CASTLE Season 9: The Final Season With NO KATE????

With the ninth and final season of Castle looming on the horizon, it's bad enough that this procedural is coming to a close. But sources (Deadline Hollywood ) are also reporting that with the final season looming, ABC (AKA Disney) is looking to cut costs on the final season and one of those cost being cut is Stana Katic's contract.

WTF???

On top of that, Tamala Jones will also be out of the final season of the show.

And then to top it off, it looks like ABC is looking to shorten the ninth season to a quick 13-episode count.

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ABC has been in on  and off chats with Nathan Fillion since the beginning of the year but they haven't approached Katic yet.

Of course as Deadline inquired with ABC about the situation, their reply has been,

“Kate Beckett has been a beloved character on our hit series Castle for the past 8 years. We are grateful for Stana Katic’s talent and dedication to the series and we hope to continue our relationship."

Katic's comment about the situation, (Man I need to take notes!) was,

“Rather then distract from what was an amazing experience, I would just like to say that I’m very grateful to ABC for giving me the opportunity to be a part of a much beloved show. Thank you to the fans.”

The relationship with Castle and Beckett seemed to be the integral part of the show, but apparently not integral enough for the closing season.


To be honest, for me, Kate was 25% of the equation for me. There was Kate (Stana Katic), Castle (Nathan Fillion), Kevin Ryan (Seamus Dever), and Javier Esposito (Jon Huertas). So it will feel a bit weird. And a part of me would love to see a Ryan/Espo spinoff.

There's also news that the (new) production staff has filmed two different endings for the show already, one where its cancelled, the other, if it gets the ninth season nod that is.

Yes, even that is still up in the air.  (ABC replaced the exec producer with two others for this present season.)

But then there are the extraneous reports from other sites saying that there is no love lost between Katic and Fillion.

The alleged rumors say that if they weren't filming a scene together, when one would walk on set, the other would leave.

That's an interesting mix of surprise and potential disappointment. They were so good on screen. But then again, if you want to look for clues about this mix up, it was apparent in this eighth season as their story lines kept them mostly apart for the first half of the season. (With another stupid plot line of secret tasks and what not.)

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The bottom line is that either this or the next season will be the last one for the ABC series CASTLE.

To be honest, events like this are inevitable. Ratings decline and everyone in the production wants pay raises, so over time, there's a threshold a show crosses that makes it less profitable than a network would want it to be.

Heck, even NCIS is not immune to this. Though it is still going strong right now, they have had a few cast changes over the last few seasons which could help alleviate production costs for a little while longer. But any season now, I'm expecting the bad news for this too.

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