“Transparent” to End With a Movie Musical

Transparent is wrapping up with a musical movie.

While there’s still no premiere date for the final season of Transparent, series creator Jill Soloway has announced that the production isn’t going to end with a traditional series finale. 

During the Television Critics Association winter press tour Wednesday, Soloway confirmed that Transparent‘s swan song will be a musical finale. 

“We would never have wanted to take a special, incredible show like that and just end it unceremoniously. It was Jill’s idea to do a musical movie,” Amazon Studios chief Jennifer Salke told reporters during the executive session. “We signed off on that idea, trusting her that she would come up with something incredible. We all sat in the front row of a musical run-through of this movie where we were crying. It is really special.”

Apparently, Soloway always wanted to make a musical, and now she’s finally making it happen. 

“Right as my parent came out, the very first instinct I had before I wrote Transparent was that my sister, Faith, and I were going to make a documentary musical,” she explained to reporters. “As a family we were always doing musicals, so that was kind of the first impulse, was to use song — and in many ways, some people have said that Transparent has always been a show that wants to be a musical.”

The unconventional way to end the Amazon series is also a way to overcome Jefferey Tabor’s exit, “When everything went down last year and we lost Jeffrey Tambor, we went through so much as a family that felt like this very emotional … there are no words,” she said. “There was no way, really, to just go back to a plain old season five.”