Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 12 Is the Final Season Until It’s Not, Apparently

Curb Your Enthusiasm creator Larry David has made clear that season 12 will be the final outing for his long-running HBO comedy. From the sound of things, however, HBO would very much prefer that not be the case.

In a new wide-ranging interview with Variety, HBO and Max CEO Casey Bloys discussed the network’s upcoming efforts including The Last of Us season 2, The White Lotus season 3, and yes: the final season of Curb Your Enthusiasm. In speaking about Curb‘s swan song, Bloys made clear that HBO would be on standby should David ever change his mind.

“For as long as I’ve been at HBO, we’ve had Curb,” Bloys said. “And it’s always been an open door. And look, even though he’s saying it’s the last season — and I think he has told the story he wants to tell — if in a couple years, he said I got one more idea, we would of course be open to that.”

Certainly this is not the most Earth-shattering news we’ve ever heard. This just in: “Cable executive would like extremely popular and successful comedy to keep airing on his cable network.” But it’s still worth bringing up to illustrate just how deep the Larry David and HBO relationship goes and how unlikely and bizarre this end of an era must feel for the pay cabler.

Here’s a mind-blowing TV fun fact: Curb Your Enthusiasm premiered on HBO the same year as The Sopranos. Yes, The Sopranos – the show that just celebrated its 25th anniversary last week and is basically seen as the beginning of Actual Television. The hour-long special, then called Larry David: Curb Your Enthusiasm arrived on Oct. 17, 1999 and properly introduced viewers to the mastermind behind Seinfeld.

Curb Your Enthusiasm, the series, premiered the following year and would continue to produce seasons on and off for the next 24 years. David pretty much had the autonomy to do whatever he wanted with Curb Your Enthusiasm: leading to its almost exclusively improvised style and long breaks between seasons. Many times throughout the years, it seemed as though David might have been done with his pet project before he picked up the phone to let HBO he had more episodes on the way.

Bloys can be forgiven then for not being able to fully process that this is indeed the end for Curb Your Enthusiasm. We’re having a hard time processing it ourselves.

Curb Your Enthusiasm season 12 premieres Sunday, Feb. 4 at 10 p.m. ET on HBO and Max.