The Equalizer fans got some bad news over the past couple weeks: First, the potential spinoff wasn’t ordered to series, then the show itself was canceled just two days before the Season 5 finale. And so the Sunday, May 4, episode served as the series finale.
The April 20 episode introduced the characters of the potential spinoff, Titus Welliver and Juani Feliz playing father and daughter Elijah and Samantha Reed. Robyn (Queen Latifah), Mel (Liza Lapira), and Harry (Adam Goldberg) crossed paths with them when Samantha reached out after her father, an ex-CIA agent, was taken. As a result, she learned more about her family’s past, specifically her biological father. The episode ended with Robyn setting her on the path to bring equalizing to a new city.
“That [spinoff] would’ve been fantastic,” The Equalizer showrunner Joe Wilson tells TV Insider. “It would’ve been a father-daughter situation. Titus Welliver is a fantastic actor. Juani Feliz is a star. She is a rising star, and we were looking forward to getting to see her kick ass and unpack all the lies that happened over her whole life. But I think it would’ve been — I don’t want to say a better version of what we’re doing, it just would’ve been a different version of seeing them foster their relationship as they continue to equalize where that was going to be. It was going to be in Atlanta. And so it would’ve been fun. It would’ve been more of a different type of family dynamic.”
While that series isn’t moving forward, Wilson shares that he has “a hundred different versions” of possible spinoffs in his head.
The Equalizer ended after five seasons with an episode that felt like it could have served as a series finale — Robyn and Dante (Tory Kittles) got engaged, Mel and Harry decided to continue equalizing for now but have talked about stopping — and it was designed that way, according to Wilson.
“It was definitely on purpose. We didn’t want to end with a cliffhanger,” he explains. “Shows get a little older. We are going into our sixth season budget, and money becomes an issue. We weren’t sure what was going to happen, and if we did end up on that wrong side, we did not want the fans to feel incomplete or cheated in any way. So we designed it in a way that can feel like an ending, but there’s so much more to unpack.”
The Equalizer, Streaming Now, Paramount+