Does Patience Die In All American: Season 5's Cliffhanger Explained

Even by the highly dramatic standards of a typical CW show, Season 5 was a rough go of it for the "All American" gang. First and foremost, every character was rattled in the wake of Coach Billy Baker's (Taye Diggs) explosive mid-season death. Once the shock and grief finally began to subside, Season 5 ended with a tragic cliffhanger when Patience (Chelsea Tavares) was stabbed by her stalker megafan, Miko (Courtney Bandeko).

The tragedy had been mounting towards its inevitable climax all season. Miko is first introduced in Episode 7, and her fandom increases into unhealthy obsession over the course of her six-episode arc. Miko serves as the head of Patience's online fanbase — a job she treats with excessive reverence — and later installs spyware on Patience's phone to track the rising singer's every move. In Episode 19, Miko is confronted with a restraining order, and Patience calls out Miko's inappropriate lack of boundaries over a live video, unknowingly inciting the crazed fan's ire. In the final moments of the finale, she shows up at Patience's door and plunges a knife into her stomach before running off. Patience pulls out the dagger and slides to the floor as a blood stain blooms on her shirt.

Fans will have to wait until Season 6 to see if Patience survives the attack. The gap between seasons will be even longer than usual, owing to the historic WGA strike, and "All American" isn't set to return until 2024 as part of the CW's midseason lineup. That hasn't stopped fans from theorizing about Patience's fate.

Since the Season 5 finale aired on May 15, fans have been debating whether the "All American" writers will kill Patience or have her survive the harrowing stabbing. For much of the fanbase, that means weighing the events of the entire series and applying a sort of tragedy quota. "Patience should not survive this," wrote Redditor u/REALBlackMambaX before delving into the show's many near-death scrapes. "This group's survival rate with assassination attempts is abnormally high. Spencer survived getting shot, Preach survived getting shot, Coop survived getting shot."

Other fans think it would be far too cruel to kill off Patience and Billy in the same season, even if the coach will be returning posthumously in a "Jedi Force Ghost" capacity. "I would have agreed with you," replied u/mala_r1der, "but with the fact that they just killed Liv's dad I think she'll survive."

The Season 5 finale is a fascinating parallel to the Season 3 finale, in which Layla's (Greta Onieogou) unstable friend Carrie (Anna Lore) tries to kill the both of them in a cliffhanger ending. Layla even compares Miko to Carrie, noting how the former is much more unpredictable. "With Carrie, even in the middle of her breakdown there was humanity in her eyes," Layla warns in an Episode 19 heart-to-heart with Patience. "I did not see that today with Miko."

Patience could possibly experience the dark outcome that Layla was lucky to avoid. "They already ran this stalker story with that Carrie girl and Layla survived," added u/CanIGetAName4, "so I don't think they wanna do the exact same outcome with Patience."