‘Roswell, New Mexico’ showrunner reveals Season 5 would have had 'legacy ending' if greenlit

The sci-fi show Roswell, New Mexico was sadly one of the many series that The CW purged from its lineup in anticipation of the potential sale of the network. The fourth season premiered in June, and became the series’ final one. 

In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, showrunner Chris Hollier shared that he was planning a fifth and final season of the show that would give its characters a “legacy ending.” 

What does a legacy ending entail? According to Hollier, the planned Season 5 would have contained at least one time jump to show where the series' characters end up over the course of their lives. 

"What does it mean when you start to find the people that you want to be with? How do you actually go and generate your own happy ever after? I loved where we were going to take those characters," Hollier told EW. "We were talking about setting the ending multiple years in the future. It would've been another wrap-up with where all of our couples were."

The Season 4 finale did include one happy ending for one of the couples on the show, of course. In that episode (and warning here for spoilers from the show’s actual ending!), we saw Michael (Michael Vlamis) and Alex (Tyler Blackburn) get married. 

"We did [the wedding] for a couple reasons," Hollier explained. "One, we knew everyone wanted that. It was also a fun way to say goodbye if we had to say goodbye, to bring everyone together. Weddings do that. And then we also wanted, if there was more to come, we wanted to shift them into a new mode, with new challenges to overcome."

Another couple, Max (Nathan Parsons) and Liz (Jeanine Mason), ended the season on good terms, albeit at separate ends of the universe. If the show was greenlit for a fifth season, however, their separation would have been more ominous than what we saw.

"There was one moment that we talked about earlier where the console behind Liz might have melted," Hollier recounted. "If someone said, 'You're greenlit for season 5,' that might have been a larger discussion. But I think this is a more fair place to leave the fans."

While the show sadly didn’t get to explore those scenarios, we still have four seasons of Roswell, New Mexico to watch and enjoy.

If you’re looking for some sci-fi TV, check out shows like Resident Alien, Brave New World, Project Blue Book, Eureka, Heroes, Intergalactic, and more streaming now on Peacock.