Why Hilary Duff’s ‘Younger’ Was Canceled After 7 Seasons

For seven seasons, 40-something single mother Liza Miller juggled a thrilling double life in Younger, passing herself off as a 26-year-old to succeed in an ageist publishing industry. Starring Sutton Foster alongside Debi Mazar and Hilary Duff, the quirky dramedy became one of TV Land’s biggest success stories before wrapping up in 2021. It has since found a second life on Netflix as a perfect comedy-drama binge-watch.

The show’s exit after seven seasons left many wondering whether the dramedy had been canceled. Creator Darren Star had a different plan. Before production began on the final season in 2020, he revealed he planned Season 7 as the show’s last, giving Liza’s story a proper ending.

Darren Star’s Refreshing and Fun Dramedy

Darren Star is one of the small screen’s most decorated talents, the writer-producer behind television classics like Beverly Hills, 90210, Melrose Place, and Sex and the City. The last of those returned in 2021 with HBO Max’s And Just Like That…, which wrapped up after three seasons. In 2015, he launched Younger on TV Land, starring Broadway star Sutton Foster as Liza Miller, a recently divorced 40-year-old mother who struggles to reenter the workforce after realizing how hard it is for women her age to thrive professionally.

After a run-in with Josh (Nico Tortorella), a charming 26-year-old tattoo artist, at a New York City bar, Liza realizes she can pass for a younger woman and decides to use it to her advantage. With help from her loyal best friend, Maggie (Debi Mazar), she poses as a 20-something to land a job in publishing, where she befriends the ambitious 26-year-old Kelsey Peters (Hilary Duff). Liza soon learns how hard it is to keep up a complicated double life.

Season 7 Was Planned as the Final Chapter

Over seven seasons, Younger earned strong reviews, with its first season scoring 97% with critics on Rotten Tomatoes. Foster’s charismatic lead performance and the show’s witty dialogue carry every season. Though never a ratings juggernaut, Younger found its niche and, as Paste noted, its seventh season made it TV Land’s longest-running original series.

According to Star, Younger wasn’t canceled. In September 2020, he told TVLine, “We are unofficially planning [Season 7] as a final season.” Production on the season had been about to begin in New York when COVID-19 hit, and with many episodes already written, Star explained that the story would pick up before the pandemic:

“The action of Younger sort of picks up where the last season left off, which was before the pandemic. But I do think we’re looking forward to incorporating it into the action as the season progresses.”

By then, the show’s central secret had largely run its course, with the people closest to Liza having learned the truth about her age. The seventh and final season premiered on Paramount+ in April 2021.

Ending Younger also made sense given Star’s busy slate. In 2020, he created the Netflix romantic dramedy Emily in Paris, which, as Netflix revealed, drew 58 million households in its first 28 days to become the streamer’s most popular comedy series of 2020. In 2026, Netflix confirmed that Emily in Paris would wrap up with its sixth season. With the characters’ arcs complete, Younger had no reason to continue, though a spin-off nearly happened for Duff’s Kelsey.

The Kelsey Spin-Off That Never Happened

While Liza Miller’s story came to an end, Hilary Duff’s Kelsey Peters nearly got a series of her own. In May 2020, The Hollywood Reporter revealed that a Kelsey-centered spin-off was in development with Star. The Younger finale even set the stage, sending Kelsey to Los Angeles after she landed a new investor for her venture, Inkubator, from Reese Witherspoon’s production company. The project never moved forward, and Duff went on to star in Hulu’s How I Met Your Father.

Star believes the finale gave Kelsey the right ending. In June 2021, he told TVLine the spin-off was “pretty much off the table,” adding, “it was always going to end with Kelsey doing her own thing, alone, heading to Los Angeles.” For anyone finishing Younger, Star’s other series make natural follow-ups, especially Emily in Paris, a glossy guilty pleasure built for bingeing.

Release Date

2015 – 2021-00-00

Network

TV Land, Paramount+

Showrunner

Darren Star

Directors

Peter Lauer, Steven K. Tsuchida, Todd Biermann, Andrew Fleming, Jennifer Arnold, Tamra Davis, Tricia Brock, Brennan Shroff, Darren Star, Miriam Shor

Writers

Joe Murphy, Rick Singer, Lyle Friedman, Sarah Choi, Jessie Cantrell, Terri Minsky, Eliot Glazer