Penny Dreadful at least knew to stop once they said what they wanted to.
Uhm, nope. That was very obvious saving face and not wanting to offend anyone when they made those statements. The writing of season 3 made it very clear they were going for more, but got the cancellation message towards the end of the season.
I mean, even the creators admit they ended it on their terms:
LOGAN: I can absolutely confirm it is really over, the end, that’s all she wrote. The whole idea to have this be the end of the series applies to all of the characters not just for Vanessa Ives and I felt the ending was for Malcolm and Ethan was Ethan got the father that he wanted and Sir Malcolm got the family he needed and together they came to a nice thing of stasis.
Some poems are meant to be haikus and some are meant to be sonnets and some are meant to be enormous epics, and this was always meant to be a sonnet. It was something of grace and beauty. I think we’ve been able to achieve that in a really masterful way with the artists that I work with, everyone’s work. I think this is the right ending so for me to revisit that world again would seem inorganic, I think.
I put it in spoiler tags since it does kind of seem like he is explaining plot points. ---
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