When Does In the Dark Season 5 Come Out? Is It Renewed?

What is In the Dark about?

In the Dark finds its footing in the gap between what Murphy Mason is and what everyone expects her to be. She's blind, yes, but that's almost incidental to the fact that she's selfish, impulsive, and genuinely funny in the way people are when they don't much care what you think. When her drug-dealing friend gets killed and the cops won't listen to her, she decides to investigate on her own, which means the show gets to be a murder procedural, a character study, and a comedy about a woman trying to live her life while also being the only one crazy enough to pursue a murder that nobody else thinks matters.

Perry Mattfeld carries the show by refusing to make Murphy sympathetic in the conventional sense. She's abrasive and selfish and frequently makes terrible decisions, and Mattfeld plays all of that straight without winking at the audience. The show around her tries to balance disparate tones—genuine stakes alongside romantic mishaps, real danger alongside jokes about her dating disasters—and it works more often than it doesn't, though the tonal whiplash can feel jarring in later seasons when the murder plots grow darker and more convoluted. What keeps things grounded is that the show never forgets who Murphy is underneath the mystery: someone trying to figure out who she wants to be while everyone else is busy telling her who she should be.

Audiences found enough to like here for four seasons, and critics gave the show credit for its lead performance and its willingness to let its protagonist be genuinely difficult. The CW kept it around longer than its ratings probably justified, which suggests the show had its people. It's not a show that became a cultural phenomenon, but it built something real with a smaller group of viewers who appreciated what it was trying to do.

In the Dark sits apart from typical procedurals because it doesn't really care whether the mystery gets solved. What matters is that Murphy keeps showing up, keeps pushing, keeps being impossible. That's a harder sell than a neat ending, which might be why the show ended before network television entirely forgot how to take that kind of risk.

Created by Corinne Kingsbury

Is In the Dark renewed or cancelled?

Why was In the Dark cancelled?

In the Dark occupied an awkward space on The CW's roster, a dark comedy about a blind woman navigating crime and relationships that never quite found the audience size the network needed to justify its production costs. By the time it wrapped its fourth season in 2022, the show had settled into a steady but modest viewership that reflected a broader reality about the network's struggles: good shows with devoted fans were no longer enough to survive when those fans numbered in the hundreds of thousands rather than millions.

The CW's finances have been under pressure for years, and the network made the strategic choice to lean harder into superhero content and established franchises that could anchor its schedule. A character-driven dramedy about a blind PI in Chicago, however well-executed, couldn't compete with the pull of shows like The Flash or Supernatural reruns in terms of licensing value or advertising draw. Four seasons and 52 episodes gave In the Dark a respectable run, and the show had a chance to build toward something resembling closure, but the network ultimately determined that the slot and budget could be better deployed elsewhere.

There's no indication the cancellation came as a shock to the creators or cast. In the Dark had done its job, telling its story across four seasons with a conclusion that aired in early September 2022. The show ended on its own terms rather than mid-arc, which is more than many network dramas get. Its cancellation reflects not a failure of quality but the simple economics of cable television in an era when traditional networks are fighting for relevance against streaming services that operate on entirely different business models.

In the Dark Season 5 Release Date

Best & worst episodes

In the Dark seasons

In the Dark trailer

Where to watch In the Dark

NetflixstreamNetflix Standard with AdsstreamAmazon VideobuyApple TV StorebuyGoogle Play MoviesbuyFandango At Homebuy

In the Dark latest news

• Disney Is ‘In The Dark’ On What Jimmy Kimmel Will Say Upon Return From Suspension

  NewsAPI:BroBible · 2025-09-23general