AMC’s Hell On Wheels is finally pulling into the station, much as a train would at the end of its journey—an appropriate metaphor for this show, because it’s about trains. Other train metaphors we could have used are: “Hell On Wheels has run out of steam” or “Hell On Wheels has gone off the tracks,” but those both have more of a negative connotation. Anyway, it’s a show about cowboys on trains and it’s going to end soon.
This comes from Entertainment Weekly, which reports that Hell On Wheels has been picked up for a fifth-and-final season. However, just like with Breaking Bad and Mad Men—two shows that are only slightly more prestigious than Hell On Wheels—the final season’s 14 episodes will be split over two years. The first seven will air next summer, with the rest coming some time in 2016—probably the summer of that year, assuming that the harmful smoke emitted by old-fashioned trains hasn’t already doomed the planet to an eternal summer by that point. With Hell On Wheels reaching the end of the line—another train metaphor we could’ve used—it’s just a matter of time before AMC has nothing left but The Walking Dead and Comic Book Men. Hopefully, Better Call Saul will keep the network from being derailed—which is a train metaphor that doesn’t make sense, because Saul isn’t about trains—when it premieres in February.