As just another part of “Bad TV News Dump Friday Before Christmas,” TNT has officially announced that Leverage will end its five-season run with an episode airing Christmas night. The show will end with “a series finale that stands as one of the show’s best episodes,” said a network statement, which is almost certainly unbiased and completely trustworthy in its judgment. The Timothy Hutton vehicle, about a group of gentleman thieves who steal from the rich to give back to the poor, debuted on TNT almost exactly four years ago, on Dec. 7, 2008.
The series had been a modest success for TNT, but it seems as if the modesty of its success bumped up against the fact that aging shows grow more expensive as they go. In an open letter to Leverage fans published both on a fansite and in Entertainment Weekly, executive producer Dean Devlin said that he and fellow executive producer (and showrunner) John Rogers had planned out the episode that airs Christmas night to be the series finale they had always envisioned for the show, just in case no season six was forthcoming. In the event of a season six, that might have seemed like an odd call, but it certainly feels prescient now.
The final episode of Leverage will air at 9 p.m. Eastern Tuesday night on TNT.