Final Season of A&E’s Bates Motel to Premiere in February

A&E's Bates Motel will premiere its final season on February 20, instead of the March premiere date of the previous four seasons, according to TVLine. Bates Motel is a prequel to Psycho, the 1960 horror film directed and produced by Alfred Hitchcock, which was based on a 1959 novel by Robert Bloch. The film details the encounter between a runaway secretary who by chance ends up at the Bates Motel, and the aftermath of her encounter with the reclusive owner-manager, Norman Bates. The previous four seasons of Bates Motel have focused on Norman Bates teenage and early adult years, culminating in the death of his mother and his transformation into the character audiences will recognize from Psycho. The final season of Bates Motel will feature entertainer Rihanna in the pivotal role of  the secretary, Marian Crane. The Crane character, portrayed by Janet Leigh in the original 1960 Psycho film, made pop culture history through a shower death scene that has gone on to be referenced, imitated and duplicated many times over the past 50 years. According to showrunner Kerry Ehrin, this season will be a bit different than the previous four in other ways as well. "[The fifth and final season ] is, in a way, the funniest, the most dark comedy," Ehrin explained to Yahoo. "I would say it still somehow manages to be weirdly life affirming." “The [Marian Crane] episodes that [Rihanna is] in were very much designed to be like a collision between Psycho and Bates Motel, and, really, it’s the first and only time we’ve ever truly stepped into Psycho,” Ehrin continued. The final season will also bring one other surprise many Psycho and Bates Motel fans have been waiting for. “We’re gonna get to spend more time with [Mother] now,” Ehrin told TVLine at the 2016 Comic-Con. The final season of Bates Motel will run 10 hour-length episodes and will premiere on Monday, February 20th at 10pm on the A&E Network.