We are heading into the dreaded part of the TV season for every TV fan when networks decide which of our favorite shows they’ll be keeping around for the next TV season, and which we’ll have to say goodbye to. All American is one of those shows that still doesn’t know its fate for the 2025-26 TV season. Deadline reports that there’s a 50/50 percent chance the show will continue with a Season 8, but that means there’s an equal chance the show won’t be coming back.
All American overhauled its cast this season, keeping series regulars Michael Evans Behling, Greta Onieogou, and Bre-Z, but otherwise shifting focus to a new generation of Crenshaw and Beverly High School students chasing their dreams like the original vortex. The new season introduced us to KJ (Nathaniel Logan McIntyre) and his father, Cassius (Osy Ikhile), who moved from L.A. to Oakland to rehabilitate the Beverly football program. Season 7 also put Preach’s (Kareem Grimes) daughter Amina (Alexis Chikaeze) and her best friend Khalil (Antonio J. Bell) in the spotlight as the next up-and-comers at Crenshaw.
The refocus of the show back to high school football after Spencer James (Daniel Ezra) achieved his dreams in the NFL gave All American a breath of fresh air and many new avenues for storytelling. That’s just one of the many reasons it would be a shame to cancel the show now. Here’s a list of other reasons why All American should make another season.
Spoilers ahead if you are not caught up on the current season.
1. The Baker and Jeremy family feud needs to be resolved.
Season 7 dropped the truth bomb that Cassius is Jordan’s cousin. Cassius’ dad was the baby that Jordan’s grandmother gave up when she was in high school, and he grew up with a chip on his shoulder, resenting the success of the Baker family. Cassius came to Los Angeles with the goal of “avenging” his father and rewriting the Billy Baker (Taye Diggs) legacy. It was all going to plan until Cassius got to know Jordan and the rest of the Bakers and had a change of heart. It was Cassius’ blood that saved Jordan’s life after he was attacked at the Crenshaw gym, but things are far from good between the two. Jordan made it clear he’s nowhere close to forgiving Cassius for his deviousness even though Olivia (Samantha Logan) is desperate to unite the two sides of the family. There’s only one episode left in this season, and that is not enough time to work through the beef between these two men and see a united Jeremy-Baker family. They need time to work this out.
2. The show needs a harmonious conclusion.
Executive producer Nkechi Okoro Carroll told Deadline that she’s continuing work on Season 8 until the show is officially canceled, which implies that there will be loose ends at the end of the Season 7 finale. All American has been a flagship show for The CW since it hit massive streaming success after the first season. It deserves to have a proper ending that allows the creative team to wrap up big storylines. It would be so distasteful to leave fans who have supported the show for almost 10 years with unanswered questions and these characters that they’ve invested so much in. If All American is going to end, it needs to be with enough warning so that Carroll and her writers can craft the perfect ending.
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3. We need to know who the new Vortex endgames are.
Bringing the focus of the show back to high school also meant that All American created a new vortex between Amina, Khalil, KJ, and KJ’s Beverly best friend Tori (Lauryn Hardy). There’s been a lot of back and forth between the love square about who belongs with who and who has feelings for who. It’s a big mess, which we love in a teen drama. However, the show can’t end until fans know what the endgame relationships are for these core four. People definitely have opinions about who make the better matches, but it is not set in stone who these kids will end up with.
4. Coop needs a happy ending.
All of the characters on All American have been through a lot, but Coop is still the most settled of the original Vortex. She and Patience (Chelsea Tavares) just broke up. And Spencer said that Coop was going to be the next big success story out of Crenshaw. She’s killing it at law school, but we’ve yet to see Coop settle into her adulthood ambitions the way we’ve seen Spencer, Olivia, Jordan, and Layla do. If the show ended now, it would be implied that Coop makes it to being a successful lawyer, but fans deserve to see Coop make it all the way after going through so much with that character.
5. We need to know how Olivia’s birth pans out.
Season 7 delivered the news that Olivia is pregnant with twins. While she and Spencer are not mainstays on the show anymore, they do drop by Beverly pretty regularly. We need to know that the birth of the twins goes perfectly and what they’ll name the duo. Are they getting twin girls? Twin boys? One of each? How will the Vortex show up and celebrate the newest additions to the next generation?
6. We need guest appearances by the rest of the original vortex.
Spencer, Olivia, and Patience have all made the pilgrimage back to Los Angeles but there’s still a few faces we need to check in with from the original crew. How is J.J. (Hunter Clowdus) doing these days? Is there a cross-country football battle that could see Jordan facing off against his high school bestie Asher (Cody Christian)? Surely Asher has some parenting advice for Spencer and Olivia as they embark on this new chapter. We can’t possibly say goodbye to this show without seeing the original crew all together one last time.
7. It’s the last carryover of the old CW.
The CW network has had a huge makeover in the past couple of years, and All American is all that’s left of the original teen-focused network. It would be suck for the legacy of the “Dare to Defy” era of the network to die in a late cancellation without a proper wrap-up. This show still has the power to resonate with fans, and it’s nice to know that pieces of what made The CW so beloved in its heyday are still carrying on.
8. There’s been no dance number in Season 7.
We’ve had a couple of low-key singing moments at Layla’s over the course of Season 7, but there hasn’t been any big performance or dance number. We can’t say goodbye to All American until the crew hits the dance floor one more time, preferably with a drunk Spencer in the middle of the dance circle. Those are the rules!
The All American Season 7 finale airs Monday, May 5 at 8/7c on The CW. Seasons 1-6 are now available to stream on Netflix.
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