Actor Nathan Fillion’s hit television series Castle enjoyed an eight-season run before its divisive series finale. A couple of years before the show’s last air date, however, Fillion revealed when he thought might be the right time to end the show.

Nathan Fillion hoped that ‘Castle’ knew when to wrap it up

Castle’s series finale was the best showrunner Alexi Hawley could do after being somewhat blindsided by the procedural’s cancellation. The ending Hawley shot, showing Fillion’s Rick Castle and Stana Katic’s Kate Beckett as a healthy married couple with a family, left too many unanswered questions. Fillion also seemed to agree with fans who didn’t think Castle earned its happy ending.

“It wasn’t the beautiful send-off that I think maybe you could hope for,” Fillion said in a resurfaced interview with The New York Post. “It’s the entertainment industry, it’s a business, I get it. I don’t take it personally when a show gets canceled — I can’t take it personally, all my shows gets canceled! Look at my resume, it’s a long list of canceled TV shows.”

But Fillion clarified that the series’ disappointing ending didn’t nullify the great experiences he had on the show.

“The fact is, I made a lot of great friends on a really great show,” he said. “I’m really happy for everything that that show has done for me.”

Fillion had a lot to be proud of when it came to Castle. At its peak, it was its network’s highest-rated show. Its longevity was also a good measure of its success since it was Fillion’s longest-running show. He was proud of Firefly, but it didn’t last nearly as long as Castle, and he felt it was treated as a problem show by its network. The Rookie, however, seems likely to catch up to Castle, as the show’s currently in its seventh season and still going strong. But the Superman star once considered how long Castle should actually run for. Its ideal end point might’ve been a bit sooner than eight seasons.

“I would like to do six years – maybe seven years, if it’s strong enough at that point – and then wrap it up,” he said. “Six years would be great, wouldn’t it? I would love to end strong.”

Ironically, Castle lasted about seven years, airing from 2009 to 2016. Fillion was worried that the show’s quality would decline if it ran too long, which happened with many shows that lasted past its expiration date. He credited shows airing in England for typically having short seasons and rarely overstaying their welcome.

“I think something that you guys here [in the UK] do really well is take shows, have incredible stories and then finish strong and wrap them up,” Fillion once told Digital Spy. “That’s something I can really appreciate. What I don’t want to see happen to Castle is… I don’t want to see it peter out and die a slow death, and be forced out.”

In the end, however, that might’ve been exactly what happened to Castle.

Nathan Fillion felt he was wrong about this 1 thing about the show’s natural ending

Fillion believed Rick Castle’s relationship with Kate Beckett was what drew in many Castle fans. For much of the series, a romance was teased between Fillion and his co-star Katic. But Fillion was always adamant that making Castle and Beckett a couple would’ve meant the end of the show.

But the pairing would officially happen long before the series ended. After Castle and Beckett got together, Castle showrunners proved to Fillion that there were still more stories in the show to tell. Which Fillion acknowledged in an interview with Playboy.

“I’m the guy who said, ‘Don’t put Castle and Beckett together, because that will be the end of it. That’s the end.’ People watch because they don’t want them to be together, but at the same time how long can you wait for two people to finally… Yeah, remember how wrong I was about that? I’m going to reserve my opinion for the future. I’m going to just kick back and wait and watch and see what happens. My hope is that there’s no natural end point. That we can continue as long as we want to. That would be nice,” he said.

Fillion wasn’t completely wrong, though. The relationship between Castle and Beckett wouldn’t last, with the show’s writers coming up with creative ways to pull the couple apart. It wasn’t until Beckett and Castle were shown in a seemingly stable relationship, as husband and wife, that the show felt comfortable ending.