White Collar revival now officially happening, the show finds itself in a great position to achieve success again.

The revival will bring back much of the original White Collar cast, including Matt Bomer in the lead role. It will be a direct continuation of the original series, following some different storylines but remaining firmly rooted in the foundations of the show. This is great news for long-time fans of White Collar, as the revival has already proven that it knows exactly what its audience is expecting from the project. It’s something new, but it’s also going to be very familiar to those who are tuning back in.

White Collar Ended On A High Note (So The Revival Doesn’t Have To Fix Anything)

The Show Had A Pretty Great Final Season

Revivals of beloved TV dramas can be extremely risky, but the main reason that things look good for White Collar is that the original series ended on a high note. It didn’t have the dramatic fall-off between seasons that frequently happens with long-running dramas, but it managed to stay high-quality right up until the very end. This means that there are no glaring errors or mistakes that need to be fixed in the revival; it can focus instead on telling a new story, bringing in fresh characters and giving the writers much more creative freedom.

When shows end on a sour note, revivals can be an effective method of bringing the characters back to wrap up loose ends - but this rarely works as intended. Shows like Prison Break and Dexter were given this treatment: their final seasons were fairly disappointing and received overly poor reviews, and the revivals focused on giving the shows a much-needed second chance. However, what these reboots failed to realize was that simply rewriting the show’s ending isn’t enough material for a whole new project - it needs a story of its own to keep itself distinct.

While Collar’s Well-Received Finale Means The Story Doesn’t Really Need To Continue

There Was No Pressing Demand To Bring The Show Back

While it’s great news that White Collar’s revival doesn’t have a disaster ending to reckon with, this raises the important question of why the show was rebooted at all. If there were no mistakes to fix, the show didn’t strictly need to come back. The happy ending could’ve been left as it was, and audiences would’ve been happy with where White Collar’s beloved characters ended up. By bringing the show back, White Collar simply runs the risk of ruining this satisfying conclusion.

...this new series’ existence now demands that the characters are given an entirely new ending altogether.

The fact that Bomer and his co-stars are all returning for the reboot is great news for audiences who have been waiting to see them back in action, but it also means that their journeys will need a new ending. Wrapping up such a beloved series can’t have been easy in the first place, and this new series’ existence now demands that the characters are given an entirely new ending altogether. It’s a huge risk that could easily backfire, but if there’s enough time devoted to fleshing out the script, it’s one that could definitely pay off.

How White Collar Can Avoid The Mistakes Of Dexter & Other Revivals

There Are Some Precautions The Show Must Take

Dexter and Prison Break have become the go-to examples for revivals that didn’t succeed, and there’s lots that White Collar can learn from their failures. For example, among the primary reasons that Dexter and Prison Break’s final seasons didn’t work was their inability to forge a compelling story that felt like it needed to be told. The first two or three episodes were pretty great in both cases, wrapping up the loose ends from the original series and rewriting the parts that didn’t work. But from there, both lost traction.

This is a lesson that White Collar needs to take on board - it can’t simply return for the sake of returning, there has to be a real purpose behind the story. The show needs to get audiences back on board with more compelling mysteries and an overarching narrative that justifies its existence; more of the same formula would be fun, but it wouldn’t make sense after so long. But if White Collar has a solid plan that can separate it from the original show, there’s no reason the revival can’t work.