The Middle aired its series finale on May 22 after a whopping nine seasons on the air, and viewers had to say goodbye to the Heck family they'd come to know so well over the course of nearly a full decade. As it turns out, however, that goodbye may not be forever for the entire Heck family. ABC has a spinoff in the works that could put one of the Heck kids in the spotlight: Sue. Here's what we know.
ABC is in the early stages of developing a spinoff of The Middle, according to EW, although no deals have yet been completed. At this stage, the plot is intended to revolve around Sue Heck, played by Eden Sher. Awkward as a teenager, a flashforward at the end of the series finale revealed that Sue had married Sean. No details are available at this point about whether the potential spinoff would follow Sue in the years between the finale and the flashforward or if it will pick up after the flashforward. Given that Eden Sher is actually 26 years old, she could believably play Sue as either a teenager or a young adult, depending on the direction ABC wants to go with the spinoff.
Fans of The Middle have reason to be optimistic about the spinoff actually making it to the airwaves in the aftermath of ABC's decision to cancel the Roseanne revival well ahead of its Season 2 premiere. Despite record-breaking ratings throughout its first revival season, Roseanne got the axe after star Roseanne Barr fired off a controversial tweet, and her protest that Ambien was the source of the tweet didn't do anything to change ABC's decision. Cancelling Roseanne opened up a primetime slot, and a Middle spinoff could theoretically fit in.
That said, a spinoff of The Middle reportedly couldn't be ready for air until midseason 2019 at the earliest, so there's no way Sue Heck's adventures could continue in time for the fall premiere slot originally intended for Roseanne. ABC could always move a midseason comedy up to a fall premiere and then fill that slot with the Middle spinoff, but we'll have to wait and see.
For now, fans of The Middle can speculate on how exactly a Sue-centric spinoff would work. The finale flashforward seems to have put some limits on the story if the spinoff picks up directly after the events of the last episode. Viewers already know that Sue will grow up to marry Sean; unless the spinoff pulls a Will and Grace and just disregards the events of the flashforward to go in a different direction, there may not be much suspense about what happens to Sue's love life if the spinoff begins before her marriage to Sean. Then again, the spinoff could stick with the flashforward and go in more of a How I Met Your Mother direction, although hopefully it would stick the landing better for fans than How I Met Your Mother did.
At this point, we shouldn't rule anything out. A spinoff could always just follow Sue as an adult after she married Sean, which could help explain why the rest of the Heck family isn't around full-time. We'll have to wait and see. Stay tuned to CinemaBlend for the latest in TV news. For what you can watch while we wait for more Middle news, check out our summer TV premiere guide and our 2018 Netflix premiere schedule.
