Postscript Season

""The battle's done and we kind of won, so we sound our victory cheer...where do we go from here?""

- Giles, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "Once More With Feeling"

Well, they all said your show was Too Good to Last. You fended off Executive Meddling, and stayed true to your original vision of the series.

Of course, you got cancelled, but that's to be expected. Fortunately, you had plenty of warning and were able to do a Grand Finale. It was a huge spectacle, full of guest stars and special effects and you tied up all the loose ends so that everyone could go home happy with a sense of closure. Nothing left to do now but record the DVD commentary track and sell the props on E Bay.

Wait, what's that? The network just called. The fans, bless their hearts, launched the biggest letter-writing campaign ever, and the Ratings on the finale were through the roof. They've decided to renew you for another season!

Oh no. What are you going to do now? You killed off Lord Voldemort, got Voyager back to the Alpha Quadrant, sank the Bismarck, resolved all the sexual tension and/or saved the galaxy. There's nowhere else for the story to go.

But, hey, don't let that stop you. After all, you got yourself another season. Other producers would kill for a chance like this, so why not just go ahead? The problem is, unless you're very careful with how you go about the new season, you might end up Jumping The Shark.

The Post Script Season is what happens when a show is renewed after it's resolved its plot arc. You end up with a season, maybe two, where the show is forced to try out a whole new premise. This seldom goes well. In the first place, you've got to shoehorn these existing characters into a new premise that doesn't quite fit them. Expect Character Derailment. Secondly, you've already had a Grand Finale, and it's going to be hard to top that. You've already shot your dramatic wad. No wonder fans of other media get just a bit of dissonant feelings when they hear about how you threw away a perfectly good ending just because you wanted more.

However, not all Post Script Seasons are unmitigated disasters. There have been a few creators who've handled their new seasons with care and presented material just as satisfying as (if not more than) the material that preceeded. For the most part, however, Post Script Season successes only occur with shows that aren't dependent on large, overall story arcs spanning the entire series.

A form of Retool. Results in Plot Leveling. Can suffer from Final Season Casting. Compare Trilogy Creep.

Anime & Manga

 * Super Dimension Fortress Macross: When the series was extended by several episodes in the middle of production, the writers added a Postscript Story Arc set After the End.
 * Gao Gai Gar had an OVA which retconned the title mecha's original purpose of construction from "fighting the Zonder" to "fighting the new A God Am I villain we just came up with". It actually went a lot better than it sounds, largely owing to sheer force of over-the-top-itude. Definitely goes under Tropes Are Not Bad.
 * The TV series itself had a "postscript last couple of episodes." The Big Bad Man Behind the Man was finally, decisively and explosively defeated. Happily ever after, right? Unfortunately years before the series began While it reeked of an Ass Pull (there was some Foreshadowing, but it was only apparent in hindsight), it somehow managed to wrap itself up nicely.
 * GUNNM: Last Order might be seen as that, because when road accident forced Yukito Kishiro to Wrap It Up, he tacked a Happy Ending onto the series and left it for half a decade, until he returned to it in Last Order. However, as the "Post Script Season" is at this moment even longer than the original series, and it completely disregarded said happy ending, it is more like a cross between the sequel and the Revival now.
 * After Akria Toriyama decided to conclude the Dragonball manga with the Majin Buu storyline, Toei (the producers of the anime version) did their own Sequel Series titled Dragon Ball GT.
 * The Dark Dragon story arc of Dragon Ball GT was itself a post-script season. Originally, the show was intended to last only through the Baby storyline, but Bandai asked Toei to kept the show going afterward in order to help promote their Dragon Ball Final Bout fighting game for the Play Station.
 * This is hardly unique treatment to GT. Dragon Ball itself kept getting extended repeatedly. It seems that every major arc was intended to be the end of the franchise before Toriyama was convinced to continue it for just a little longer.
 * Yu Yu Hakusho was meant to end with the Chapter Black saga, but the editors had Yoshihiro Togashi make another arc, which was terribly contrived and rushed through in both the manga and its subsequent anime adaptation (especially the manga, where the final battle is barely even shown!)
 * In many ways, Transformers Energon seemed to suffer from this in its final quarter, which featured a story that essentially had nothing but the most tangenital connection to any of the plot that had come before it (the villains had obtained their main objective and were defeated three-quarters of the way through the show, leaving nothing for anyone to actually do). The frustrating thing, though, is that it's not strictly a postscript - the show was always intended to run to 52 episodes, and this final arc was simply filling out that requirement, even though the actual story of the series had been finished.
 * The Fist of the North Star (Hokuto no Ken) manga was renewed by Shueisha after completing its originally planned three-year run. Raoh, who was originally established to be Kenshiro's greatest adversary and possibly the greatest warlord in the post-apocalyptic world, was killed off as he literally ascended himself to the heavens. Because of this, Buronson and Tetsuo Hara had to come up with new adversaries for Kenshiro to face, as well as explain why they weren't around during the earlier storyline, resulting in quite a few ass pulls. The most egregious example is the whole Kingdom of Shura storyline, which revealed that Kenshiro and Raoh had other siblings that the reader weren't aware of before: namely Hyo, Kenshiro's actual blood-related elder brother, and Kaioh, Raoh's identical-looking elder brother.
 * It may not look like it, but the original plan for the Pokémon anime was to cover only the first generation games, while giving sneak peaks to the Pokémon of Gold and Silver, which would launch shortly after the anime's end. This was due to the fact that video game adaptations to other media have not had good track records. Of course, things turned out a bit differently than what they planned for.
 * When World Events Productions was first editing/dubbing Voltron, the plan was to edit three short-lived, similar but unrelated Combining Mecha Anime shows (Go Lion, Dairugger XV, and Albegas) into one series for a combined total of 125 episodes to put into syndication. But with the unexpected popularity of Lion Voltron (GoLion) followed by the equally unexpected backlash against Vehicle Voltron (Dairugger), plans to dub Albegas were scrapped, leaving WEP 20 episodes short. So WEP actually hired Toei to animate 20 new Lion Voltron episodes that are not a part of Go Lion at all.
 * Season 2 of SD Gundam Force.
 * Season 3 of Monster Rancher.
 * Season 3 of Sonic X. Ratings had been mediocre in Japan, so the anime was unable to get past the initial 52 episode order and had to quickly wrap up its Trapped in Another World premise...and then it became an absolute hit in the international market, resulting in a somewhat Darker and Edgier season that had barely anything to do with the rest of the series before it. A bit of an odd case in that this season has never actually aired in Japan, possibly due to the low ratings during its initial run.
 * Season 2 of Yoroiden Samurai Troopers, AKA Ronin Warriors. Originally everyone was supposed to die in the final sequence except Nasti and Jun ("Mia" and "Yuli"), but the producers were notified that the network wanted a second season ... just when Episode 17 was about to air. They then stalled and rewrote the last two episodes to produce a happy ending -- and introduce a Crowning Moment of Awesome Hand Wave Deus Ex Machina that became the central and driving force behind the next season. The second season, unlike many of these things, turned out to also be possibly better than the first.

