The Righteous Gemstones creator reveals Season 4 wasn't initially planned as the end

It's a bittersweet feeling for fans of The Righteous Gemstones as the fictional faithful family return to our screens for a fourth season. While it's great to see old faces back again, this will be our final season with the Gemstones.

Danny McBride, the creator, writer, director, and star of the series explained that initially the plan wasn't for Season 4 to be the final season. "When we started writing the show, a lot of the themes and stuff that were coming to our brains were about closure and about moving on," he said. "I wanted to keep an open mind as we shot, just in case it didn't feel like that, or if we tanked it, we have a chance to redo it. But as we moved through the season, it became apparent to me that we were completing what we had set out to do."

McBride has made ten seasons of television with HBO, and when asked by Deadline if it had been the network's decision to close down The Righteous Gemstones, HBO's comedy chief Amy Gravitt said: "We are always in such constant dialog from the beginning of a pilot to the end of a series, that it isn't necessarily a decision between one or the other, but something that we talk about together."

No matter whose decision it was, The Righteous Gemstones will be ending with this fourth and final season, the first episode of which is available to view now.