After 11 seasons, filled with beards, camo and controversy, the cast of A&E’s popular reality television show Duck Dynasty announced Wednesday night during its season premiere that this one would be their last.
“We’ve got an unbelievable announcement for y’all,” Uncle Si Robertson says enthusiastically to the camera.
“After five years, we’ve decided as a family for this to be the final chapter of the Duck Dynasty series,” one of the Robertson brothers, Jase, continues.
“May God bless each and every one of you,” Si Robertson says in closing. The family, all 21 of them, let out a resounding “Yay!”
The show chronicles the lives of Willie Robertson and his brothers, Jase, Jep and Alan; their wives; their parents, Phil and Miss Kay; and Uncle Si as they run their highly successful Duck Commander duck-call business in rural Louisiana.
Although it debuted as a reality television hit, raking in record numbers in its infancy, Duck Dynasty has suffered in recent years from a decline in viewership, probably brought on, in part, from a widely reported controversy that forced A&E to briefly suspend Phil.
In an interview with GQ magazine in 2013, the year after the show debuted, the Robertson family patriarch made unsavory comments about homosexuality, women and race relations.
As Washington Post reporter Emily Yahr wrote at the time:
“It all started when Robertson — a 67-year-old self-proclaimed ‘Bible thumper’ — was asked by the magazine what he considered sinful. He responded, ‘Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men.’
“There were some other crude remarks about why he prefers women and on race relations in the Jim Crow South. Reaction was swift and loud. The NAACP expressed outrage. Gay rights groups called for A&E to condemn their star for his ‘vile’ comments. The network went one step further: Executives announced late Wednesday that Robertson would be suspended from filming ‘indefinitely.’ ”
Fans defended Robertson in the name of free speech, among them Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), who said, “It is a messed-up situation when Miley Cyrus gets a laugh, and Phil Robertson gets suspended.”
But the suspension did not last long.
After the Robertson family said that Phil’s remarks were expressions of his faith and that they could not “imagine the show going forward without our patriarch at the helm,” A&E reversed course a week after the announced suspension.
After the controversy, ratings fell steadily, but the show remained popular among die-hard fans. The Robertson family managed build an entire empire out of the show’s success.