Apple TV Renews ‘The Morning Show’ for a Final Season
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In 2019, Apple kicked off its new streaming service with The Morning Show, a high-profile drama that made Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon the highest-paid TV stars in Hollywood.
However, all good things must come to an end, and after nearly eight years, five seasons, and a lengthy list of awards, The Morning Show is about to sing its swan song.
Apple telegraphed the end today while announcing the fifth — and final — season in a post on X, noting that “Alex and Bradley are back where they belong.”
While Apple hasn’t announced a premiere date for the new season beyond “coming in 2027,” tradition makes it a pretty safe bet that we’ll be looking for a September debut.
The first season of The Morning Show launched the same day as “Apple TV+” (as it was then known), on November 1, 2019. However, seasons 2–4 have been as predictable as Apple’s iPhone launches, coming on September 17, 2021, September 13, 2023, and September 17, 2025 — with each season premiering between the launch event and release date of the iPhone 13, iPhone 15, and iPhone 17.
That makes it a pretty safe bet that we can expect the show’s final season to kick off around the same time as Apple’s “iPhone 19” lineup — or the so-called “iPhone 20” if Apple decides to mark the device’s two-decade anniversary in some way.
The timing would certainly be apropos, considering that we first heard of Apple’s official plans for The Morning Show on November 8, 2017 — five days after the iPhone X hit store shelves.
Defining Apple TV’s Trajectory
When The Morning Show finally arrived in 2019, it was considered the crown jewel of Apple’s nascent streaming service. From the day that Apple unveiled its plans in March — with Aniston and Witherspoon on stage at the event — to the debut of its November programming lineup, the message was clear: Apple would be focusing on quality of shows, not quantity.
Apple TV launched with only eight original series. One of those was unscripted (Oprah’s Book Club), and three — Snoopy in Space, Ghostwriter, and Helpsters — were kids shows. That left only four scripted adult shows: The Morning Show, See, For All Mankind, and Dickinson, the last of which was a half-hour comedy (albeit a slightly dark one).
While some critics debated the “quality” argument in the early days of the service, one thing was clear: Apple wasn’t afraid to throw large bags of money at its original shows. Even before the service launched, insiders reported that See had a budget of around $15 million per episode. While that was on par with cinematic world-building epics like Game of Thrones, it was still more than most feature films cost.
The budget for The Morning Show wouldn’t have been far off. Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon were taking in $2 million each per episode just for their starring roles, and that was on top of what they’d have also been making as executive producers and owners of the show, which was produced by their own studios. Reports suggested that the first two seasons cost Apple around $300 million all told.
However, it wasn’t just about money. The Morning Show also brought Jennifer Aniston back to television after 15 years on the big screen, and marked Reese Witherspoon’s first-ever role in a regular TV series (as an aside, it’s a bit ironic that one of Witherspoon’s few TV guest appearances was actually in the role of Aniston’s character’s sister in Friends).
Add in Steve Carell, and this was a drama being led by actors who had traditionally done lighter fare like romantic comedies. The Morning Show was nothing like Friends, Legally Blonde, or The Office, so it wasn’t surprising it took a while for critics to adjust.
However, once they did, the accolades began pouring in. Critics warmed up, with The Guardian’s Stuart Heritage famously saying that “To watch Aniston on The Morning Show is to resent Friends for robbing us of a truly incredible dramatic actor.”
The Morning Show was nominated for several Golden Globe Awards before the first season was even over, including Best Television Series in the drama category, and while it didn’t win at the Golden Globes, Aniston gave Apple its first SAG award, winning for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series. Co-star Billy Crudup took away a 2020 Critics Choice Award Best Supporting Actor in a Drama for his role as Cory Ellison.
Dickinson, which starred Hailee Steinfeld as the title character, was written with a three-season arc from the beginning, and ended in 2021. The Jason Momoa-led See also ran three seasons, into 2022. However, the other two have carried on.
With For All Mankind also expected to air its sixth and final season next year, The Morning Show will mark the end of an era: the last one of the original Apple TV shows to have its series finale.
