The wheels continue rolling as the sixth season of ABC’s political thriller TV series “scandal” approaches its nail-biting two-hour back-to-back finale, two episodes away. Even as the crisis management team of cool and tough Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) strain their utmost to “handle” the looming threat of this arc of the series, events in the real world are also proceeding apace. Several prominent sources are beginning to sound the notice that “Scandal” will run for one more season, where the whole story will finally be concluded. This ending after seven seasons was supposed to have been established by show-runner Shonda Rhimes and accepted by ABC.

Designed to end short

According to series creator Shonda Rhimes, the nature of “Scandal” with its serialized story format dealing with high-intensity and serious crisis situations were a guarantee to the production studio that it will not run for long. This stands in contrast with her other popular TV creation “Grey’s Anatomy”, which has a more subdued narrative in comparison. Rhimes is of the opinion that there’s only a finite amount of narrative that a series like “Scandal” can handle telling in its entire run.

“I know what the end of ‘Scandal’ will be,” says Rhimes. “And I feel really good about that. And I can see where the end point is. And I don’t think I’m going to change that.”

ABC has previously announced back in February that “Scandal”, “Grey’s Anatomy”, “The Middle” and “How to Get Away With Murder” will all be returning will be returning to its TGIT lineup with new seasons, although it’s known now that for “Scandal”, it will be for the last time.

Meanwhile several other programs like “Agents of SHIELD”, “Designated Survivor”, “Once Upon a Time” and “Fresh Off the Boat” have not been announced if they will be renewed once their latest seasons end.

Past scare

Viewers of “Scandal” on ABC have had a fright once regarding the series during a broadcast of “Good Morning America” back in July 2016.

Anchor Lara Spencer had mentioned that the then-upcoming season 6 will be the final one. Shonda Rhimes, upon learning of this pronouncement, went onto Twitter with an amusing reaction: "Whoa, GMA: I never said this was the final season of Scandal…Way to make me spit out my coffee!"

Actress Kerry Washington, who plays main character Olivia Pope, has not said anything about the planned end of the show.

The end of “Scandal”, to her, is up solely to Rhimes and ABC. Regardless, Washington has expressed appreciation for how playing crisis manager Pop has changed her life. The network is expected to make a formal announcement regarding the conclusion of the series on Tuesday May 16.