Fans of HGTV's Fixer Upper, y'all need to sit down, because I have some seriously bad news: Fixer Upper is ending. According to People, hosts Chip and Joanna Gaines dropped the bombshell on their blog on Tuesday. Titled "Our Last Season," the designer-builder couple from Waco, Texas, told fans that the fifth season of Fixer Upper will be the show's last. "While we are confident that this is the right choice for us, it has for sure not been an easy one to come to terms with," Chip and Jo said in their post. Season 5 of Fixer Upper will premiere in November.
Chip and Joanna Gaines' net worth certainly won't be hurting once the show goes off the air. Despite reportedly making $30,000 per episode of Fixer Upper, they have plenty to fall back on. Chip and Jo are the co-owners of Magnolia, a massive group of businesses that include everything from a brick-and-mortar home design store with an online home goods market, to boutique vacation rental properties and a high-end realty group spanning five Texas markets.
But Fixer Upper fans shouldn't start sobbing just yet, as the couple announced that a spinoff show featuring Jo called Behind the Design, is set to premiere shortly after the last season of Fixer Upper begins airing on HGTV.
Jo announced the news about her Fixer Upper spinoff series in an Instagram post this past March. "We have a lot of questions about the designs and what goes on on Fixer Upper and how we get from point A to Z when it comes to these houses and these projects from a design standpoint,” she said in her video. "So we have a new series coming out this year called Behind The Design which focuses on each project. And you get a more inside scoop of how we came up with a lot of the decisions and the design elements we got to incorporate."
The surprising news about Fixer Upper ending comes after a summer filled with rumors, not just about the show itself, but Chip and Jo's marriage. When the couple was dogged by divorce rumors, which Chip shut down with a tweet in August. "Won't ever happen," the 42-year-old business owner tweeted. "You can take that to the bank!" In April, Jo responded to scuttlebutt that she was leaving Fixer Upper before its fifth season — which obviously is not the case. "Don't believe everything you read," Gaines posted at her blog, according to People.
Even though Behind the Design means that Chip and Jo won't completely disappear from TV screens after the end of Fixer Upper, fans were not taking the news very well on social media. The amount of personal fan investment into Chip and Jo's success is almost overwhelming.
It's true that Fixer Upper has a loyal fan base. As depressing as it may be that Fixer Upper is coming to an end, the Gaines certainly have their plates full with their Magnolia business empire and the forthcoming Behind the Design. Let's not forget, too, that Chip and Jo are parents to four kids to boot. Jo told People that ultimately, they need to remember their roots — and that they don't want their kids to grow up on reality TV. "They’re so young, and we want to give them the chance to have a normal childhood,” she said. “Family is the most important thing in the world."
The couple reassured fans that they haven't seen the last of them yet, as they wrote in their blog post:
Though our Fixer Upper chapter is coming to a close, we aren’t done with Waco. We aren’t done renovating homes. We aren’t done designing things to make your home your favorite place on earth. We aren’t done working towards restoration in all things or helping out those who could use a hand. In fact, in all of these of things, we are just getting started.
Who knows what the future holds, but we’re excited for whatever is around the bend and in the meantime, we will definitely be staying in touch.
Fixer Upper will return to HGTV — for its final season *sob* — on Nov. 28.
