(WARNING: Spoilers for Power Book II: Ghost will be found below.)
Power Book II: Ghost seemed to be the most successful and most beloved series out of all the <em>Power spin-offs. Despite that, the show was not renewed for a fifth season in a surprise announcement from STARZ earlier this year. Last night, the series finale for Ghost aired, with the show bidding goodbye to beloved characters like Tariq, Brayden, Cane, Diana, Dru, Effie, and others for one final time. It was a sad, but fitting ending to the Ghost series, but why did the show have to come to an end?
Why Is Season 4 The Last Season Of Power Book II: Ghost?
Earlier this year, STARZ CEO Jeff Hirsch bluntly explained that the rising cost to produce a season of Ghost seemingly led to its end. Hirsch shared his explanation at the Deutsche Bank media conference:
“When seasons go from one to two to three to four [seasons], three to four is where the cost really pops because most of the actors get bigger raises, and you have to really manage that. So, you have to have in your portfolio of development shows that can actually replace shows as they get into later seasons.
As you turn the slate over to go from season four and five economics, to season one economics, you can pull a ton of cost out of the business. What you have to do is map out each of those shows and … what the curve looks like, and know where you have to pop a new show on to bring that cost down. And so we’ve got a pretty good map of what that looks like. Because again, we focus on those two core demos, we’ve been able to manufacture hits for those demos.
And so when you bring a BMF on — you know, BMF will be probably one of our two biggest shows, okay, it looks a lot like Power, it cost half as much, right?
You look at the [Power] map and say, ‘Okay, if I take one of those characters out and spin one of those out, I can bring that on to replace the Power show at half the cost.’ Now I’m putting a lot of money right to the bottom line. And I’m really not losing anything in terms of acquisition costs and subscriber viewership, because we know what those demos want. And we know how to line those up. And so that’s really the core of getting to that 20% [margin] — turning that slate over with fresh content to drive the business.
If you think about our slate of seven to 10 shows,” he said, “It’s a lot like the salary cap management in the NFL … if you have a special teams player who’s coming off his rookie deal and about to become a veteran … You can go back and draft and pick a rookie, bring them on with a rookie deal and manage costs. Managing a content portfolio of originals is kind of the same thing.
It’s a tough, but truthful explanation for the end of Ghost. The good news is that fans can look forward to new seasons of Power Book III: Raising Kanan and Power Book IV: Force in the next year, as well as the start of Origins, the prequel series STARZ announced earlier this year.
The entire ‘Power Universe’ is available to stream on STARZ.