When Does The Borgias Season 4 Come Out? Is It Renewed?

What is The Borgias about?

The Borgias is Neil Jordan's glossy, blood-soaked chronicle of the most notorious family in Renaissance Italy, built entirely around Jeremy Irons as Pope Alexander VI, a man willing to poison rivals, blackmail cardinals, and sacrifice his own children to keep the papal throne warm. If you want to watch a period drama that treats the 15th century like a crime family saga (which, functionally, it was), this delivers exactly that. The show knows what it is: a prestige vehicle for watching powerful, corrupt people scheme, seduce, and stab each other in marble halls while wearing expensive costumes.

What separates The Borgias from its contemporaries is how comfortable it remains with pure villainy. There is little hand-wringing here, no attempt to make Rodrigo sympathetic or tragic. Irons plays him as a man who has simply decided that his wants matter more than anyone else's life, and the show spends three seasons watching him prove this thesis. The family drama underneath (the twisted codependency between father and son, the various betrayals) gives it texture beyond pure political intrigue, though the actual plotting can feel repetitive. Seasons blur together because the mechanics stay the same: someone threatens the Borgias, the Borgias eliminate them, everyone looks magnificent while doing it.

The show arrived during peak prestige television cynicism and found its audience among people who appreciated the unapologetic ambition. Critics were mixed, some praising Irons and the production values while others found the repetition tedious and the historical liberties frustrating. Showtime cancelled it after three seasons despite respectable ratings, a decision that left several character threads unresolved.

The Borgias sits between the ruthless efficiency of The Americans and the operatic corruption of Game of Thrones, though it lacks the narrative momentum of either. If you watch it, you are watching for the craft and the performances more than for a story that builds toward anything inevitable.

Created by Neil Jordan

Is The Borgias renewed or cancelled?

Why was The Borgias cancelled?

The Borgias arrived on Showtime with considerable ambition and a strong cast, but it never found the audience size that premium cable networks need to justify their budgets. Despite respectable critical reception, the show's viewership remained modest throughout its three-season run. Showtime's economics are built on a smaller subscriber base than broadcast networks, which means shows need to either generate extraordinary word-of-mouth and cultural momentum or deliver the kind of loyal, measurable audience that justifies their production costs. The Borgias, for all its polish and historical intrigue, failed to become a phenomenon in either way.

The show's cancellation also reflected a broader shift in how Showtime was allocating its resources in the early 2010s. The network was increasingly focused on finding breakout hits that could anchor its entire brand, and it was becoming clear that The Borgias was not going to be that show. By the time the third season aired, Showtime had already begun investing more heavily in other dramas and in building franchises around existing successes. A show with solid but unspectacular ratings could not compete for renewal when networks were thinking in terms of cultural impact and subscriber growth rather than mere viewership numbers.

What likely softened the blow for fans was that the third season provided a natural conclusion to several major storylines, even if it wasn't framed as a planned finale. The show ended its run without leaving behind the kind of unresolved cliffhangers that make cancellations feel abrupt. That doesn't change the fact that Showtime pulled the plug, but it meant viewers at least had some sense of closure rather than being left completely adrift.

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