Netflix will be premiering the much-anticipated fourth season of Longmire today. With this news, the shock and frustration which set in among fans of the show will wear off quickly. A&E canceled the drama after three seasons, leaving its fans stunned.
Netflix grabs one more popular show
A&E’s decision to cancel the show came as a surprise to many, as the show was among the most popular original scripted series, averaging 5.6 million viewers in its third season. A&E canceled the show because the viewers “skewed older than the cable channel bosses wanted,” says a report from the Fresno Bee. With Netflix, there are no such concerns.
Several big cliff-hangers were featured in the final episode of season three. The show is based on the novels by best-selling author Craig Johnson. Hunt Baldwin, executive producer of the show, clarified that the cliff-hanger was not written to force the cable network to continue producing the show. Baldwin informed fans that when that part was written, a lot of story was left to be told. “And we were surprised that there was a period of sort of a purgatory last season when we didn’t think we were going to get to finish,” he added.
Baldwin further said they are thrilled at getting the opportunity to tell the remaining story through Netflix. “We threw a lot of knives in the air at the end of Season 3, and a big part of the story we’re telling in Season 4 is what happens when those knives fall.”
Season 4 to be different
Longmire Season 4 will be a bit different from the previous ones. As it now airs on Netflix, producers are free from the limitations of commercial television, allowing them to make each episode as long as they want. The writers can use the extra time to focus on the stories of the supporting characters.
When the news of A&E pulling the plug after three seasons reached Robert Taylor, the main lead in the show, he didn’t believe it all and took it as a joke. Taylor was in Australia when he got the message of the show being canceled. It took him weeks, but he said, “I reconciled myself to not doing it again, but I always believed we weren’t finished.”
