Empire Will End After Season 6

Empire is going to wrap after its sixth season, Fox has confirmed. Perhaps because there’s no way the drama on the show could ever outpace the insanity off-set?

According to Entertainment Tonight,

“We’re turning the final season of Empire into a large television event. If you look at what we’re doing with Empire… we really are trying to go out guns a-blazing,” Charlie Collier, CEO of Fox Entertainment, told reporters on a press call Monday morning. “One of the great benefits of announcing a final season is to allow the fans to lean in and to have the ending they deserve, and that’s everything we’re trying to do with this iconic series. Six years is a pretty remarkable run for a drama series and we feel good about it.”

The announcement comes just a couple of weeks after Fox renewed the series for a sixth season, though at the time there were no plans to include Jussie Smollett, who as you recall was accused of staging a hate crime against himself. Shortly thereafter, for reasons we’ll only know following a revealing miniseries, all 16 charges against him were abruptly dropped.

“At this point, we have no plans for that,” Collier said. “The writer’s room for next season hasn’t even gathered yet.”

Still, the New York Times reports that the debate over whether Smollett would return had become a source of disagreement between the show’s stars and its producers and executives. Smollett was written out of the last two episodes of season five, though he does have an extension on his option, which leaves the door open for him to come back.