It's been 54 years since Bewitched ended its eight-season run on primetime TV. The classic sitcom aired on ABC from Sept. 1964, to March 1972. Starring Elizabeth Montgomery as suburban housewife/witch Samantha Stephens, the beloved series featured Dick York, Agnes Moorehead, Dick Sargent, Erin Murphy, and more.
The final Bewitched episode, titled “The Truth, Nothing But the Truth, So Help Me Sam,” aired on March 25, 1972, on ABC. The storyline, about a truth spell Endora (Moorhead) places on Darrin (Sargent), was basically a remake of the Season 2 episode “Speak the Truth" and was about as far from a series finale as it could be. Bewitched signed off that season with no official goodbyes or resolutions—and that’s because the show was actually supposed to return that fall.
In an interview with Pop Entertainment, Murphy, now 61, said it was “not true” that the series was canceled by the network. “We were never canceled,” the actress said. “We were supposed to go on, but Liz Montgomery decided that she didn’t want to do another season. So we went off the air gracefully. We weren’t canceled. We all thought we were coming back.”
Murphy, who played Tabitha Stephens on the classic comedy series, told Fox News Digital that Bewitched actually had a multi-season renewal when the cast and crew went on summer hiatus after filming Season 8.
"We’d been picked up for two more seasons,” she said. “So we went on our hiatus thinking we were going to come back a month or two [later], and we never did. … They sent a letter to our house [stating] that they decided not to continue. So, I went to Girl Scout camp."
Because the series ended so abruptly, Murphy didn’t have memories of the finale.
“No, and the reason I have no special memories of the final episode is that it wasn’t supposed to be the final episode," she told ReMind magazine in 2025. “We all had contracts for two more years, our show had been picked up for two more seasons, and we went on hiatus like always, expecting to come back. We all received telegrams and letters which explained that Liz had decided not to do the show anymore, and that we wouldn’t be coming back. The final episode was just like any other week of the show. None of us knew it was the final episode while we were filming it.”
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A divorce put a damper on ‘Bewitched’
Montgomery’s husband, William Asher, was one of the directors on Bewitched. By the time Season 8 rolled around, the Hollywood power couple’s marriage was on the rocks.
In an interview with Fox News Digital, Peter Ackerman, the son of Bewitched executive producer Harry Ackerman, claimed his father was given an ultimatum by Montgomery in 1972.
“The network wanted to continue with the series [but Montgomery] would only do it if my dad would agree to basically fire her soon-to-be ex-husband,” Peter Ackerman alleged. “They had broken up at that point and hired this other fella who was directing that episode to be the new director. My dad said, ‘Liz, Bill Asher is my partner, I’m not going to do that to him.’ And she said, ’Well then, Bewitched is done.’“
Montgomery and Asher divorced in 1973 after 10 years of marriage.
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