The friendly, familial, and romantic bonds forged in Everwood are forever, but the WB drama itself was not. Shortly before the family drama’s fourth season finale on June 5, 2006, Everwood fans learned that network executives had canceled the show and that it would not make it to The CW upon that network’s launch months later.
Luckily for those diehards, though, Everwood’s writers and producers foresaw that eventuality and filmed a season finale that could serve as a final chapter for the show. Here’s how — and why — it all ended.
Everwood ended on an optimistic, romantic note
The two-part “Foreverwood,” small-town doc Andy (Treat Williams) nearly loses neighbor-crush Nina (Stephanie Niznik) to romantic rival Jake (Scott Wolf), while girl-next-door Amy (Emily VanCamp) almost loses Ephram (Gregory Smith), Andy’s son, to romantic rival Stephanie (Luciana Carro).
But Jake leaves town after finding out about the engagement ring Andy was intending to brandish in Nina’s direction, and when Andy does propose (after saying goodbye to his late wife at her grave), Nina says yes. And at the bat mitzvah for Delia (Vivien Cardone), Andy’s daughter, Amy drunkenly comes to terms with her feelings for Ephram, and she rents out a Ferris wheel for a declaration of love he accepts.
Meanwhile, Andy’s colleague Harold (Tom Amandes) and town mayor Rose (Merrilyn Gann), Harold’s wife, finally get a baby after one of his patients drops off a newborn on their doorstep, and they agree to house Harold’s grieving mother, Edna (Debra Mooney). Amy’s friend Hannah (Sarah Drew) chooses a local university over a full-ride Notre Dame scholarship to stay closer to boyfriend Bright (Chris Pratt), Amy’s brother. And Andy finally gives Delia the pony he promised her years prior.
If all the optimistic turns of fate had Everwood viewers’ heads spinning, they weren’t alone. ”I’m so used to things not working out the way they’re supposed to that I get a little freaked out when they do,” Ephram says in the finale.
The show was canceled as The CW launched with a resurrected 7th Heaven
In the spring of 2006, The WB was readying to merge with UPN to create The CW, and it seemed as though Everwood was primed to move to the new broadcast network. In fact, TV Guide reported that The CW had Everwood listed on its website, and a source told the outlet that CW execs had initially slotted the show on the fall 2006 schedule.
“It became about who is going to make the switch to the CW. It was us, Veronica Mars, and Supernatural that were all fighting for our lives, and we had heard that two of the three would basically make it,” Everwood creator Greg Berlanti told Entertainment Weekly in 2016.
Patrick Eccelsine/The WB
But then the 10th season finale of 7th Heaven, designed to be that show’s series finale, drew more than 7 million viewers, and then-CW boss Dawn Ostroff renewed 7th Heaven for an 11th season and canceled Everwood.
The Everwood team was prepared, though. “We created two endings because we weren’t sure whether we were coming back,” executive producer Rina Mimoun told EW. “The one that aired had Amy [revealing her feelings to Ephram]. The other one, which we shot but no one ever saw, had Ephram about to go downstairs to meet Amy, but then he gets a call from Madison [his old girlfriend who had their baby], which keeps him in the apartment. We were going to play it out with the return of Sarah Lancaster.”
The finale’s tied-with-a-bow closure divided critics
The New York Times critic Virginia Heffernan said Everwood went out on with a “gorgeously sentimental extravaganza,” with the WB drama “making its cancellation look entirely natural and expiring on the same note of decorous sentimentality that propelled it for four charmed years.” Hefferman observed that “happily-ever-after was the only way things were ever going to end in the kindly town.”
Entertainment Weekly’s Jennifer Armstrong wrote along similar lines, opining, “There’s nothing better than a well-earned sap-fest: that crucial opportunity that comes along, every once in a great while, to get your happy ending, to experience a moment better than you’d dared to hope, after you’ve been through a hell of a lot of crap to get there.”
Warner Bros./Courtesy: Everett Collection
Writing for Salon, however, critic Hillary Frey deemed the finale trite and uncharacteristically cliché. Frey wrote, “Did Ephram and Amy, and Nina and Andy, all have to fall cozily back in love? Did Harold and Rose really have to have a baby delivered to their doorstep? Did Harold’s grieving mother really have to be happy about moving in with her son, when for four years we’ve watched her struggle to even like him? … As the finale, it was just too much good cheer for a show that so decently dealt with the darker things in life.”
Will there be a Season 5?
Berlanti weighed in on the prospect of reviving Everwood in 2018, telling Variety, “I think it’s about schedules and finances and budget and if we can get a budget to a place, I think that there’s a real shot that that could come back. I think we just have to figure out what would be the best way to do it…”
By 2021, however, those hopes seemed dampened. “There had been talks for a minute about a potential revisiting of [Everwood], which I would have been a thousand percent down for,” VanCamp told People at the time. “But I don’t know whatever really happened.”
But the prospect of more Everwood seems remote now, especially since Niznik died in 2019, and Williams and costar Jon Beasley died in 2023 (though Beasley’s character, Irv, Edna’s husband, predeceased him).
Thanks to streaming, however, fans can book another trip to Everwood: All four seasons are currently available for viewing on Prime Video.
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