How do you feel about the season four ending of Nashville? Lionsgate chief Kevin Beggs recently defended the cliffhanger ending in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.

Earlier this month, we reported that ABC cancelled Nashville after four seasons. However, Lionsgate says they are committed to finding a new home for the country music drama.

In the interview, Beggs said the season four cliffhanger was the intended ending for the season, not the show necessarily:

There’s a little short-term pain but ultimately long-term gain because we intend and are quite focused and are in substantive and serious conversations with multiple buyers about continuing the show on another platform. If we didn’t feel that was going to happen, we might have gone a different way.”

He added that a happy ending would’ve been a “disservice” to the fans:

The ending we ran was the ending always envisioned for this season. These things are crafted over weeks and months. In our estimation, to go with a quickly assembled too-easy wrap-up is more of a disservice to the fans who have invested four years in this great cast and these great stories. And there’s more stories to tell.”

As we reported earlier, an alternative season four ending was shot and will be made available to fans. In the “happy” alternative, Juliette (Hayden Panettiere) and Avery (Jonathan Jackson) reunite.

Beggs said that he has every intention to continue Nashville so the cliffhanger won’t be the end of the series:

Our job as a studio with the creative team is to give Ed and Marshall maximum flexibility — not limitation. This is the ending that was intended. I think it’s more of a disservice to try to hastily put something together that’s not satisfying. There will be detractors, but on the whole, the notion that this show will continue has been so positively received that I have to play the long game. And the long game is about keeping this show going. We wouldn’t take such a strong position to advocate for the ending that we wanted to stick with — the original ending that was crafted by our team — if we didn’t feel good about our chances moving forward.”

What do you think? Are you a fan of Nashville? Did you like the season four ending? Do you think the show should continue?