Shooter canceled, season 4 not happening at USA

For everyone out there who enjoyed Shooter over on USA, the following is news that you were probably hoping you wouldn’t have to hear: The series has been canceled. With that, the September 13 finale is now going to serve as the series finale.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the series is ending mostly for the reason that many other series conclude — ratings. The numbers for the show, which stars Ryan Phillippe alongside Shantel VanSanten, fell consistently over the course of its three-season run on the air. Season 3 was down a sizable margin over season 2, and we have to imagine that there was concern that a potential season 4 was going to be down even more if it was ordered.

Shooter was a series that had to deal with chaos right from the start, as the show was originally delayed due to some real-life tragedies. When it did finally premiered, it performed fairly well in the first season. Yet, the second season was forced to end in a rather-abrupt manner after an injury to Phillippe rendered him unable to do some of his work on the action-heavy series. This season the series did have a good lead-in courtesy of USA’s Queen of the South, but it still didn’t matter all that much.

As for whether or not we foresee this series managing to find a new network home somewhere else, it’s ultimately rather hard to imagine it. Shooter was already a co-production within the NBCUniversal family, so they had an incentive to keep it if the ratings stayed fairly strong. That didn’t happen, and because of this, we think it was fairly easy for the network to move on. This is the second major cancellation from USA this summer, as they have already made the decision to end Colony after three seasons.

The only real hope that Shooter has, at least per our vantage point, is the Paramount Network given the connection that is there. Yet, with the show’s budget and declining ratings, that still feels like a slim possibility.

What do you think about Shooter being canceled, and are you disappointed that there’s seemingly no hope for another run elsewhere? Share below!

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