Abhiroop Das
Created by David Appelbaum, NBC’s ‘La Brea’ concludes its third season by pitting Gavin and company against Maya Schmidt, whose goal is to privatize and weaponize time travel. To do this, she sets up a three-way channel connecting 10,000 BC, 1965, and 2021 via a series of colorful auroras. After facing several hardships, Gavin eventually tracks down a way to use these auroras to his benefit, entrusting Eve and Sam with taking care of things in 1965. Meanwhile, he launches an attack on Maya’s prehistoric base camp, together with the Tongva tribe and a T. rex.
In the end, Gavin and his team emerge victorious, using a makeshift aurora to transport everyone back to 2021, where he at last reunites with Eve. While the season wraps up most of the larger plot beats, its six-episode run, accompanied by the cancellation of a potential sequel, left many fans curious. As of writing, NBC has shown no interest in greenlighting the show for a fourth season.
La Brea Season 4 Was Canceled Due to a Dwindling Viewership and a High Production Cost
‘La Brea’ was canceled by NBC after its third season, likely due to a combination of declining viewer count and high production costs. While the first season of the show recorded a strong start, with the pilot reportedly climbing past 13 million views across platforms, the viewership declined with each sequel entry. Season 2, which was greenlit only weeks after the first season premiered, experienced an approximate 44% dip in viewership. As per The Sydney Morning Herald, the series cost roughly between $50 to $70 million, which makes it one of the costliest shows ever made for TV. Reportedly, the COVID-19 pandemic also had an effect on these numbers, making the continuation of the show an unlikely possibility.
When it comes to science-fiction stories, productions are expected to get more ambitious with time, but that can only work when the cost-to-profit ratio is sustainable. Notably, big-budget shows in the same vein, like ‘Terra Nova,’ ‘Westworld,’ and ‘1899,’ were also axed for similar reasons. However, for ‘La Brea’, there was another factor that played into its cancellation, that being the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. In the aftermath of these strikes, NBC opted for much shorter seasons, cutting the show down from 14 episodes in season 2 to just 6 episodes in season 3. This decision was reporedly intended to release the actors from their contracts early and also contributed to the significant reduction in Natalie Zea’s appearances, who plays the lead role of Eve in the show.
The decreased episode count for season 3 likely made it that much harder for the writing team to wrap up the plot, especially in a show as elaborate as ‘La Brea.’ However, creator David Appelbaum took it as a challenge to simultaneously squeeze in all of the details and keep things balanced. In a conversation with Collider, he revealed that he always had a vague idea of the ending in mind. “From the beginning, I’ve always had certain landmarks that I’ve tried to hold onto. I knew how I wanted to emotionally wrap up the show,” he added. Using those emotional beats as a guide, David and his creative team sought to give the show a comprehensive finish. To that end, he went on to claim that the final episode is their best work in the show, one he hoped would move people to tears.
La Brea Season 4 Could Bring Back Time Travel to Tie up Some Loose Ends
While ‘La Brea’ wraps up its time travel plot by the end of the third season, a hypothetical fourth season could have delved deeper into the science of it all. Notably, Scott still doesn’t know why his paleontology paper is so important for Maya and her organization, and if he were to figure it out independently, it is possible to reinvent time travel from scratch. Another simpler method is to reverse engineer that technology from the chip Gavin used while landing in 2021. That, however, depends on how Gavin dealt with it after making a safe exit. Regardless, with the government now aware of time travel and its potential usages, there is little doubt that similar attempts will be made, regardless of whether they are captured on screen.
On the note of the auroras closing, many dynamics between people living in 2021 and 10,000 BC are rushed, or go outright unresolved in the show’s finale. Most pointedly, we never get an answer to whether Leyla leaves the prehistoric world and joins the present, as her dream always has been. Though it’s apparent that she and Izzy are in love with each other, the Harris family’s reunion ends up taking precedence over this romantic closure. Another detail that goes unexplained is the fact that Ty essentially has no way of even contacting the present anymore.
A reality where dinosaurs and humans coexist is bound to break the natural order of things, which makes life unsustainable. If Ty intends to continue living with Paara in 10,000 BC, it might become necessary to go back into the future and figure out a way to bring dinosaurs back to their own timeframe. However, with the chances of a fourth season standing at slim to none, these questions are unlikely to ever get answered in full.
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