Snowpiercer to run out of steam with its fourth season on TNT

Deadline confirms tonight that Snowpiercer, the TV adaptation of Bong Joon-Ho’s post-apocalyptic dystopia of the same name, will wrap up its run with its upcoming fourth season on TNT. The show’s cast, which includes Daveed Diggs, Jennifer Connelly, Mickey Sumner, Sean Bean, and Alison Wright, has apparently had the options on their contracts lapse, usually the death-knell for any series that’s sitting on the bubble of a possible cancellation.

Like the film, Snowpiercer takes place (at least, initially) on a single endlessly running supertrain that appears to be the last bastion of human life in a world where the planet has frozen. The series focused much of its energy on Connelly’s Melanie, a high-powered member of the group that runs the train, and Diggs as Andre Layton, a detective hoping to overthrow the oppressive government Melanie represents.

Snowpiercer the show has, understandably, pushed this story quite a bit further from the not-especially-complicated class parable of Bong’s film, ending its recent third season on a cliffhanger showing that, yeah, there are probably other people out there somewhere amidst the tundra. The show’s fourth season is currently in production, which suggests that the series’ creators might have enough time to steer the train to a safe station, so to speak. The show previously announced that it was adding Clark Gregg and Michael Aronov to the cast of what’s now going to be its final season.

TNT released a statement about the show’s ending today, saying, “We can confirm that Snowpiercer will end after a successful, multi-season run on TNT. Its talented writers, actors and crew took an extraordinary premise and brought it to life in thrilling ways. It was critically acclaimed, had a significant impact on the post-apocalyptic genre, and now remains in the hearts and minds of fans forever.” Which is a pretty grandiose claim there at the end; we can’t wait for our own descendants, years from now, to pass on the oral traditions of the TNT Snowpiercer show, providing some comfort to each other as they cope with their own climate-induced apocalypse.