No More TV Vampires? Will 'The Originals' Be Back Next Season?

The modern era of vampires on television began way back in the 1990s, when Buffy The Vampire Slayer changed the way we looked at TV vamps. Back then, vampires were the quirky bad guys of The Lost Boys and Interview with the Vampire, and since then, the influence of Twilight has mellowed the tactics of the undead a bit. Changed as they might be, vampires' reign on TV has continued nearly unbroken for decades, but that might all be about to change.

When producers of The Vampire Diaries announced that this season would be the series' last, TV vampires suddenly became an endangered species. HBO's True Blood, the other pillar of post-Twilight TV vampire romances, was already gone, leaving TVD's sibling series, The Originals, as the last stand of television vampire-dom.

Now there are rumors that the upcoming fourth season of The Originals might be that series' last, too. The rumors were fueled by the series' failure to make The CW's fall schedule, but network execs insist that the decision to give the show a mid-season premiere had everything to do with scheduling, not a reluctance to bring it back.

"We have a very strong schedule," CW president Mark Pedowitz told TVLine in May. "We still believe quite a bit in The Originals. We only have 10 hours, so we made a choice to [hold it] to further boost our schedule at midseason."

Those reassurances haven't been enough to quell speculation that the series could be moved to another network, to Netflix, or simply dropped altogether because of its sinking ratings. It doesn't help that Pedowitz said at the same time that he hoped TVD would be back next year, too.

If The Originals goes away, TV vampires will be, for the first time in more than a decade, virtually extinct.

That would be a sad day. But, hey, we've still got plenty of zombies, right?