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| La Brea Season 4: Why Was the NBC Series Cancelled? |
NBC’s La Brea will not return for Season 4, with the sci-fi drama ending after its third season despite leaving several story threads dangling. The cancellation came after a sharp fall in viewership, the enormous cost of producing its prehistoric time-travel adventure and the disruption caused by the Hollywood strikes. In other words, getting people through a mysterious sinkhole was apparently easier than keeping an expensive television series alive.
Created by David Appelbaum, La Brea began with a spectacular premise: a massive sinkhole opens in Los Angeles, sending people thousands of years into the past. By Season 3, however, the story had expanded into a much bigger battle over time travel itself, with Gavin Harris and his allies facing Maya Schmidt, whose plans involved controlling and weaponising the technology.
The third season ultimately brought that conflict to a conclusion. Maya established a connection between 10,000 BC, 1965 and 2021, using a series of auroras as gateways between the different periods. Gavin eventually worked out how the phenomenon could be used against her, while Eve and Sam were tasked with dealing with events in 1965.
The final confrontation was suitably La Brea: Gavin attacked Maya's prehistoric base with help from the Tongva tribe and, because apparently a normal rescue mission would have been far too straightforward, a T. rex. The group eventually succeeded, using an improvised aurora to return to 2021. Gavin was finally reunited with Eve, giving the central family story the emotional ending the series had been building towards.
That finale matters because Season 4 was never ordered by NBC. The six-episode third season was effectively the show's final run, and although the ending closes the main conflict, it also exposes how much more story could have been told if the series had continued.
The biggest issue was the show's economics. La Brea started strongly, with its first episode reportedly reaching more than 13 million viewers across platforms, but its audience declined over time. Season 2 saw a substantial drop, reportedly around 44 per cent compared with the first season. For a conventional drama that might already be uncomfortable. For a series involving prehistoric locations, elaborate visual effects, large casts and dinosaurs, the numbers become considerably harder to ignore.
Production costs were another major problem. The series was reportedly costing around $50 million to $70 million, putting it among the more expensive television productions of its kind. That is a sizeable bill for a show whose central question was already "what if Los Angeles fell into a hole?" Add dinosaurs, period settings and multiple timelines and the accountants were presumably having their own survival drama.
The COVID-19 pandemic also complicated television production and economics around the series. At the same time, the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes created another major disruption across Hollywood. By the time La Brea reached its third season, NBC had reduced the episode order dramatically, going from 14 episodes in Season 2 to just six in Season 3.
That shorter final season had a noticeable effect on the storytelling. La Brea had accumulated a surprisingly complicated mythology involving time travel, family relationships, prehistoric communities and the consequences of moving between eras. Trying to squeeze all of that into six episodes was never going to be an entirely painless exercise.
The reduced order also affected the presence of Natalie Zea's Eve, one of the show's central characters. The production changes were reportedly connected to efforts to release cast members from their contracts earlier, which contributed to her reduced appearances during the final season.
Still, creator David Appelbaum had apparently been thinking about the show's destination for some time. He previously explained that he had certain emotional landmarks for the story and knew how he wanted the characters' journeys to conclude. That gave the writers a framework for bringing the main family storyline home even while other parts of the mythology were being wrapped up at speed.
And that is probably the most frustrating thing about La Brea Season 3: it actually does provide closure, but not necessarily the sort of closure that answers every question. The main conflict ends, Gavin gets back to Eve and the Harris family is reunited, yet the world the series created still has plenty of unexplored corners.
Scott's research remains one obvious loose thread. His palaeontology paper is important to Maya and her organisation, but the full significance of it is never completely explored. A hypothetical Season 4 could have investigated whether Scott could independently recreate the principles behind time travel, rather than relying entirely on the technology already established.
There was also another potential route back through time. Gavin had used a chip connected to the technology during his return to 2021, meaning that reverse-engineering it could theoretically have opened another door to the past. Whether Gavin kept, destroyed or otherwise dealt with that technology after reaching safety is left open.
More importantly, the government now knows that time travel is possible. That revelation alone creates a rather enormous problem. Once an impossible technology becomes known to governments and scientists, it is difficult to imagine everyone politely agreeing never to touch it again. A fourth season could have explored the political and scientific consequences without simply repeating the same sinkhole storyline.
The human relationships also leave a few unfinished pieces. Leyla's fate is particularly noticeable. She has long wanted to leave the prehistoric world, while her relationship with Izzy develops into something more meaningful. Yet the final reunion of the Harris family takes priority, leaving their future together unclear.
Ty's situation is similarly unresolved. Having chosen to remain in 10,000 BC with Paara, he effectively loses access to the present. That creates an intriguing dilemma because the prehistoric world is already being altered by the presence of modern humans, while dinosaurs and people living together introduces consequences the series only begins to address.
A continuation could also have explored the ecological mess created by moving people and technology across thousands of years. If dinosaurs remain in an altered timeline while humans from the future establish themselves there, the natural order is hardly going to send a thank-you card. The question of whether prehistoric life should be returned to its original timeline could have become a major storyline.
My take is that La Brea's cancellation feels less like a story being abandoned completely and more like a production being forced to reach the finish line earlier than planned. The creators clearly had enough material to keep the mythology moving, particularly once the government learned about time travel and Scott's research remained relevant. But the economics were difficult to ignore. A costly science-fiction series needs an audience capable of justifying that expense, and La Brea was no longer delivering the same numbers it had at the beginning.
The six-episode final season then put additional pressure on a story that was already juggling several timelines and characters. I actually think the decision to prioritise Gavin and Eve's reunion was sensible from a character perspective, even if it left some fascinating questions sitting on the table. The finale gives viewers an ending, just not a perfectly tidy one. And honestly, for a show involving dinosaurs, time portals and people falling through giant holes in Los Angeles, expecting tidiness may have been asking a lot.
So, will La Brea Season 4 ever happen? Based on the conclusion of the third season and NBC's cancellation decision, there is currently no fourth season continuing the story. The existing finale leaves enough material for another chapter, but the series was ultimately built around a production model that became increasingly difficult to sustain.
For viewers, that means some questions will probably remain permanently stuck somewhere between 10,000 BC, 1965 and 2021. Was Leyla ever going to join Izzy in the present? Could Scott have recreated time travel? What happened to Gavin's technology? And what on earth happens when humans decide that prehistoric dinosaurs make perfectly reasonable neighbours? Those are the questions worth debating now, so which unanswered La Brea storyline would you most want Season 4 to explore?