Fuller House's finale gives Netflix a solid reason to renew it for season 6. In 2015, Netflix announced it was moving forward with a sequel spin-off to the '80s/90s' family sitcom Full House, with the show debuting the next year. Five seasons after, the offshoot is officially finished, but the series leaves the story in the perfect position to move forward.
After dropping the first nine episodes for its final season, Fuller House released the remaining outings, most of them devoted to the preparation for the triple wedding of DJ (Candace Cameron-Bure), Stephanie (Jodie Sweetin), and Kimmy (Andrea Barber) to Steve (Scott Weinger), Jimmy (Adam Hagenbuch), and Fernando (Juan Pablo Di Pace). The brides and grooms get to do the traditional activities leading to tying the knot including a bachelor adventure for the boys. Following a string of unfortunate circumstances, the wedding goes through smoothly; and while Stephanie and Kimmy initially decided to move out of the Tanner household after the wedding, everybody decided that it's best for them to stay under one roof for the foreseeable future.
Currently, there are no plans for a season 6, with Fuller House's cast and crew seemingly not interested in pushing for it except for one meta-joke snuck in the last season. However, there's a strong case to be made for why Netflix should order at least one more season of the spin-off considering where things were left off.
Why Fuller House Was Canceled
For context, it's important to understand why Fuller House ended in the first place. In 2019, shortly after all 13 episodes of season 4 dropped on Netflix, it was announced that Fuller House season 5 would be its last. Cameron-Bure, who also served as a show producer, belatedly revealed that they were expecting at least one more year from the streaming service, with some storylines saved for it, so Netflix pulling the plug on it was a shock to the creative team.
The cancellation is mostly rooted in the show's stagnant viewership. While the streaming platform is notoriously secretive about its viewership numbers, reports revealed that Fuller House suffered a massive drop in ratings between seasons 1 and 2 despite critical reviews getting better in the show's later years. This means that while the general viewing public checked out what the sequel spin-off was about when it debuted, most weren't hooked on it. It's the relatively large fan base coming from Full House that sustained the spin-off going for four more seasons until Netflix decided it was time to end it.
Fuller House Fails to Have The Same Appeal As Full House
Fuller House's inability to expand its fan base has something to do with the show's main focus - the adult characters, particularly their romances. It's understandable why the spin-off put its legacy characters at the show's forefront - to appeal to Full House's following who already have an attachment to these characters. There's a significant amount of screen time devoted to DJ being torn between Matt (John Brotherton) and Steve. Things got more complicated with the introduction of CJ (Virginia Williams) and her almost-marriage with Steve. Meanwhile, Kimmy and Fernando break up, get back together, decide to re-marry only to back out of it, and then eventually tie the knot in the finale all in a span of five seasons. Despite this, Fuller House never really explored the specifics about their relationship.
Unfortunately along the way, Fuller House forgot to develop their new characters, casting aside their young cast, essentially using them as supporting players, which is the opposite of what its parent series did. Full House never missed a chance to focus on their child actors, appealing to its fanbase with its signature parenting storylines as they offered something for both the adult viewers and their children. It's very rare to not have a plotline about the kids - be it Michelle (Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen) having confidence issues about her ability to read, Stephanie dealing with peer pressure, or DJ coping with being rejected from her dream university. The girls' stories are usually linked with what the older cast is also going through, each outing ending with a resolution to the issues, and both featured characters learning something, making for a more holistic storytelling format.
While Fuller House did give Jackson (Michael Campion) and Ramona (Soni Nicole Bringas) their arcs, dealing with typical teenage romances and navigating through their interests, they're typically B-plots that get lost in the mix with the adult storylines. For example, the pair's theater narrative in the final nine episodes didn't have any satisfying resolution, the show didn't even reveal what the play they were working so hard for is about. The younger cast got it worse with Max's (Elias Harger) uniqueness mostly utilized for comedic purposes, and Tommy and Stephanie's baby, Danielle, were almost non-factors in any narrative.
A Potential Fuller House Season 6 Can Expand Its Base
The focus on Fuller House's romances is further highlighted with the triple wedding in the series finale, but now that DJ, Stephanie, and Kimmy are all married, the show can finally shift its focus to more parenting stories, bringing them back to their Full House roots. Based on what's been revealed about their scrapped season 6, the spin-off would more actively incorporate Danielle into their narrative, as well as chronicling Stephanie's ongoing pregnancy - something that was revealed last minute in the final episode. No more dramatic love lives to tackle for the adults means that the offshoot now has the space for narratives about its younger cast. In fact, Fuller House can even do a better job at telling these stories, tackling different issues faced by the young nowadays since it has a more varied age range for its kids: Jackson and Ramona are young adults, Max is a tween, Tommy is a pre-schooler, and Danielle is an infant. The spin-off can expand their audience by making their young characters more relatable to viewers who are around the same age as them. After all, those who have stuck with Fuller House throughout its run were initially brought to the franchise by their attachment to Full House's young cast.
This doesn't mean that Fuller House should limit featuring the adults. Like Full House, they will be integral in effectively telling these types of stories. It's just now, they need to assume the role of the parents in the spin-off - something that was direly lacking in its first five seasons. The original show always had actual significant interactions between their young and old cast - sometimes, they even tackled a single narrative that both involved a parent-figure and a kid. As childish as Joey (Dave Coulier) or carefree as Jesse (John Stamos) were, they imparted good values to young DJ, Stephanie, and Michelle. On the flipside, Danny (Bob Saget), Jesse and Joey also learned new things by taking care of the girls.
At this point, Fuller House is in a unique position to be a kid-friendly show that also has a millennial following because of their previous exposure to its parent series. Given this, Netflix should be inclined to order at least one more season of the show as it has the opportunity to become the cult favorite that Full House was in the '90s by becoming more appealing to a larger demographic.