Comic Books

 * The maxiseries Amethyst Princess of Gemworld was originally going to be just a twelve-issue series. At the end of the series, the protagonist and her allies triumph, the Big Bad is killed off, and the heroine returns to her normal life on Earth after peace is restored to the Gemworld. However, the series was so successful that DC Comics decided to do an ongoing series. The first twelve issues, done by the original creative team behind the maxi-series, weren't too bad. But when they left, the new creative team changed the direction of the series drastically, and did a series of Retcons designed to drag the series kicking and screaming into the mainstream DC universe. The series was cancelled soon afterward.
 * Runaways was only supposed to be eighteen issues, and after, there wasn't really anywhere to go, but the series got a second volume with the original creative team that lasted another few years, and continued after they left, and it was recently relaunched again. Many fans liked the new characters and new directions, but the overall sense of suspense was lost, and, after the original creative team left, it just wasn't as quality.
 * Marvel's original Micronauts series concluded with a Bittersweet Ending. The Big Bad was finally Killed Off for Real, but the heroes' Homeworld had been reduced to a lifeless ruin. With Homeworld in ruins and the war over, the Micronauts decide to go off and explore the Microverse as the series ended. Then the series was relaunched as Micronauts: The New Voyages. Under a new creative team, the series picked up where the original left off, but the series ended up being mostly dull and pointless as the Micronauts (and the story) wandered aimlessly. Eventually, they returned to Homeworld to restore it to life as the series ended.
 * All of the character arcs and plot lines in Cerebus had been pretty much resolved by issue 200, yet Sim kept the series going for another 100 issues (arguably for the sole reason that he publicly declared the series would run for 300 issues total). The new issues were...not well-received.
 * According to Hergé; The Adventures of Tintin concluded with "Tintin in Tibet" and that the works afterwords ("The Castafiore Emerald", "Flight 714", "Tintin and the Picaros" and the unfinished "Tintin and Alph-Art") were basically this. However; they actually were well received, and still continued the nature a little bit, showing that this trope is not always a bad thing.

Literature

 * For those who took Latin in high school, one can't help but wonder if the writers of the Cambridge Latin Course textbook thought they wouldn't get their contracts renewed after Book I. Vesuvius blows and everybody dies, Caecilius dying onscreen and his son's fate left in question... until next semester. Also, Book IV had a lot of Filler arcs, don't you think? Who cares about Those Two Guys at Bath and random weddings? Get back to Salvius and his evil!
 * Dean Koontz's Frankenstein ends the third book by, resolving the Unresolved Sexual Tension, and otherwise tying up its loose ends. There is a mention of , but otherwise everything is settled. Book Four came out in 2010, and Book Five is coming out in 2011. And many, many people really wish they hadn't/aren't.
 * Peter and The Starcatchers appeared to end with "Secret of Rundoon". However, in 2009, a fourth book called "Sword of Mercy" was written, taking place after a large timeskip (Directly before the events of Peter Pan for that matter.) One probably would have wondered if Barry and Pearson thought their contracts wouldn't get renewed so they wrapped up the arc in "Secret of Rundoon". However, the Big Bad wasn't as easily defeated as they assumed in the original series...

