Why HBO's Insecure Is Ending With Season 5

All good things must come to an end — even good things that might have gotten pretty awkward along the way.

HBO announced January 13 that its acclaimed series Insecure will be ending with its upcoming fifth season. The show stars Issa Rae as nonprofit employee Issa Dee as she, her best friend Molly (Yvonne Orji), and her on-again, off-again boyfriend Lawrence (Jay Ellis) navigate the trials and tribulations of modern life in Los Angeles.

The show has received praise and awards for its comedic yet honest handling of the contemporary Black experience, particularly from the perspective of its two female leads. Rae has received two Emmy nominations for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series and two Golden Globe nods for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy. In 2020, the show's fourth season was also nominated at the Emmys for Outstanding Comedy Series, while Orji was nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series.

With so much success and acclaim, why is Insecure coming to an end?

The good news is that Insecure fans get to avoid an awkward goodbye. The show is going out in the best possible way for a TV series: on its own terms and with its own timeline, no unintentionally dangling threads or rushed finale. "We always planned to tell this story through five seasons," Rae told Deadline, "but we couldn't have made it this far without the tremendous support of our audience." 

One thing is certain: even after the series finale, Rae's future is anything but, well, insecure. In 2020, the actor-writer-producer appeared in the drama film The Photograph and the romantic comedy The Lovebirds, both of which she also produced. In 2021, she's set for a role in the B.J. Novak-directed thriller Vengeance and is also producing the HBO docuseries Seen & Heard, a history of Black television as told by the performers.

Scripts for the fifth season of Insecure have been completed, with the show scheduled to go into production later this month. No premiere date has been set, but Deadline reported that HBO expects season 5 of Insecure to appear on the network sometime later in 2021.