The Lyon family’s hip hop record label and its six-season saga concluded in 2020 after blazing a trail as both musical, soap opera, and Shakespearean drama. From the moment Lucious Lyon (Terrence Howard), his dynamic ex-wife Cookie (Taraji P. Henson), and their sons Andre (Trai Byers), Jamal (Jussie Smollett), and Hakeem (Bryshere Y. Gray) were introduced on the program, the audience was captivated. Unfortunately, before the sixth season was even halfway through, its amazing journey came to an end. Other factors include the fact that Lucious’ and Cookie’s ultimate fates were left unresolved — particularly aggravating because the series had been hinting that both people’s deaths might be on the way.
Sure, shows have ended in strange ways before, but they’ve usually had enough time to wrap up their storylines. What caused the conclusion of Empire to come out of nowhere? Did the cast or showrunners want out? Was it a decision by the network? Or were there other, stranger reasons behind it? Let’s examine what really caused Empire to end.
The pandemic was a major factor in Empire’s early cancellation
The 2020 Coronavirus really messed up with the plans for the show. While the creators knew that the sixth season was going to be the last, we didn’t get the proper finale. Just like pretty much everything in 2020, it was shut down. The shut down led to the final season stopping at 18 episodes instead of getting to 20 episodes.
TVLine explained that the 18th episode was forced, where it was sort of padded with footage from unfinished episodes. This really messed with the storylines, showing a flash-forward death of both Lucious and Cookie, which was never fully addressed.
Internal Troubles With Empire
The alleged hate crime in Chicago dealing with Jussie Smollett really impacted the show. This was during season 5 and brought a lot of negative attention to the show. According to sources, while the cast believed that Smollett was innocent and supported him, the majority of the production crew felt he had perpetrated the attack against himself. Smollett’s criminal accusations were eventually dropped, but his character was similarly destroyed. For the fifth season, Jamal Lyon was removed from the program, and co-creator Lee Daniels eventually affirmed that he wouldn’t be returning for the sixth season.
It was around this time that Fox decided that Empire was reaching its ending time. A mere two weeks after renewing the show for season 6, they announced that would be the last season. It wasn’t necessarily the Smollett drama that caused the show’s ending. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Empire had a corporate “realignment” that put Fox out of major studio connections because 20th Century Fox TV was reorganized and put under Disney.
Does Empire Have A Future?
In a TV Guide interview, Brett Mahoney shard that he still would like to put together the series finale properly at some point in the future. But who really knows if or when it will ever happen.
There have been some rumors floating around with possible show spin-offs. Mahoney said he probably won’t be involved in those, but it’s entirely possible for someone else to sweep in and start something up. “I think the creators are talking about it and the network,” he said about the possibility of a return to the world of Empire from a different angle.
Mahoney named that he would like to see a Bossy spin-off. Can you imagine the story of a female-run company in the entertainment world?