Live Action TV

 * Babylon 5 was originally plotted to a five-season arc. When the PTEN syndication network crumbled around it and the show was not renewed for a fifth season, the fourth season storyline was reworked to complete the entire arc. The show was subsequently granted a fifth season, but with almost all of its major plot threads resolved, the fifth season that resulted was much weaker, composed of a lot of stories that had been cut from earlier seasons as they weren't as strong.
 * As originally planned, Season 4 would have ended with the episode "Intersections in Real Time" in which . What actually happened was that "Intersections in Real Time" ended up as the fourth-last episode of the season, and the events which would have wrapped up the main arc of in early season 5 were squashed into the three episodes "Between the Darkness and the Light", "Endgame" and "Rising Star", followed by the Grand Finale "Sleeping in Light". The story arcs in Season 5 were indeed originally planned for Season 5, but the reason why it was generally weaker than previous seasons was because the developments intended for the season's beginning which were most pertinent to the series as a whole had already been shown in Season 4.
 * For example, the telepath colony arc (which covers most of the first half of season 5) was originally meant to only be about three episodes long.
 * Twin Peaks sorta went downhill like this after Laura Palmer's killer was revealed, the main plot being resolved (due to Executive Meddling, no less - the writers had other plans). It felt incredibly awkward to have Dale Cooper still hanging around in Twin Peaks, even though he didn't have a reason to stay after the killer had been found. Wyndam Earl was more of a stand-in for Laura Palmer's killer than a real villain.
 * Earth Final Conflict neatly resolved its entire premise in the penultimate season, wiping out the entire species responsible for the action of the plot. As a result, an entirely new random alien race had to be introduced to keep the plot afloat.
 * Blakes Seven  ended its third season with the destruction of the Liberator and the (apparent) death of the Big Bad. When the fourth season opened, they had to take the show in a radically different direction to compensate for the changes.
 * Buffy the Vampire Slayer killed off Buffy in the fifth season. While this did not actually undermine the premise, the power of the Grand Finale proved impossible to match, and some people consider the following season lackluster by comparison. The characters themselves talked about how much the sixth season sucked while it was still going on, repeatedly describing their own adventures as lame, filler, etc. It was even lampshaded in the Mind Screw episode.
 * Very much a case of YMMV and a continuing Broken Base. Season Six still contained several critically acclaimed/fan favourite moments (most notably the widely beloved musical episode). There are also plenty of people who thought that the show had already deteriorated by Season Five (the one containing the original Grand Finale), which was significantly weakened by the introduction of Dawn and attempts through her to appeal to a younger a demographic. The only thing Buffy fans can truly agree on is that the show's glory days were Season 2 and 3.
 * Mystery Science Theater 3000 ended its seventh season by resolving its entire premise, so the eighth season had to begin with a Reset Button, the shifting of the setting five hundred years into the future, and the introduction of a new antagonist. It survived for three more seasons, mostly because the plot of the series was never much more than a Framing Device for the slapstick and snark.
 * The X Files faced retool after retool as they tried to wring a few more seasons out after the feature film. The seventh season is particularly guilty of premature closure. It "explained" the conspiracy arc, killed off nearly all the Syndicate antagonists, and perhaps most significantly, resolved the long-running mystery of Mulder's missing sister.
 * There is no postscript. Every season represents the unfolding of a single overarching story. It just might not have seemed like it.
 * Remington Steele married off Laura and Steele, as the show's cancellation looked certain and Pierce Brosnan had been offered the role of James Bond. However, because Brosnan got the Bond role, NBC decided to renew the show, bringing it back for a very lame half-season which lacked all of the charm of the preceding seasons and effectively scuttling Brosnan's big movie break. Brosnan didn't end up playing Bond for over a decade.
 * Sledge Hammer nuked its town in the first season finale, not expecting renewal. With the renewal, the second season was set "five years earlier", with all ongoing plotlines continuing uninterrupted.
 * Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was originally a completed series at a mere 40 episodes, with a conclusion similar to the ending of Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger (the Japanese basis for the first season) where Rita Repulsa was re-captured and thrown back into space in her dumpster after the defeat of Cyclopsis. However, the explosion in merchandise sales early into the series convinced Saban to pay Toei to film more action footage to extend the first season to 60 episodes (some which were left over and eventually used for the second season), as well as enter a contract for adapting whole future seasons. Traces of the original series finale are evident in the VERY choppy Command Center scene at the end of the aired version of "Doomsday Part 2" (in which Zordon offers the Rangers to retire, even though Rita is still loose).
 * Power Rangers In Space was also initially set to be the final season following Power Rangers Turbo, and made great strides to finish off existing plot threads, even killing off established characters and redeeming others. The ratings were so good for the more serialized In Space that the series was recommisioned. Executive Producer Johnathan Tzachor (who later became more of an executive meddler) suddenly threw out the entire existing cast in favour of a fresh one, a trait that has continued with every post-script season ever since.
