the characters.”

Brilliant Minds‘ cancellation wasn’t an enormous surprise, as it posted NBC’s steepest double-digit year-to-year declines despite maintaining its high-profile Monday time slot after The Voice. In fact, NBC signaled early on that the show might be canceled when the powers that be pulled it from the schedule in February, still with the remaining six episodes set for release post-cancellation on May 27.

It wasn’t the only show that got the boot; freshman cheerleading comedy Stumble, which fared well with both critics and viewers, never recovered from a rough ratings start. Another mitigating factor behind Stumble‘s cancellation is the scheduling of the show on Fridays behind Reba McEntire’s sitcom Happy’s Place.

Jeff Bader, NBCUniversal’s President of Program Planning Strategy, told Deadline he felt “terrible” about canceling Stumble.

“I love that show,” Bader said. “Obviously, there is an issue with a single-cam coming out of the multi-cam, just tonally, it was different than Happy’s Place. We have very limited real estate, and we did the best we could, I feel terrible about it.”

Katz agreed, “We loved [Stumble]. Creatively, we loved this show. I think we could all think of shows that we loved creatively that unfortunately, didn’t go beyond one season. We’re incredibly proud of it, and think it had so much humor and so much heart. I’m disappointed that it’s not continuing.”

Bader admitted the “tight schedule” of programming could also be the culprit for Brilliant Minds and Stumble‘s cancellations.

“Honestly, we have a very, very tight schedule. Because we have a lot of sports, for our entertainment time periods, we had to actually give up on some shows that we really love to make room to launch our future potential hits,” Bader said.

“You’ll see that Lisa and team, they very specifically developed multi-cams to pair with multi-cams and single-cams to pair with single-cams, the flow should be better this year,” Bader said.

Brilliant Minds returns for its final six episodes on Wednesday, May 27 at 8 p.m. ET on NBC. New episodes will continue to air in that time slot and will be available to stream the next day on Peacock.