On December 5, Jax Taylor announced on Instagram that he and his wife, Brittany Cartwright, would not be returning for another season of Vanderpump Rules, the Bravo reality show that used to be about hot young employees of Lisa Vanderpump’s SUR Restaurant boning each other in West Hollywood and that is now about hot former employees of Lisa Vanderpump’s SUR Restaurant buying identical houses in the Valley. But is there even a show for them to not return to in the first place?
According to blogger Tamara Tattles, after a Zoom meeting last week, the show has been “permanently shelved.” This news is still very much unconfirmed, and neither Bravo nor any of the cast has announced it themselves. If confirmed, though, the cancellation would be unsurprising. Jax and Brittany are not the first original cast members to depart the show — in June, Bravo fired Stassi Schroeder and Kristen Doute after the story began to recirculate of them calling the police on Faith Stowers, a Black cast member, for a crime she had nothing to do with because they were angry she had slept with Jax. And that same month, two of the show’s three newest cast members, Max Boyens and Brett Caprioni, were fired for their racist tweets.
Even beyond the firings and exits of so much of the cast, the future of the show was already uncertain. Several current and former cast members are currently expecting babies: Jax and Brittany; Stassi and her fiancé, Beau; Lala Kent and her “man,” Randall Emmett; and Scheana Shay and a rugby player. It’s unclear how the series — which has mostly focused on drama and drink-flinging — would adapt to accommodate that change.
Back in 2019, before season eight even aired, writer Kelly Conaboy made the case for the show to be killed. “It was a show about the beautiful and fame-hungry, and the drama was largely trivial,” Conaboy wrote of the early seasons. “When there were obvious problems — Stassi’s text-message bullying, Katie’s issues with alcohol, Jax’s everything — the viewer was at least able to keep in her mind that perhaps the cast member would grow out of it.
“The show has changed, though, naturally,” she went on. “Life gets sadder as one gets older. It gets happier, too. Neither of these developments particularly works in Vanderpump Rules’ favor.”
So is Vanderpump Rules getting canceled? Probably, but it’s unclear. And if it isn’t … well, why not?