 * After an unprecedented (at the time) letter-writing campaign saved Star Trek the Original Series from cancellation, fans were "rewarded" with a third season containing many of the show's weakest and/or goofiest episodes (even by the standards of the series), including the infamous Spock's Brain as season premiere. Since the series was always purely episodic, the usual reasons for a lackluster Post Script Season don't apply; what really killed the show was that the network promised a solid Tuesday night slot and then was moved to a Friday... er, Saturday Night Death Slot, violating a verbal contract with creator/producer Gene Roddenberry. He left the show in protest and had little involvement in the third season. That said, some strong episodes did churn out.
 * Stargate SG-1 had this happen multiple times, with seasons 6, 7, 8 and 9. The show was expected to be cancelled after five seasons, and so ended on a decent (but not Grand) finale ("Revelations") -- the expectation was that they would then move on to The Movie (to be called "Stargate: The Lost City" or something similar) which would segue into the Spin-Off (Stargate Atlantis, which was very different in concept at this stage). Then the show was renewed for a sixth season, and so was given a Grand Finale ("Full Circle") which introduced the planned concept of The Movie. Then the show was renewed for a seventh season, so The Movie was cancelled and its concept was rewritten as a season-long arc that would finish with a two-part Grand Finale ("Lost City") which would segue into the Spin-Off instead. Then the series was renewed for an eighth season, so the Grand Finale's ending was changed to make more of a cliffhanger to be resolved in the Season 8 premiere, and Stargate Atlantis started running concurrently to Stargate SG-1. It was expected that the eighth season would be the last, however, so the end of the season was once again devised to close the book on the series: both major galactic threats were taken away in a three-episode arc ("Reckoning" Parts 1 & 2 and "Threads" -- interestingly, these came just before the Grand Finale), and then the series ended with yet another two-part Grand Finale ("Moebius") involving time-traveling to ancient Egypt. The show was then picked up again for a ninth season, and was given a Retool which replaced several cast members and introduced a new Big Bad. Season 9 was made knowing that the show would be renewed for at least another year -- and then, finally, the show was cancelled after the end of Season 10. Whether the final episode ("Unending") was a Grand Finale is doubtful; the real resolution of the series happened in the DVD movie "Stargate: The Ark of Truth". And then there was another DVD movie, and more planned... until Stargate Universe underperformed and MGM went bankrupt. Ooops.
 * Sea Quest DSV also had this happen twice. It was not known if the show would be renewed, so at the end of the first season, they destroyed the SeaQuest. The show was picked up, so there was a Retool and a new SeaQuest was constructed. Then at the end of the second season, facing a similar situation, the SeaQuest was transported to another planet and then destroyed. The show was picked up, so it was renamed SeaQuest 2032 and moved ten years into the future. Partway into season three, it was Cut Short.
 * Only Fools and Horses: The British sitcom about two poor wheeler-dealer street-market trader brothers ended after 15 years (7 seasons and four sets of Christmas specials) with the Trotter brothers finding an antique watch in their garage, and becoming millionaires at last. The three episode finale, where the Trotters are finally shown in luxury penthouses and expensive sports cars, was shown over Christmas 1996 and attracted massive viewing figures for The BBC. A few years later they convinced writer John Sullivan to reprise the ever-popular characters for three more Christmas Episodes. Having the Trotters lose their investment money in a stock market crash (based on one in real life) and return to their original lifestyle only to gain some of their lost fortune back and allow Rodney and Cassandra to finally have a child of their own, the specials were panned by critics and viewers alike, and no more have been produced since 2003. To add salt to the wound, "Time On Your Hands" was featured on Sky1's often repeated Top Fifty TV Endings feature...completely ignoring the three 2001-2003 specials.
 * Night Court: Season 8 is over. Dan quits his job and loses the Phil Foundation fortune. More importantly, Harry and Christine have professed their love to one another. OK, that's the end. What's that? We've been renewed? Oh, crap!
 * 30 Rock devoted an episode to the idea that several of the characters on that show were unhappy with the Season 9 ending to Night Court, so they staged a "fake" episode, reuniting several of the actual cast members, and they had Harry and Christine get married.
 * The last (fifth) season of Angel was, in its own way, a Post Script Season--albeit one that didn't arise from being renewed at the last second. The long story arc of the third and fourth seasons had come to a close, the characters had moved on to a completely different setting (the evil law firm Wolfram & Hart), several characters set out to be or were forcibly retooled, everyone except Angel had, and Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer was added as as regular cast member. The change was apparently done at the network's request. Then, due to conflicting accounts, including the high per-episode cost, the show was cancelled anyway. What makes it a Post Script Season instead of a Retool is that, while it was intended to cover multiple seasons, the cancellation aborted the arc.
 * The seventh season finale of Charmed was at first planned as the series finale. Just think about it: Darryl promised his wife he wouldn't help the Charmed Ones anymore, then they destroyed their own source of power so the Big Bad would die in the explosion as well, and finally changed their faces and started living normal lives! Not to mention their dead sister Prue was mentioned a lot, and even the episode title was a mirror of the title of the pilot episode. But then they got renewed... we all know what happened since.
 * It wasn't so much as being planned, but more like hedging their bets. The show was consistently on the bubble for Season 7. The writers had no idea whether they'd be back or not. It wasn't until about a week before the last episode aired before the network renewed the series for an eighth season. Word of God says the Season 7 finale was explicitly written as a Series Fauxnale.
