Wentworth has been in the Netflix U.S. series charts for the last week, with the Australian prison drama currently at number seven on the top 10. This means that a lot of American viewers have made it to the end of the most recent set of episodes and are ready for Season 9 of the series.
There is good news and bad news for American fans of Wentworth. Fox Showcase, who air the show in its native Australia, has announced that the show is coming back for Season 9, which is expected to air Down Under in 2021, will be the final one for the show.
The show was canceled back in October 2019, when it was announced that the show would be brought to an end with after 20 more episodes, 10 of which aired as Season 8 from July to September this year in Australia before coming in October to Netflix U.S.
With this order, the show made it to 100 episodes. Wentworth's production company is Foxtel, whose executive director of TV Brian Walsh said in a statement at the time of the renewal, "the commissioning of these additional episodes will see it reach an extraordinary 100 episodes."
As this suggests, one of the reasons that Wentworth may be ending is that 100 episodes is a very long time for an Australian drama to run. By way of comparison, the Wikipedia page listing the longest-running Australian television series lists anything over six years (Wentworth will end after nine), while the same list for the U.S. begins at 10.
In fact, Wentworth is Australia's longest-running one hour drama, so it has already gone on longer than any similar non-serial show before it.
Before the show was canceled, the show had already been saved once before by its fans. After rumors started to fly after Season 7 that the show had ended, an online petition titled "Let's save Wentworth" got thousands of signatures, after which the show's renewal was announced. Keeping the show popular across 100 episodes is a remarkable feat, so the creators probably wanted to go out on a high after nearly a decade of making the show.
Filming on the show's 100 episodes wrapped in September 2020, with the final batch of episodes expected to air in Australia in summer 2021. Netflix U.S. viewers get the show a few days after its season finale airs. If the next 10 episodes of Wentworth finish around the same time next year as the show did this year, American viewers will be able to see Wentworth Season 9 in October 2021.
Wentworth Season 9 is coming in 2021 to Fox Showcase and Netflix.
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