In May 2010, after a whopping 456 episodes, Law & Order ended its run and was then replaced in its slot the following fall with Law & Order: Los Angeles. However, that spinoff only lasted one season, and during that time, Dick Wolf was trying to save the original series. He was shopping it to AMC and TNT, amongst other networks, but neither side couldn’t agree on terms for the license fee.

Then in 2015, he talked about bringing back Law & Order for a limited series, but unfortunately, it never came to fruition. So why, after 20 seasons, did Law & Order get canceled? The seasons leading up to the series’s cancellation had been slowly dipping when it came to ratings, meaning that a new season had already been in question. Pretty much, the show was canceled due to falling ratings and for putting a crunch on production's budget.

Dick was pressured into developing a new season on a very tiny budget to avoid cancellation, but that was something he wasn’t willing to do. When it was announced that Law & Order was ending, fans were totally shocked. If the show had been renewed for Season 21 back then, it would have made history for NBC as the longest-running television series in its history.