Empire to End After Season 6

The Lyons will get just one more run at Fox.

After renewingEmpirefor Season 6, the network announced on Monday morning that the upcoming sixth season of Lee Daniels' drama series will indeed be its last.

The hit hip-hop-centric series will return to its original time slot on Tuesday evenings this fall and is poised to be as dramatic and shocking as anything we've seen from the Lyons den in the past. The show's fifth season ended with a game-changing split between Cookie (Taraji P. Henson) and Lucious (Terrence Howard), and showrunner Brett Mahoney has promised that fans can expect some major fallout from that development in the next season.

"I think they're both looking at it like yes, they love each other, but does that mean that they should be together?" Mahoney told TV Guide. "They may be separate for a bit and if they come back together, it's gonna be a matter of eyes wide open, versus what happened this time around when they jumped into a relationship without necessarily thinking about what it was actually gonna take to stay together."

During the network's Upfronts conference call on Monday morning, Fox executives reiterated that while actor Jussie Smollett's contract has been renewed through next season, there are "no plans" at this time for the character of Jamal to return to Empire.

Earlier this year, Smollett was charged with 16 felonies, including filing a false police report, for allegedly staging a hate crime hoax. All charges were dropped on March 26. However, Smollett was written out of the final two episodes of Season 5 amid the Chicago Police Department's investigation, which left many wondering if he would be back next season. Taraji P. Henson and Terrence Howard, along with several other cast members, recently penned a joint letter urging the network to bring Smollett back for Season 6. However, it looks like those efforts were made in vain.

Empire's first five seasons are available for streaming on Hulu.