Why Many Beloved TV Shows Are Ending in 2019

With the announcement that its upcoming 15th season will be its last, Criminal Minds joins a massive list of beloved television shows ending their run in 2019.

The long-running CBS crime procedural will air its Season 14 finale on Feb. 6, and will then return for a 10-episode final season at some point during the 2019-2020 season having produced 325 episodes.

Criminal Minds fans will get a chance to have a proper goodbye with the characters during the shortened final season, as other television shows will also be saying goodbye in the months to come.

Scroll down and find out why some of television’s fan-favorites will be calling it a day this year.

Criminal Minds

After 14 seasons, the CBS series knew it was time to call it a day.

Criminal Minds, which is produced by ABC Studios, had been in danger of cancellation a few times, due to lack of ratings and production deals, but the series will be allowed to give fans a proper ending.

“It’s really bittersweet, but I’m so, so grateful to CBS for giving us this heads-up,” Executive producer Erica Messer told TVLine. “I think one of my biggest fears was always, ‘Oh man, what if we don’t know’ and then they just don’t bring back the show? But they respect this series and the cast and the crew and the fans enough to end this properly.”

Big Bang Theory

There were rumors on CBS that the beloved sitcom might be returning for a 13th season, but that all changed just before the Season 12 premiere.

Series star Jim Parsons was reportedly ready to move on and there was no chance the series would keep going without star Sheldon Cooper.

“It’s both as complex and as simple as just feeling innately that it was time. It speaks to a lot of things, none of them bad. There is no negative reason to stop doing Big Bang. It felt like we have been able to do this for so many years now, it doesn’t feel like there is anything left on the table,” Parsons recently told Entertainment Weekly.

Game of Thrones

It’s the ending fans have been dreading for, but can’t wait to experience, in a series ever. Co-creators D.B. Weiss and David Benioff previously told press they always knew how the HBO fantasy drama would end.

“We’re trying to tell one cohesive story with a beginning, middle and end. As Dan said, we’ve known the end for quite some time and we’re hurtling towards it… The thing that has excited us from the beginning, back to the way we pitched it to HBO is, it’s not supposed to be an ongoing show, where every season it’s trying to figure out new story lines. We wanted it to be one giant story, without padding it out to add an extra 10 hours, or because people are still watching it. We wanted to something where, if people watched it end to end, it would make sense as one continuous story. We’re definitely heading into the end game now,” Benioff told Deadline at the end of season six.

Veep

Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Selina Meyer has not been the vice president for a while, so it seems like time to say goodbye to the Emmy-beloved HBO comedy series.

Executive producer David Mandel previously said the series would never want to repeat itself, so might as well say goodbye to Selina and her hilarious staff while they are still on top.

Mr. Robot

Creator Sam Esmail revealed he was ready to say goodbye to USA Network’s dark series, which took Rami Malek into the Hollywood A-list.

“When I first created the world of Mr. Robot, I thought it would be a niche television series with a small, cult following. Over the past three years, it has become so much more, and I am continually humbled by the show’s recognition and by the amazing cast and crew that work tirelessly to help bring my vision to life,” Esmail said in a statement when news broke of the end of the show. “Since day one, I’ve been building toward one conclusion — and in breaking the next season of Mr. Robot, I have decided that conclusion is finally here. Everyone on the creative team, including the amazing people at USA and UCP, didn’t want to say goodbye, but we ultimately have too much respect for Elliot’s journey to extend past its inevitable ending. Therefore, season four will serve as the final chapter of the Mr. Robot story. To fans of the show: thank you for the past three years, and I can’t wait to share this exciting final season with you.”

Shadowhunters

Despite a massive following and fans begging for the show to keep going, Shadowhunters lost it all due to budget problems.

“We are very proud of Shadowhunters, a series that broke new ground in the genre world and became a fan favorite,” Freeform said in a statement at the time. “However, along with our partners at Constantin, we reached the very difficult decision not to renew the show for a fourth season. But as big supporters and fans ourselves, Freeform insisted on and championed the filming of a special two-part finale that would give devoted fans a proper ending. The 12 episodes will air in spring 2019. We want to thank our talented creators, producers, cast and crew along with our colleagues at Constantin for their hard work and dedication and to Cassie Clare for her incredible book series. We look forward to the final chapter of this breakthrough drama.”

