Forgoing the “six seasons and a movie” mantra that Community put forward—first as a joke, and then eventually as an actual barometer of televised success—the crew behind FX’s vampire drama The Strain say they only need three more years to get their bloody story told. That would bring the series, based on a trilogy of novels by executive producers Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan, up to five seasons of bureaucratic maneuvering and undead-stabbing action, which fellow producer Carlton Cuse says would give the show a natural place to end.
Talking to Digital Spy, Cuse—who made his name on Lost, another show that set its ending point well in advance—said, “We need to see this story come to its conclusion, and I think five seasons will be just about the right amount of time.” The current plan, he said, is for the show’s second and third seasons to cover del Toro and Hogan’s second book, The Fall, with the semi-apocalyptic events of the finale, The Night Eternal, taking up the fourth and fifth.
The Strain is currently in the middle of its second season of blood-vomiting urban vampires and edge-of-your-seat arguments about the jurisdiction of the CDC. It was recently renewed for a third, bringing it three-fifths of the way toward fulfilling Cuse and company’s five-year Master Plan. (The Master is a character on The Strain.)