 * The seventh season finale of That 70s Show was clearly supposed to be the series finale: first, Red FINALLY caught the guys smoking pot in his basement. Then he finally said to his son he loved him without insulting him in the process. And, of course, at the end of this episode, the main character Eric left the series. Aside from an open ending of the Kelso-Jackie-Hyde love triangle storyline, there was nothing more to add to the story.
 * The open ending was clearly tacked on after it was known the series was renewed. Jackie and Hyde's relationship had already had its ups and downs, and they were resolved... only to be thrown more obstacles at the tail end to provide material for new episodes.
 * In Boy Meets World, the highschool graduation season finale had changes like Mr. Feeny retiring and moving away, and Shawn deciding to take a job as a photographer instead of going to college. But when the series was renewed, both of these changes were reversed so that Shawn and Mr. Feeny could be part of the college experience along with Cory, Topanga, and the rest.
 * Despite Scrubs's Grand Finale at the end of its eighth season, it was picked up for ninth where it was ReTooled to focus on a completely different group of characters in a setting only tangentially related to Sacred Heart.
 * They had it happen in season six, too. The entire season built up to wrapping up the various plot-lines: Elliott was getting married to Keith, who brought out the best in her; Turk and Carla had a lovely family set up with their baby daughter, Izzy, and the same was true of Dr Cox and Jordan with their kids, Jack and Jennifer Dylan; JD was as neurotic as ever, but mostly unchanged and dealing with the alienation that his dislikable habits led to; Laverne had been Killed Off for Real ... and at the last minute, they got renewed for season seven. Suddenly, JD finds out that Kim lied to him about her miscarriage, Elliott's dysfunctions with Keith got turned Up to Eleven, and instead of the (admittedly kind of depressing) ending that things had been shaping up for, we got a cliffhanger season ending and a season premiere that really only served to once again point out that JD and Elliott were the endgame couple.
 * At least they had the decency to bring Aloma Wright, Laverne's actress, back as a new character.
 * The final season of The A-Team, which resolved the main premise of the show - the team is pardoned by the government, and works for them instead of hiding out in the L.A. underground. In turn, it also had a post-script finale.
 * Magnum PI had such a definitive finale at the end of season seven, they aired commercials explaining that despite the main character, things weren't really over. It lasted another season.
 * The episode order for the fourth and last season of Felicity was increased after production had wrapped. The original finale resolved the existing storylines and gave a brief synopsis of the characters' lives for the next two years. The extra episodes, rather than simply being written to take place and be aired before the finale, instead created a new five-episode arc set after the two year fast-forward, in which Felicity magically travels back in time to the beginning of the season in order to make different choices. The show had never included fantasy elements before, and the whole arc, while interesting, felt undeniably tacked on to an otherwise finished product.
 * The ultimate example is probably Coronation Street, which has essentially been on a series of postscript seasons since 1960. It was originally intended to be 13 episodes long, with Coronation Street bulldozed in a Made for TV Movie. However, it proved so popular that a new series was commissioned, and it's been broadcasting more or less continuously to the present day.
 * This happened with Golden Girls. Bea Arthur decided to leave the show after the seventh season, and it ends with Dorothy getting married and moving to Atlanta. However, her mother Sophia decides to stay in Miami with the roommates, and the eighth season is retitled The Golden Palace as the girls open a high-end hotel. Needless to say, it wasn't well received and most fans prefer to think the series ended with Dorothy's wedding.
 * Sort of happened on Saved By the Bell. The show had finished taping its finale (which centered around the characters' high school graduation) when NBC ordered more episodes. Which shouldn't have been a problem, as the finale hadn't aired yet, and they could simply air the new episodes prior to the finale--except that the actors' contracts had expired, and everyone but Tiffani Amber-Thiessen and Elizabeth Berkley decided to sign new ones. As a result, Kelly and Jessie were replaced with a new character named Tori Scott. No explanation was given for Kelly and Jessie's absence in the new episodes, and since the finale was already in the can, no explanation could be given for Tori's absence at graduation.
 * La Femme Nikita. Despite being the USA Network's top rated drama during its 4th season (even with no advertisement by the network), the cancellation was announced. After the large fan campaign to bring the series back, in September 2000 a truncated 5th season was announced. It did help out with some of the Cannon Fodder they had left behind, but gave one hell of a Bittersweet Ending.
 * Season 5 of Supernatural ended with . It was a very touching episode and would have made the perfect series finale,  . And then they got a sixth season. The show creator walked away but his co-producer kept it going.
 * Although, with the way the seventh season keeps suspicions are mounting that this might really be the end.
 * Apparently not, the show has been renewed for an eighth season.
 * Prison Break was an odd case of unplanned seasons. While the creators mentioned the show was only designed for two seasons, Fox squeezed a third season out of them in 2007-2008. This unfolded the same year when...you guessed it...the writer's strike happened. As a result, the third season was truncated to 13 episodes, and forced the writers to produce a fourth season to wrap up the show. Depending on who you ask, the fourth year was either a creative resurgence from the mediocre third season or a godawful train wreck of epic proportions. The controversial series ending was even more polarizing. And let's not even get into the cash grabbing DVD movie, The Final Break.