Elementary

The modern-day Sherlock Holmes drama is ready to say goodbye.

The Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu-led series was a big hit for CBS and will leave fans with what promises to be a fulfilling conclusion.

“[Series creator Rob Doherty] set out to tell a story, and it feels like he has accomplished what he had set out to do. The actors, the crew and the staff feel that way, and we feel that. So are grateful and celebrating what we had and looking forward to the future,” executive producer Carl Beverly told press.

Broad City

With the final season premiering on Jan. 24, 2019, co-creators and stars Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer revealed they were ready to say goodbye to their iconic roles.

Both actresses have moved on to other projects since then, though they will give us one last season of shenanigans for fans to enjoy before saying goodbye forever.

The Affair

The relationship drama starring Maura Tierney, Dominic West, Ruth Wilson and Joshua Jackson, has gone through quite a few changes in recent seasons.

And despite an upcoming season five time jump that will introduce new characters and a new mystery, the series was always set to end with Season 5.

“Sarah Treem has always envisioned this as a five-season series, and we will be fascinated to see where she takes her talented cast and all of us next year in its climactic season,” Showtime programming president Gary Levine said.

Homeland

After everything that has happened, Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) deserves one last battle before retiring to a sandy beach (can sh even get a happy ending?)

“Homeland has been the most joyful and rewarding experience of my career. Not many have been as lucky as me — partnered with the miraculous Claire Danes, supported to the ends of the earth by Fox and Showtime, and working in the company of some of the most gifted writers, actors, and filmmakers in the business. I am sad to see the journey coming to an end, but it is time,” executive producer Alex Gansa said in a statement.

You’re The Worst

According to FX, the comedy series wrapping up after its current season was a mutual decision, and by the looks of the season premiere — which aired Wednesday — we can’t wait to see how this show is going to end.

“Making You’re The Worst has been an incredible experience and FX Networks have been dream partners,” creator Stephen Falk said in a statement when the ending was announced. “I am thankful to have the opportunity to be thoroughly judged whether or not we ‘stick the landing’ — which is a thing people say now that stupid Breaking Bad had to end so damn perfectly.”

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

Series creators Rachel Bloom and Aline Brosh McKenna always said the show would go for four season, which made the final season announcement less heartbreaking than others.

“It’s four at most. It’s a series that lives in being finite,” Bloom told E! News ahead of Season 2. “It’s because Aline is a screenwriter. She was like, ‘I just want to map out the whole series.’ We spent months just marinating the characters and really mapping it out. Our ratings aren’t amazing, so I don’t think CW would be like, ‘Please give us 10 seasons!’ It works to our advantage in that sense.”

Jane The Virgin

After originally only planning the series to be four seasons long, executive producer Jennie Snyder Urman said her plans changed during Season 2.

“…I thought, ‘We have enough to take us through five seasons.’ We started to have those discussions in season three. The studio and the network were always really supportive. Mark Pedowitz told me early on, ‘Tell me when it ends. Just give me enough notice.’ I was really grateful to have that, because you don’t often have that leeway and confidence, and the foresight to be able to plan your ending. Gina and I are creative partners, and we talk about everything, and we were on the same page,” Snyder Urman told The New York Times. “It’s the ending I pitched when I pitched the show. I couldn’t have pitched them a million of the details that have happened along the way, and it doesn’t have to do so much with the plot and with all the twists and turns. But the overall structure and what I wanted to say about certain things — structurally, that’s built into the ending.”

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

With all episodes coming Jan. 25, we are only a few weeks away from saying goodbye to the little Netflix series that could.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, co-creator Robert Carlock admitted he originally intended for the series to be five seasons, but the split fourth season counts as separate installments.

“We were never quite sure what the life of the show wanted to be,” he said. “When we split up this fourth season into kind of a fourth and a fifth — just in the boring, most practical way, you could think of them as two short seasons — one wouldn’t be coming out until 2019, so it just felt like the right time to pull up stakes since we were kind of pushing ourselves into next year.”

Orange Is The New Black

Netflix renewed one of its most watched dramas at the time to Season 5,6 and 7, with many assuming that that meant Season 7 would be the end.

The streaming platform confirmed the news in October 2018, with creator Jenji Kohan simply saying it was time to “be released from prison.”

I will miss all the badass ladies of Litchfield and the incredible crew we’ve worked with,” Kohan said in a statement. “My heart is orange but fade to black.”