J.J. Abrams' espionage thriller Alias ended its run after five seasons on ABC. The show started off as a hit for the network, but its viewership continually diminished over the years. Because of that, the show's cancellation didn't come as much of a surprise.
The TV show followed the double life of CIA agent Sydney Bristow. Sydney balanced life with her friends who believed she worked for a bank while she was secretly taking down corrupt government organizations. But the show's storyline quickly got convoluted. Clones and absurb fakeouts started popping up in the show. With those storylines, Alias began to commit itself to the weird world of science fiction.
Alias started to lose its viewers the deeper it got into some of these odd storylines. Executive producer Jeff Pinkner spoke to EW in 2006 about some of the highs and lows the show faced over the years. Alias was always intended to be a family drama set in the espionage world, but the show also had hints of sci-fi. Pinker believed the show lost its focus the further it dove in to its most prominent sci-fi element — the Rambaldi prophecy.
Within the universe of the show, Milo Rambaldi was a 15th century philosopher and inventor who created prophetic works centuries ahead of its time. Rambaldi was infused into the DNA of show. Many of Sydney's early missions were centered around tracking down various works and designs by Rambaldi. She eventually learned of a prophecy about The Chosen One, who would bring forward Rambaldi's works and complete destruction. The woman depicted in the prophecy happened to be a dead ringer for Sydney. Some of the show's later episodes spent more time centered on Rambaldi than its regular focus of Sydney and her family dynamic. As Pinkner said, those episodes created a feeling of looking from the outside in, leading to a lot of confusion. That likely made the audience feel excluded, causing many to drop off from the show.
Alias mishandled a number of other storylines as well. The show vested a significant portion of its Season 1 storyline in Will's investigation into the death of Sydney's fiancé, which eventually pulled Will straight into Sydney's secret world of espionage. As Pinkner told EW, the writing staff learned that the audience simply didn't care about Will. By the time they figured that out, the situation was too far gone to remedy. Problems like this brought Alias's ratings down. Alias never pulled in huge ratings, so there came a point where those low numbers caught up with them. For better or worse, the show's various storylines ran their course. If they were handled in another way, Alias could've perhaps lasted a little longer. But the show eventually went back to its roots for its final season, meaning that Alias did go out in a way that was true to form.