You know The Magicians Season 5 has come to an end. Is there any hope for the future? Sadly, there isn’t going to be a sixth season, and here’s why.

There isn’t a new episode of The Magicians Season 5 tonight. That’s because last week was the Season 5 finale. In fact, if you thought it felt like a series finale, there’s a reason for that.

SYFY hasn’t renewed The Magicians for a sixth season. There’s definitely no more story to tell. At least, not unless the show is revived or rebooted at some point in the future. I guess we can never say never, right? But as the current story, The Magicians Season 6 is definitely not happening.

Why has SYFY canceled The Magicians?

Of course, you want to know why it’s the end. It’s the soft linear ratings that are to blame here. Despite SYFY canceling a lot of its scripted shows right now, the cost of producing The Magicians was too great to justify renewing for another season. The show wasn’t pulling in enough live viewers to make it a financially viable series.

And it’s sad, but that’s the way network and cable TV still work. There’s only so low the ratings can drop before it’s too low for the networks.

The Magicians Trilogy Boxed Set: The Magicians; The Magician King; The Magician’s Land

The showrunners had a feeling this would happen

Going into the fifth season, the showrunners, John McNamara, Sera Gamble, and Henry Alonso Myers, had a feeling that this was going to be the case. The show was on the bubble and the showrunners knew they would need to potentially write a series finale. And so, they created an ending that could work as both.

Instead of filming content that could catapult into the sixth season and just opt for two different endings, the finale was written in a way where parts of scenes could be cut out. It could leave some of the storylines on cliffhangers if necessary. Just not with the usual type of cliffhanger we’ve been used to seeing.

Personally, I think it was a good move. For too long, we’ve had showrunners create major cliffhangers in the attempt to force a network to renew them. Just look at the cliffhanger Lucifer left us with Season 3, hoping that it would encourage FOX to renew them. Fortunately, Netflix saved the show, but we could have been left with an infuriating cliffhanger for the series. The Magicians showrunners thought about the viewers, creating an ending that would tie up the loose ends, even if we didn’t get a certain character back for a few minutes.

MORE: Should Netflix save The Magicians?

What did you think of The Magicians Season 5 finale? What would you have liked to see in a sixth season? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

The Magicians Seasons 1 to 4 are currently available to stream on Netflix. Season 5 will join soon. In Canada, you can stream the first four seasons on Amazon Prime Video.