 * Seventh Heaven had a grand series finale at the end of the 10th season. They got all the original cast back, had a big almost-wedding, and every married Camden child was expecting twins. Then, like the Jesus that the Christian characters never mentioned, the show was revived three days later because the executives mistook the finale's high ratings as a sign that people wanted the show to continue. For the 11th season, the writers were forced to find a way out of the corner they backed themselves into with the twins, as well as deal with a much smaller budget. Their way out of these problems was to make Lucy have a miscarriage over the summer, have the longest-running (and highest paid) actors not appear in every episode, bring in a bevy of cheaper teen actors, and have Reverend Camden homeschool the twins to save money on a classroom set and extras. The results were dismal.
 * 24's seventh season was delayed for over a year because of a strike by the Writer's Guild of America, and its renewal status was up in the air. As a result, most of the long-running plot threads in the series were wrapped up, including the final appearances of most of the surviving supporting characters from the series, and the resolution of the overarching conspiracy of seasons 5, 6 and 7 (to the point that a major character who was previously thought dead returned to get his revenge). Season 7 even ended on a downbeat note, as Jack Bauer made peace with himself (after being infected with a virus) before slipping into a coma, while his daughter attempted to save his life. However, the show was unexpectedly renewed for an eighth season (which only happened after season seven had finished airing), and the writers transported Jack (who survived the virus) from Washington to New York, where he works to stop another terrorist threat with the help of the recently-instituted CTU New York branch and an (almost) entirely new cast. The only thing that connects it to the previous seasons are a handful of characters and the appearance of a previously-assumed dead President.
 * Every season of Friday Night Lights after the third season, although this is a rare case of a postscript season done right. The main narrative arc concludes with the Panthers, as well as most of the main characters' arcs being wrapped up...that is, until the fourth and fifth seasons, where Coach Taylor (who was forced out of his job) is hired at a newly-reopened school and teaches a new team with lesser equipment, budget and facilities, training them from scratch. However, the narrative (coupled with cameos and updates on the characters who were previously put on a bus) made it just as well-written as the previous seasons.
 * The seventh season of the Canadian coroner drama Da Vincis Inquest ended with most of the major plot threads tied up (including the arrest of the series' Big Bad, who was prevalent throughout the last three seasons) and most of the characters getting a decent send-off. Although the series ended with a vague Sequel Hook (in which the main character, Dominic Da Vinci, announces his intent to run for Mayor of Vancouver), it was pretty much the end...until the show was retooled a year later as Da Vinci's City Hall, skipping the entire process of the mayoral election and going straight to Da Vinci in office. Although the postscript season still integrated a handful of characters from the previous seasons, the show bled viewers and was subsequently cancelled at the end of its season.
 * All in The Family wrapped up its eighth season with Mike, Gloria, and Joey moving to California. Actors Rob Reiner and Sally Struthers had announced they were leaving the show, and producer Norman Lear couldn't imagine continuing it without them, so having the Stivics say goodbye to Archie and Edith was conceived as a perfect Tear Jerker ending to the show...until CBS executives offered Carroll O'Connor $100,000 an episode to come back as Archie, and he agreed. Not only did the show continue for a ninth season (without Reiner, Struthers, or Lear), it got an After Show in Archie Bunkers Place.
 * John Esmonde and Bob Larbey's (now little remembered) National Service sitcom Get Some In! was cancelled after its fourth season in 1977. Esmonde and Larbey decided to end on a high note, with Corporal Marsh demoted to Aircraftman for cheating on a nursing exam and posted to a remote RAF base in Labrador, while "erks" Jakey, Ken, Matthew, and Bruce received a cushy posting to an RAF hospital in Malta. However, the News of the World successfully campaigned ITV to renew the series (citing audience figures of over 14 million), and the fifth season premiere in 1978 saw the plot developments at the end of the fourth season reversed as the "erks" were immediately recalled to Britain and found themselves once again under the heel of Marsh (who had returned a hero and restored to Corporal). The cast and audience alike were unhappy with the result, doubly so because Robert Lindsay, who played Jakey Smith, had accepted the title role in the John Sullivan-penned sitcom Citizen Smith during the hiatus and was replaced by future Brush Strokes star Karl Howman. The fifth season proved to be the last, and ended on a much less final note than the fourth season.
 * As Roseanne neared the end of its eighth season, which had been expected to be its last, the ratings improved enough for the network to ask for one more season, in which the show completely lost its moorings as the Conners' lottery win allowed the writers to indulge in all the "what-if" plotlines they had never otherwise dared to touch. It had to end with Roseanne sitting on the couch as it was in the original set saying basically "none of what you watched for the past season really happened".
 * Primeval, due to its huge budget, by British television standards, has spend most of its runtime on the verge of being cancelled. On top of that the actor playing the lead hero wanted out during season 3. This season, while containing some big fat Sequel Hooks, killed off not only him but also the main villain (:his wife). While the gimmick driving the series was still there the writers had to develop a completely new storyline when they were eventually greenlit for a season 4 and 5. (Season 5 ended on a similar note, if the series gets revived again there will be a post post script season season.)

