Sister wives across America are gonna be crushed: "Big Love" is coming to an end. On Thursday, Michael Lombardo, president of HBO Programming, announced that the show's fifth season, which debuts Jan. 16, will also be its final one.

“It has been an honor and pleasure to work with series creators Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer on this unique and provocative series, and I’m happy that they will be able to bring the story to its close the way they always envisioned,” Lombardo said in a statement. “We look forward with great anticipation to collaborating with Mark and Will on their next venture.”

Olsen and Scheffer explained that the Emmy- and Golden Globe-nominated series -- which follows the lives of Salt Lake City businessman Bill Henrickson, his three wives Barb, Nicki and Margene, their nine kids, and three houses -- had simply reached a natural conclusion. “When we created 'Big Love' in 2002, we had a strong conception of the journey the Henrickson family would make over the course of the series, of the story we had to tell,” said Olsen and Scheffer in a statement. “While we were in the writers’ room this year shaping our fifth season, we discovered that we were approaching the culmination of that story."

The series' creators promised that this would be "the most vibrant and satisfying final season of a television series that we can produce.” Both Olsen and Scheffer will continue to work with HBO, though their next project has not been announced yet.

-- Melissa Maerz

Photo: Chloe Sevigny, Bill Paxton, Jeanne Tripplehorn and Ginnifer Goodwin in HBO's "Big Love." Credit: Lacey Terrell / HBO

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