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We live in an age of television reboots. In the past year we’ve seen shows like King of the Hill, Dexter, Phineas and Ferb, and Daredevil come back for new seasons. However, you shouldn’t expect The Wire to join that list. Showrunner and creator David Simon believes the series ended the way it needed to and he isn’t tempted to come back for more.

“The stories work if you have a beginning, middle, and an end. We really did plan the end,” Simon explains during a 2014 PaleyFest panel. “The end had to be the end. And the last thing we wanted to say in a very fundamental way was, there’s 100 million channels and there’s all this entertainment, we’re a culture that’s pretty much entertained ourselves to death.”

Simon went on to explain that the show accomplished its mission of telling the types of stories that aren’t normally told. “I used to be very proud when people like Andre [Royo] or Michael [K. Williams], usually the street characters, or it could be the detectives to, they would come out of the trailer and we’d be shooting somewhere in West Baltimore. And there was like, ‘Somebody made a television show about this America.’ To see people rally around Andre Royo, and they would come and bleed out their stories. It was just so beautiful.”

“There’s a whole universe that isn’t sufficient for narrative in most people’s minds, and this show was a very improbable thing that managed to last for a while. What the writers were trying to say there was even when you get too close to something like this, people use it as a grist for melodrama. Like, let’s revel in some gangsters, or let’s have some tough cops, or let’s enjoy some violence, or let’s have the thrill of the chase, or the ticking time bomb,” Simon continues.

“There was a little part of us that wanted to say pay attention to what gets pulled through the keyhole and what doesn’t, because what we just said was these four seasons and what we’ve seen of this last season are the part of the iceberg that’s under the water.”

Simon went on to explain that coming back for a revival would cheapen the message, concluding with a quote that summed up the state of modern television storytelling. “Sustaining the franchise is the great disease of American television,” Simon says.

It’s interesting that he said this in 2014, and 11 years later that disease has only spread.

The Wire's David Simon talks about his return to life on the streets with Homicide spin-off graphic novel with Philippe Squarzoni.