While fans of The Fosters are in a rough place right now as the series wraps its fifth and final season, but you don't have to say your goodbyes just yet. Though The Fosters won't return for Season 6, it will come back this summer for a three-episode "event series," according to Deadline, offering some last minute closure and introducing a spinoff. Entertainment Weekly reported last month that the still-untitled Fosters spinoff will feature Fosters stars Maia Michell and Cierra Ramirez, and has been ordered for 13 episodes to start.
Dates still seem to be up in the air as far as when exactly this three-night event will air. But according to some of the stars' social media accounts, the final table read is already in the past. “Our last table read & it’s starting to sink in. Mostly feeling grateful for such a magical five and something years, I love this group of people more than anything," Mitchell wrote last month as a caption to several photos of she and her co-stars sharing set memories. David Lambert also shared similar sentiments to Mitchell's, posting a photo of his parking spot at the set in early February as he said his goodbyes.
"I will always cherish this lot," the star wrote. "It’ll always hold a special place in my head and my heart. And I’m eternally grateful for being able to say I worked here. I could go on and say more but what’s the point. I’ll leave it at... I’ll miss this place very much."
Joanna Johnson, executive producer of the show, shared a touching moment as the series wrapped. "My heart aches, can’t stop crying," Johnson tweeted. "But it’s not the end of this extraordinary family. Not if I have anything to say about it. I couldn’t love this cast more." She and her other co-producers Peter Paige and Bradley Bredeweg also released a statement on the ending of the show. “First and foremost, we want to thank our fans – our supportive ‘Fosters Family’ — and Freeform for fostering this show,” Paige, Bredeweg, and Johnson said, according to the same Deadline piece. “It’s been the privilege of our lives to get to shepherd this beautiful family through five seasons of love, laughter, heartbreak, tribulation, and triumph — and message to the world that DNA doesn’t make a family, love does."
The show has garnered rave reviews and a dedicated following during its five season run, with an average 97 percent positive critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and an 89 percent audience score on the same site. Twitter has also been buzzing in anticipation of the show's finale, and fans seem to be just as invested in the show's relationships and storylines as they were right when the show was getting started.
Luckily, fans of the show will still be able to hold onto some characters, such as Callie and Mariana, as they're the two characters who apparently will be the most heavily featured in the new show. But per Deadline, they aren't the only familiar faces who will show up in the as-yet unnamed show. “We plan to have all characters from the original series make guest appearances,” Freeform's EVP for programming and development, Karey Burke, told the publication.
Mariana and Callie will be older in the upcoming show, and will be moving to Los Angeles, according to Deadline. “Both of them will be faced with the challenges of working in a cultural divide all the while pursuing their dreams that have been laid into those characters throughout The Fosters,” Burke said. So it seems like the spinoff will offer longtime fans an extension of the characters they've come to know and love while still being different enough to entice viewers who weren't necessarily familiar with the original show.
So it's a time of renewal and change for The Fosters. After one show comes to an end, a new story will begin.
