Canadian teen-oriented soap opera Degrassi is shutting down after more than a decade on the air, with the show’s 14th season to be its last. The series—which originally launched as Degrassi: The Next Generation in 2001, acting as a sequel series for the long-running soap franchise—currently airs on MTV Canada and TeenNick in the U.S.
The effects of the cancellation are expected to be wide-ranging; heavy layoffs are likely in Canada’s child actor factories, which have spent the last 14 years funneling fresh young faces into the Degrassi furnace. (Most of the unemployed workers are expected to join their brothers and sisters in the country’s vast sketch and improv mines.) Meanwhile, teenagers across North America, no longer guided by Degrassi’s moral influence, have begun spontaneously giving birth to drunk, STD-riddled babies, who immediately began Facebook shaming each other into committing suicide at epidemic rates. And, perhaps most tragically, there is now one less interesting thing to say about former Degrassi star Drake, a major hit to workers in the booming “saying things about Drake” industry.
The series finale will air on July 31, after an hour-long special titled “It Goes There: Degrassi’s Most Talked-About Moments,” presumably covering all the most screen-searing times that Degrassi went to that place that it did. TeenNick executive Keith Dawkins has also said that the special and finale would be accompanied by “social activations,” which should come as welcome news for the show’s many sleeper agents, some of whom have been waiting more than a decade to activate and spread their reign of melodrama-tinged terror across the globe.