Animal Kingdom - Season 4
Animal Kingdom premiered on TNT on June 14, 2016, with the first season consisting of 10 episodes. Starting with the second season, each subsequent season consisted of 13 episodes. The second season premiered on May 30, 2017. The third season premiered on May 29, 2018. The fourth season premiered on May 28, 2019. The fifth season premiered on July 11, 2021. The sixth and final season premiered on June 19, 2022. The series concluded on August 28, 2022, after six seasons for a total of 75 episodes. It was the final scripted original series to air on TNT before the production of original programming was ceased.
Animal Kingdom - Season 4
The project was picked up to series with a 10-episode order in December 2015.[8] The show debuted on June 14, 2016,[9] and on July 6, 2016, TNT renewed it for a 13-episode second season.[10] On July 27 TNT announced it would be renewing Animal Kingdom for a third season, which premiered on May 29, 2018.[11] The season 3 premiere was aired after a game on TNT beginning 12:30/11:30 central the day before the premiere.[12] On July 2, 2018, TNT renewed the series for a fourth season.[13] Production on the fourth season began on January 10, 2019.[14] The fourth season premiered on May 28, 2019.[15]
On July 24, 2019, TNT renewed the series for a fifth season.[16] On March 16, 2020, production on the fifth season was suspended "until further notice" due to the global covid-19 pandemic.[17] Production on the fifth season resumed on September 7, 2020.[18] Filming for the season wrapped on December 11, 2020.[19] On January 14, 2021, ahead of the fifth season premiere, TNT renewed the series for a sixth and final season.[20] Production on the final season began on March 6, 2021.[21] Filming for the season wrapped on August 12, 2021.[22]
The first season of Animal Kingdom has received positive reviews. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the season has an approval rating of 76% based on 33 reviews. The consensus is: "Bolstered by Ellen Barkin's acting prowess, Animal Kingdom is a darkly intriguing, although occasionally predictable, twisted family drama."[23] On Metacritic, the series has a score of 65 out of 100, based on 27 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[24]
In Canada, the show is broadcast on CTV Drama Channel, formerly known as Bravo,[43] and all seasons are available on Netflix[44] and Crave. Beginning with its fourth season, the episodes were broadcast on Bravo at the same time and day as the original TNT broadcasts.[45] In French, the show airs on Z.[citation needed]
The first season was released in DVD and Blu-ray formats on April 28, 2017. Each set contains behind-the-scenes featurettes and deleted scenes. The home media for the first two season's DVD releases were distributed by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment.[46] For Season 3, the Warner Archive Collection label also produced the Blu-ray format starting with Season 2, and began manufacture on demand DVD releases for the remaining seasons.
On July 6, 2016, the series was renewed for a second season of thirteen episodes.[1] On July 27, 2017, TNT renewed the series for a third season.[2] On July 2, 2018, TNT renewed the series for a fourth season.[3] On July 24, 2019, TNT renewed the series for a fifth season.[4] On January 14, 2021, ahead of the fifth season premiere, TNT renewed the series for a sixth and final season.[5] The final season premiered on June 19, 2022.[6]
There was a lot that went down on Season 4 of Animal Kingdom, the biggest being the death of Smurf. The Season 4 finale was emotionally charged with plenty of surprises that will spill over into Season 5. Fans have been wondering since the finale what's next for the Cody boys, and soon the wait will be over. The new season is sure to bring just as many if not more plot twists, and we are totally here for it!
TNT has released a new Animal Kingdom Season 4 trailer, featuring the Cody crime family returning in what could be the most intense season yet. The series stars Emmy and Tony winner Ellen Barkin, Shawn Hatosy, Ben Robson, Jake Weary, Finn Cole, and Sohvi Rodriguez, with Emily Deschanel joining the cast this season in a recurring role. Check out the trailer in the player below!
Deschanel has been laying low since Bones wrapped up in 2017; her only role has been a voice cameo as herself in one 2018 episode of The Simpsons. The actress starred on the Fox procedural for 12 seasons as Temperance Brennan, a brilliant forensic anthropologist (whose best friend happened to be named Angela) who teamed up with an FBI agent (David Boreanaz) to solve grisly murders.
Animal Kingdom season 4, episode 8 "Ambo": The Codys head out for a big job, even though Smurf (Ellen Barkin) is nowhere to be found. All eyes are on J (Finn Cole) as he assumes a leadership position in a risky heist. Directed by David Rodriguez and written by Bradley Paul.
