New Amsterdam most likely ended after five seasons because the show’s viewership numbers were just not high enough anymore.
New Amsterdam’s complex characters and the brilliant actors who play them are a large part of why fans were drawn to the show to begin with.
However, this was evidently not enough and after five years, the show was cancelled after its fifth season, most likely because of declining viewership numbers.
Why did people enjoy watching New Amsterdam?
When the first episode of NBC’s medical drama, New Amsterdam first premiered on the channel in 2018, many people were sceptical of whether this show would be good enough to set itself apart from all of the other popular medical drama shows on television.
Fortunately, New Amsterdam already has an intriguing story, since the show is based on Twelve Patients: Life and Death at Bellevue Hospital – a book written by Eric Manheimer.
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However, the charming and complicated group of characters at New Amsterdam Hospital and the actors who portrayed their endearing storylines on the show are what really made fans fall in love with the show.
Why did New Amsterdam end?
When New Amsterdam aired its first episode, the show proved that it could bring in millions of viewers.
In fact, the first episode, in which Dr Max Goodwin (played by Ryan Eggold) utters his now-infamous catchphrase, “How Can I Help?” for the very first time, brought in over 8.3 million viewers in the United States alone.
However, with the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and increased competition in the television space, these viewership numbers have declined slightly in the past few years, even though the show did maintain a consistent 1.13 rating in the 18-49 demographic category.
While New Amsterdam was on the air for about five years, with five seasons in total, the announcement that the show was cancelled and would be ending after its fifth season already came in 2021.
The show’s creator, David Schulner, and director, Peter Horton, have been quite forthcoming about the fact that they do not understand why the show was cancelled by NBC and that they felt like they needed more seasons to tell their stories.
This shock is understandable, as New Amsterdam managed to maintain fairly high viewership numbers over the years and has even received a letter of praise from the World Health Organization for their portrayal of various public health issues.
However, it seems that even with New Amsterdam’s relative success, the show’s declining ratings may have been the reason why it got cancelled so abruptly, but NBC has not provided an official reason for the show’s cancellation yet.
Did the New Amsterdam creators know how they wanted to end the show?
Although the news that New Amsterdam would be ending with its fifth season did come as a shock to the team behind the show, they did go into this final season with a vague idea of how they eventually wanted the show to end.
David Schulner has explained that they knew that they wanted the ending of the show to come full circle in terms of how it began, which is how they approached the final season.
Why did the New Amsterdam creators choose to end the show with Luna instead of Max?
The last episode of a show can be daunting in many ways. Not only do fans often worry that the ending will feel insignificant or not live up to their expectations, but the creators need to worry about tying up all their loose ends.
Fortunately, David Schulner’s daughter did him the favour of pitching the idea that the ending of New Amsterdam should look to the future, instead of the past.
How did the final episode of New Amsterdam end?
After all of the crucial decisions were made and filming had wrapped, the last episode of New Amsterdam finally aired as the second part of a special two-part finale on 17 January 2023.
The finale definitely has a “We have come full circle” element to it, with the title of the episode, “How Can I Help?” even hinting at Max’s iconic line from the show’s very first episode.
However, what really brings the entire thing full circle is when it is finally revealed that New Amsterdam’s new Medical Director is Max’s daughter, Luna, and that the rest of the episode was just a flashback to some of her memories at the New Amsterdam Medical Centre.
If you have not watched the series finale yet, these final episodes of New Amsterdam are available to stream on Peacock or through Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, DIRECTV, Sling TV, Vudu, NOW, Sky TV and VidAngel.
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