'Castle' Season 8 News: How To Watch Series Finale Online, Featuring Rick & Kate's Final Mission [VIDEO]
After eight seasons of laughs, tears, pulse-pounding moments and expressions of love, ABC's Castle will finally come to an end Monday night.
ABC announced Thursday that they were cancelling Castle after eight seasons, a surprising reversal given the past month. The network announced that star Stana Katic (who plays Kate Beckett) would be exiting the series before season 9, and many of the show's stars and supporting players signed new contracts to keep going.
But the network received such bad press for the Katic move that many fans soured on their once rabid devotion to the series. As such, Castle will end with both Katic and Nathan Fillion (Rick Castle), the way the series was devised from season 1.
Monday night's season 8 finale, which is now being called the series finale, will feature Castle and Beckett finally getting to the bottom of the whole LokSat case. However, the ABC press release for the finale teases that an "unforeseen twist" puts the case and their lives "in jeopardy."
For those fans who were afraid Beckett might get killed in the finale, the announcement of cancellation may be a blessing in disguise. Castle co-showrunner Alexi Hawley previously told Entertainment Weekly that they filmed an ending just in case they heard they weren't coming back for season 9, which would ideally tie up the whole series in a satisfying manner.
"If we hear that we're not coming back, we have shot something that we can put at the end of the episode as a way to put a button on everything," Hawley explained. "Obviously that would be a bad thing because it would mean no more. We did it in order to try to protect the fans, because you can't end the series on a cliffhanger."
The Castle series finale airs Monday at 10 p.m. ET/PT on ABC.
If you wish to live stream the finale, the network has an official live streaming site, though it only works in some areas of America. Check here to see if you can get a live stream of ABC.
To live tweet the series finale of Castle, use hashtag #Castle or #CastleFinale on Twitter.