No one wants to see their favorite TV show get canceled, but what about when your favorite TV show gets canceled not once but twice? That's a special type of injustice, and it's exactly what happened to the NBC time travel show, Timeless. At least disgruntled fans will get a little bit of justice back though, because NBC has ordered a two-part series finale of Timeless that will at the very least provide closure for the show's audiences. According to Deadline, the two-part finale will air this winter, so that gives you plenty of time to make your predictions about how the Season 2 cliffhanger of a finale will end up.
As mentioned before, the drama over whether or not Timeless would get renewed for a third season was almost as shocking as the drama on the actual sci-fi show. Then again, it's been like that even since Season 1. Last year, in May 2017, NBC canceled and then brought the show back within three days. As Vulture pointed out, a Network's cancellation and instant undoing of it had been unprecedented before the 2017 debacle. Usually if a show gets revived from a cancelation, it's because it was picked up by a different network, as with the recent case of Brooklyn Nine-Nine's move from Fox to NBC.
After Timeless, which stars Abigail Spencer and Matt Lanter, had its close brush with death in 2017, it seemed like its second chance meant NBC wanted to keep it for good. Alas, NBC canceled the show for a second time this past June despite Timeless' cult-like fan base, known fondly as "Clockblockers." In fact, that enthusiastic audience used the hashtag #SaveTimeless following the news that the show wouldn't return for Season 3, taking over Twitter with their passionate movement. The most ironic thing is that the Timeless fans had used that same hashtag after the show's first cancellation — and it really felt like the past was repeating itself, or maybe that everyone had... traveled back in time.
Now, those same fans, including Saturday Night Live's Leslie Jones, have taken to Twitter to celebrate what you could probably chalk up to as a consolation prize. Hey, TV being as cut-throat an industry as it is today, everyone sort of has to take what they can get, and the Timeless fans seem to be taking the two-part finale as a win.
The official twitter account for the Timeless writers also tweeted about the news, cautioning fans that this would likely be the real end. "We know that many of you wanted a 3rd (and 4th and 5th) Season of the show rather tahn a 2 hour finale, but when it became clear that that wasn't going to be possible, this was our last and best hope to #Save Rufus," they wrote.
Despite this sign that the planned two-part finale would, in fact, be the end of the show, many fans are holding out hope that they can still get more seasons of Timeless even after the finale airs. "Doctor Who had a movie when they thought they were done and so did Star Trek. This movie is an opportunity to #SaveTimeless and make it grow has a franchise," one Twitter user, @FrostWells, tweeted. That Twitter user's examples aren't exactly pertinent to Timeless considering that Star Trek was canceled in 1969, and then the film didn't come out until 1979, which then led to the Star Trek coming back to TV in 1987. Dr. Who has a similarly spaced out timeline. Still, it's true that a show could technically still come back after its cancellation, especially if ratings are strong.
Timeless fans have had a lot of cancellation fake-outs, and it definitely doesn't seem likely that NBC could change its mind and choose to renew the show again, but then again, you never know. If nothing else, the two-part finale is exciting enough on its own.