Radio

 * This happened to The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy in its original radio incarnation, which had to get Arthur and Ford off of prehistoric Earth and rescue Marvin and Zaphod from a carbon copy of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal so they could go on further adventures. (While poor old Trillian got a one-line Put On a Bus.)
 * The bus came back later, when they started making radio versions of the book series.

Theatre

 * Henry V - After the roguish Prince Hal won a loyal fanbase in Henry IV parts one and two, the author eventually decided to extend the story, even after bringing Hal's relationship with the Ensemble Darkhorse Falstaff to a satisfactory conclusion in the finale. The reboot ended up being much Darker and Edgier, and contrary to the author's promises didn't include Falstaff at all.

Toys

 * Bionicle ended mid-2010, and the entire toyline, comics, movies and novels have become discontinued. Just about all of the main story threads got neatly, if abruptly, wrapped up and the final speech delivered, but many side-stories were still unfinished and a lot of mysteries unsolved, thus (and also because the "ending" had set up a ton of new possibilities) LEGO agreed to keep the story going for at least another year and a half, but only the main writer, Greg Farshtey remained as the sole storyteller, as the other members of the former Story Team had moved on to other projects.

Video Games

 * Mega Man X 5 ended the story and left Zero Killed Off for Real. Capcom produced a sequel anyway, without Keiji Inafune's involvement. X6's mostly pointless story tried to combine all 3 of X5's endings, used one of the worst Ass Pulls ever to bring Zero back, and demoted Big Bad Sigma to Anticlimax Boss status. It even included a robot shark for easy jumping purposes.
 * It doesn't help that Zero's explanation that Maybe if the development team didn't make that wretched Nightmare stage gimmick, they'd had more time to make the game make sense.
 * The less said of Axl, and the 2 further sequels, the better.
 * There's also the fact that X5 was supposed to lead up to the Zero series.
 * Where Zero was killed Deader Than Dead in its finale.
 * That would be the fourth game. The third game was supposed to be the last one of the Zero series. Capcom is really bad with this trope.
 * And then returned as a Biometal in ZX.
 * Halo 3 suffered from a variation on this. The developers have been very frank in saying that a need to meet a publisher-enforced deadline for Halo 2 not only deprived them of much-needed game polishing time and various chunks of gameplay, but forced them to cut off the game's actual ending. They had to come up with a way to pad out a game's third act into an entire new, console-selling, killer-app extravaganza. They didn't do a bad job gameplay-wise, but the storyline suffered from the resolution of most of the plot points in the previous title.
 * However, 343 (a new company made up of remnants of Bungie that wanted to stay with the series after Bungie split after making Halo Reach, plus some other designers from other game companies) announced plans for a new Halo trilogy at E3 2011, so that might solve the story problems of part 3.
 * After years of Final Fantasy games existing as standalone games, the success of Final Fantasy X and the intrigue created by a promotional video expanding on the game's Bittersweet Ending led to production of Final Fantasy X-2 scant months after the game's Japanese release. Since the world had already been saved in the previous game, this sequel had a Lighter and Softer tone, especially compared to the heavy drama of the first. It also added Fan Service by the truck load and starred three women. Finally, it also addressed the Bittersweet Ending, leading to many outcries from people that had assumed
 * Syphon Filter: Logan's Shadow. The eponymous virus and the Consortium are no longer part of the plot, which instead involves Somali pirates and a Big Bad affiliated with al-Qaeda.
 * Super Robot Wars does this all the time, often including a series after its plot has been resolved simply to pad out the cast list (or because they want to pair it up with another show). Super Robot Wars Alpha and Super Robot Wars Z in particular have a rather large number of Postscript Series, since they're multi-game epics and just having characters disappear into the ether when there are still enemies to fight wouldn't make sense.
 * The Another Centurys Episode franchise also did this in 3: The Final (with Macross and Metal Armor Dragonar, both of whom had their plots finished in 2) and R (Gundam Seed Destiny, the only series in the ACE franchise to debut with its plot resolved).
 * The original Another World ending was meant to be Left Hanging, but Interplay went ahead and made a sequel without Chahi's involvement, where you play as Buddy, and Lester, the original protagonist, dies near the end.
 * Leisure Suit Larry after 3. Al Lowe had written himself into a corner with 3's ending and couldn't figure out how to logically continue the series, so he skipped part 4 and made its absence the main plot point of 5.
 * Resident Evil 5 rendered series Big Bad Wesker Deader Than Dead, yet the series is slated to continue with RE 6, needless to say sans Shinji Mikami. Looks like it may be becoming a Franchise Zombie.
 * How very Meta.
 * Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation, Chronicles, and Angel of Darkness, all of which became Canon Dis Continuity after the reboot.
 * Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker, while well-received, pretty much qualifies as this. Metal Gear Solid 4 had already revealed the secret behind the Patriots, ended their rule, and made Big Boss repent. Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker is therefore a mostly Filler Interquel which mostly serves to explain something that was already explained by a previous Filler game (Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops) in a way slightly more congruent with Metal Gear Solid 4's retcons. Fortunately the plot on its own is a lot of fun, and the game is also really entertaining.
 * The second half of the Megaman Battle Network games suffer from this. The ending of 3 is the typical "It looks like the hero's about to die. No wait, he survives." script, while being overly sentimental and dramatic, as well as finally beating up the World Three, the main villain group. It's pretty obvious that 4 was made with absolutely no thought put into subsequent games (ie. the villain is a Giant Space Flea From Nowhere, dark chips seem to be a one-off gimick, and there plot is very bare bones). 5 builds on the dark chips and the new villains, the Nebula organization, but kills them off in the game, making all the development meaningless, and 6 switches gears back to World Three, the group you were assured were finished in 3, while bringing back older characters from all the other games, except, oddly fitting, from 3.