In the final moments of the episode, J tells Pete that Smurf has cancer and he'll be the one taking over, which Pete seems to take in stride. Did J just declare hunting season on the Cody family to a rival crime syndicate? Maybe, maybe not. Time will tell.
On Tuesday's episode, titled "Ghosts," the TNT family drama said goodbye to Janine "Smurf" Cody (Ellen Barkin), the tough matriarch of the Cody boys, whose death came not during a heist gone wrong -- like we all may have presumed -- but by a fatal shot taken by her grandson, J (Finn Cole). For four seasons, Smurf's tension-filled relationships with her sons have caused strife for years, with several of them crowing about going off on their own and stepping out from under her shadow. But without her around, will they even survive?
Diagnosed with terminal skin cancer earlier in the season, Smurf was forced to face her own mortality for the first time. And when she decided to pull one last heist, she had plans of not making it out alive -- only Pope (Shawn Hatosy) had other plans. "I'm supposed to be dead," Smurf snarls, after Pope safely rescues her from a bloody gunfight she starts. That's what leads her to break down in front of her sons in the episode's most heartbreaking and gut-wrenching moment, when she pleads with Pope to do the unthinkable and shoot her dead. Her desperate pleas and Pope's insistence on not being the one to kill her prompts J to be the one to pull the trigger.
Following Animal Kingdom's bombshell episode, ET spoke with showrunner John Wells about the decision to kill Smurf, the conversations he had with Barkin about wrapping up her storyline, the ramifications of her stunning death for the Cody boys and how the loss of the family matriarch sets up next week's emotional finale and the upcoming fifth season.
John Wells: We start every season in the writers' room before passing out index cards to all the writers and I ask different questions: What did we do well? What didn't we do well? What are the scenes that you want to see more of? What are the scenes you don't want to see more of? One of the things that showed up a lot was we felt like the stories of Smurf's dominance of the boys were becoming... not predictable exactly, but expected. And it led to a conversation of, "What do we do to not repeat the same dynamics?" One of the things that came out of it is, how did Smurf become Smurf? Who was she? We only know little bits and pieces of it, and that led to the storyline of a younger Janine, the birth of Julia and Andrew, and the history with J. And we didn't want to end up at the end of the series and not have seen how the boys would actually survive without Smurf. It's the animal kingdom, so every couple of years someone is going to leave the show -- either one the characters is going to get killed or arrested permanently to keep it realistic.
I spoke to her very early on before we came back for the season to talk about it. She's a movie star, so she's used to doing three months on a show or on a film and then going off and doing something else. So she was amazed that there was four years worth of work, so it wasn't that. She was like, "Yeah, these people have to die."
No. We had endless conversations about who should pull that trigger. Three or four episodes before we actually gave the script out, the actors were aware that this was going to happen but they didn't know who was going to do it. So I got the actors lobbying, "I should be the one to do it," or, "You should be the one to do it," because they knew that whoever pulled that trigger was going to set a series of actions in motion for the future. They understood at the moment that Smurf was committing suicide because she didn't want to die [in a hospital bed], so it's not a murder necessarily, but it's who had the courage to actually do what she wanted done. The ramifications of that and the recriminations for the future were going to become major story points for next season. There's already quite a bit about that in the final episode, but it'll be something that propels us into next season substantially.
Ever since Smurf was diagnosed with cancer earlier this season, she's been forced to face her own mortality quite literally and not through the family business by pulling off heists and dealing with dangerous people. It offered insight into a character that we rarely see vulnerability from. Can you talk a little bit about her journey this season?
Oh yeah. That's what the last episode is about in large part. Will they stay together at all as a family? That's really the tension that holds the final episode together and what we think will propel us into the next season. That's very astute. That's exactly what, thematically, is happening in the final episode.
20 New Midseason TV Shows Ranked by Premiere Viewers: From 'Bless This Mess' to 'The Red Line' (Photos)When it comes to TV, winter is typically no fall -- but a few of these series premieres could have made the cut for an earlier start, ratings-wise. TheWrap has ranked all of broadcast's midseason debuts by their "live" total-viewer tallies. A pair of new singing competitions were impressive, a kinda-sorta reboot on The CW was not. Scroll through our gallery for the Nielsen returns from the 20 debuts we've seen. Find our Fall TV version of these rankings here. 041b061a72