‘Leverage: Redemption’ Canceled After 3 Seasons — What Would’ve Happened Next

Leverage: Redemption was a sequel series that premiered in 2021. It followed the five-season run of Leverage on TNT, from 2008 to 2012, and included most of the original cast. Gina Bellman (grifter Sophie Devereaux), Christian Kane (hitter Eliot Spencer), and Beth Riesgraf (thief Parker) all returned as series regulars. Aldis Hodge (hacker Alec Hardison) was a special guest star. Timothy Hutton‘s mastermind, Nate Ford, was killed off-screen prior to the events of the revival. Noah Wyle (fixer Harry Wilson) and Aleyse Shannon (maker Breanna Casey) joined the crew in the new series. We’ll have to wait to see if there’s any possibility of seeing the crew again, as we did with Leverage: Redemption.

Like the original series, Redemption saw the crew going after the rich and powerful who take what they want, providing … Leverage. It was produced by Electric Entertainment, with executive producers Dean Devlin, Marc Roskin, Rachel Olschan-Wilson, John Rogers, and Chris Downey.

Rather than have a season-long villain, there was a season-long theme for Season 3. The finale saw Parker seemingly going rogue, running a job by herself, and leaving the crew to wonder how far she would go — would she really kill a mark? Instead, she set him up for a potential path to redemption. As a presentation she put together showed, she knows that the main reason to do what they do, how they do it, is it’s their way. The good news is it didn’t end on a cliffhanger, but there is still so much left to explore with the crew.

When TV Insider spoke with showrunner John Rogers (who wrote the finale) and executive producer Marc Roskin (who directed it) at the end of the third season, there weren’t any firm plans for what a fourth could look like.

“We have to keep making the show because bad things keep happening. When we came back for the reboot, we were like, well, we’re going to get stories. And then all the horrible stories just rained out of the sky, and they do every year. I think if you had a fourth season, you would see a lot more about the sort of AI tech — the environmental damage that industrial AI does. I always research just in case about these small towns that have these giant bitcoin and AI factories built in them and the sound and the noise and the power draws destroying these people’s lives,” Rogers said.

“We’ll talk a lot about power. I think we can only drift more and more into the same direction we’re going this year, which is just because something’s legal doesn’t make it good and something’s illegal doesn’t make it bad,” he continued. “That’s a system the world puts on things, and we have to treat people like people on an individual basis and not rely on the structures that we believe are there to protect us. It’s not full-blown 17th-century anarchism, but it’s getting there.”

When it came to returning characters, Roskin wanted to continue to bring back Drew Powell, whose Hurley started out as a mark on the original series and then became part of Leverage International in the revival. Rogers named Maggie (Kari Matchett) and Sterling (Mark Sheppard) “because I would love to explore how their relationship with Sophie changed after Nate’s death over that or even how they — we established Maggie and Sophie had become friends by the end of the first show, but probably friends to the level which made Nate uncomfortable. They’ve stayed friends, and it would be interesting to see if we get Maggie back.”

Rogers was hesitant about ever introducing Nana, who fostered Hardison and Breanna. I don’t think there’s an actor that we can actually cast that will ever be as awesome as Nana — Hardison’s Nana, Parker’s Nana by this point, and Eliot’s Nana, whether he admits it or not — is,” he explained. (Shannon, however, told us she wanted to see Whoopi Goldberg in the role.)

Looking ahead, Gina Bellman and Christian Kane had both thought the show would’ve had to get a bit darker.

“I think next season, we would have to go find some darkness again. I think we’ve always gone light, shade, light, shade, and we’ve always handled that really well. And this is definitely a very nice, bright, shiny, light season that people would get a lot of pleasure from,” Bellman explained.

Added Kane, “It’s the Jekyll and Hyde thing. If there was a Jekyll and Hyde with [Eliot and Sophie] where we both flip back to some of the other stuff, then there’s no redemption, almost gets kind of erased. You know what I mean? Because it’s like, we’re coming after you now. You hurt us in a way that no one has, and so now the gloves are back off. You took us to a point where, ‘Alright, let’s just do some good for some people. Let’s be good. We’re all this.’ But then if you take that away from us and the gloves come off and we started getting bare knuckle, that would be a fun season.”

Riesgraf wanted to explore more of Parker’s backstory and continue to lean into the international aspect that the revival had opened up. “Keeping the comedy and the character stuff we love so much and the action stuff with all that mixed in just makes it look like a really cool global experience,” she said.

We do know one thing the show would “never” have revealed, according to John Rogers: the worst thing Eliot ever did when he was working for Damien Moreau (Goran Visnjic).

“It’s interesting because Christian has said, ‘I know what it is,’ and I said, ‘Don’t tell me. Whatever you’re going to have, whatever I’m going to have, whatever Chris Downey or Dean [Devlin] has in their head is all going to be different,’” Rogers told us. “‘It doesn’t matter. What you believe is the worst thing he’s ever did is what will give you the performance.’”

He continued, “There’s a line that a lot of people found shattering in the second season in the finale where he says, ‘I appreciate the opportunity to be useful. And that’s just a guy who’s like, ‘Look, I’ll never see the promised land.’ This is the tragedy of the show. There’s no greater hero than a man who believes he will never see the promised land and spends his entire life trying to get other people there. And that’s Eliot. It’s funny, he’s much harsher on Eliot than I am. I’m like, ‘He could be redeemed,’ and both of those guys are like, ‘No, he’s going to hell.’”

Will you miss Leverage: Redemption? What would you have liked to have seen explored before it ended? Let us know in the comments section below.

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• ‘Leverage: Redemption’ Canceled After 3 Seasons — What Would’ve Happened Next