6 Spinoff Ideas for Shows (Maybe) in Their Final Seasons
No, it’s not set in stone that All American: Homecoming, The Blacklist, The Goldbergs, Grey’s Anatomy, The Morning Show, and Ted Lasso are ending after their upcoming seasons. But all six of those titles are among the series rumored to be approaching their endgames, either by design or by ratings downturn.
And no, it’s not fair that we could be losing all of them soon: Some are relative upstarts, some are long-running hits, and some are critical darlings. (At least one or two might be in the “Is that show still on?” category, but we dare not say which.)
If helps to cushion the still-hypothetical blow, we’re proposing spinoffs that could keep the stories going. While we get our agents to set up pitch meetings with TV execs, read on to see our ideas.…
Hair by Hardin
There’s never been a network TV show with a nonbinary protagonist, so we’d love to see All American: Homecoming’s scene-stealing hairstylist, Nathaniel Hardin (Rhoyle Ivy King), get her own show — one in which she takes her skills to the major leagues, so to speak, and opens a salon in Atlanta close to the Bringston University campus.
The Blacklist: Reversal
The Blacklist already spawned one spinoff, 2017’s short-lived The Blacklist: Redemption. But as the original series enters its 10th and potential final season, its storyline is nearly too convoluted to follow. So we suggest starting fresh with new characters and a flipped premise: Instead of a criminal turning himself over to the feds to help take down his enemies — à la Red (James Spader), shown here — why not center on a fallen FBI agent lured into the criminal underground?
Grandpa Goldberg
Patton Oswalt, pictured here, narrates The Goldbergs as a grown-up Adam Goldberg, played in teen form onscreen by Sean Giambrone. We’d love to fast-forward a few decades and catch up with Adam as he becomes a young grandfather (with Oswalt playing the role onscreen) — the “Pops” to a whole new generation of Goldbergs. (But Wendi McLendon-Covey would still play Beverly Goldberg, thanks to the magic of prosthetic makeup.)
Shawnee Memorial
In his “Dear John” letter in Grey’s Anatomy Season 16 — or, more accurately, a “Dear Jo” letter — Alex Karev told wife Jo (Camilla Luddington) and other Grey Sloan colleagues that he had reconnected with Izzie Stevens, found out she had welcomed his twins, and moved to Kansas to “make this family whole.” Bailey (Chandra Wilson) recommended Alex as chief of peds at a hospital called Shawnee Memorial, and we’d love to see Alex and Izzie’s new life together in a medical drama set there. (And Justin Chambers and Katherine Heigl might want steady TV employment nowadays anyway.)
The Evening Show
In The Morning Show’s second season, viewers meet Laura Peterson (Julianna Margulies), a UBA news anchor who was all but fired from Your Day, America — a rival to the show-within-a-show The Morning Show — for being gay. As we saw when she subbed in as TMS cohost, Laura is great at playing nice for morning TV audiences but doesn’t mince her words when the cameras are off. It’s only rumored that The Morning Show’s upcoming third season might be its last, but if it is, we hope Margulies returns in a spinoff about Laura’s primetime career, continuing a role the actress certainly seems to be enjoying.
Nate Shelley
AFC Richmond’s former kit manager and assistant coach (played by Nick Mohammed) took a dark turn at the end of Ted Lasso’s second season, not only ditching the team for a new coaching job with West Ham United but also spilling the beans about Ted’s (Jason Sudeikis) mid-match panic attack. It was a startling about-face for one of Richmond’s most beloved staff members, but that twist also highlighted how much Nate’s colleagues — and even the Ted Lasso audience — had overlooked and underestimated him. If Season 3 really is the final round of this Emmy-winning comedy, we hope the writers turn the spotlight on this surprisingly complex bloke.
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