Western Animation

 * Justice League Unlimited finished its plot arc in its second season, ending with an epilogue to the entire DC Animated Universe, set after Batman Beyond. The series went on for one more season, however, with an entirely different storyline involving Luthor and Grodd forming the Legion of Doom; however, unlike many other examples on this list, it managed to maintain its high quality until the end. The series' creators have stated that they made every season finale a possible Grand Finale, since they never knew whether or not they would get another season.
 * Teen Titans also got renewed for one additional season (season five) that year. The surprise of this development could be seen in that the three-part finale for season four was titled simply "The End".
 * It's also evident in that previous seasons stuck pretty strongly to the Sorting Algorithm of Evil, while Season Five's Big Bad the Brain was, while still very dangerous, much less so than Season Four's Trigon (because really, there's really no way to go up from the resident God of Evil). To compensate, the writers brought back nearly every villain the show had ever had (aside from the previous seasonal big bads) plus several new ones, to serve in Brain's Legion of Doom.
 * The Recursive Adaptation comic Teen Titans Go remained in publication for two more years, during which it acted as an unofficial "sixth season" of the series, following from the events of the Teen Titans Trouble in Tokyo movie and cementing the relationships of Flash and Jinx as well as Beast Boy and Raven.
 * Kim Possible was originally set to end with The Movie So The Drama, but was renewed for another season. However, the following seasons retained high quality and the true series finale finished up the remaining story arcs the original left hanging, such as
 * Season Five of The Batman is seen this way by many, as it mainly consists of team ups with other heroes, as well as Commissioner Gordon and Batgirl being relegated to guest characters.
 * "Last But Not Beast" was very clearly supposed to be the ending of Dexters Laboratory. Dexter revealed his secret lab to his parents (an ongoing plot point since the beginning of the series), crossovers from the mini-series that ran between Dexter episodes (Justice Friends and Dial M For Monkey), and Dexter learning of Monkey's secret identity as his resident lab monkey. (everyone but Dee Dee had a memory wipe afterwards, but that's a detail) However, the show was called to produce another two seasons so they obliged with some Art Evolution (for better or ill), recast voice actors, and Your Mileage May Vary writing quality. Somewhat of a subversion as series creator Genndy Tartakovsky had already walked away from Dexter's Lab by this point and the show was continued under a new hand.
 * Futurama has been put in the situation three times.
 * In 2001, Fox decided not to renew Futurama (possibly because they had so preempted so many shows with sports that the final episode didn't air until 2003) - this caused the staff to write an open-ended finale since they weren't sure they'd really be cancelled (they were.)
 * Futurama reruns on the Cartoon Network were so successful, however, that Comedy Central decided to buy 16 more episodes in 2006, in the form of four different 4-episode-long movies. The final movie closed with an ambigious ending where the Planet Express ship entered a wormhole with no idea on where the other end led to - with the on-again-off-again couples aboard having resolved their relationship troubles.
 * After about a year, Comedy Central announced that they bought another 26 episodes of Futurama, which became seasons 5 and 6 and aired in 2010-2011. An earlier interview said that the second-to-last episode would be an open-ended series finale, and the final episode would be a "Tales Of Interest" style disjointed episode. When it aired, the final episode also had a short message from a cosmic being about reincarnation.
 * ...And after all that, in March 2011, Comedy Central has decided to order 26 additional episodes of Futurama.
 * Recess was supposed to end with the Continuity Porn episode, "Lawson and his Crew", and then wrap everything up with The Movie, Recess Schools Out, where the characters leave fourth grade. Because the movie was such a huge sucess, Disney renewed the show for another season, putting the main kids back in the fourth grade, getting rid of both Butch and Miss Grotke after the season premiere, adding Anvilicious morals, and the season only lasted three episodes before it hit Disney's notorious 65 episode limit. Many fans believe that this was when the show Jumped the Shark.
 * Spongebob SquarePants was originally supposed to end after Season 3 with The Movie being a conclusion to the whole series. It has since had numerous seasons of degrading quality (due to Executive Meddling and being Adored By the Network), although Word of God states that The Movie is still technically the finale.
 * "See Me, Feel Me, Gnomey" is thought to be the Grand Finale of The Powerpuff Girls (although it has never been shown on U.S. television), in spite of the fact that it was made as a season 5 episode. The last original episodes (not including the 10th anniversary special) the made and screened were "Roughing It Up" and "What's The Big Idea?" Many fans believe that either the show should have ended after season four and the movie or Craig McCracken should have returned to it (he was busy pitching and making Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends).

Others

 * Duel Academy R 2 is now currently one or two years past the end of Yu-Gi-Oh GX - and Juudai/Jaden's graduation.