Sad news for Fleabag fans today as creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge has confirmed that the show will never return to our screens.

Speaking to The Mirror, the writer said of the series: “I think we have to let her go, she’s exhausted. She’s been through a lot.” Although Fleabag won’t return in its original form, Waller-Bridge revealed that the team behind it are “all going to work together again, so there will be something of the Fleabag spirit to come back”.

The show first aired in 2016, with its second season wrapping up in April last year. The sitcom received widespread critical acclaim, and saw Waller-Bridge win three Emmys for acting, writing, and the coveted Outstanding Comedy Series award.

Waller-Bridge’s new comments come less than a year after the writer said she wanted to revive the show later in her life. Although she still ruled out a third season, Waller-Bridge told the audience at an Amazon event that she has “a fantasy of bringing Fleabag back when I’m 50”.

Addressing the personal nature of the show, Waller-Bridge told The Mirror: “People are so relieved when they feel that something is honest and truthful. Fleabag was the moment where I thought, ‘Oh, fuck it, I’m just going to write this’. When you have that feeling, you just go off.”

The actor also discussed why she almost didn’t create a second season. “The thing that was really bugging me was that the central relationship in this show is between Fleabag and the audience,” Waller-Bridge said. “I thought that was the perfect journey. She starts with inviting you in, and by the end you know too much and she’s pushing you away. So I was like, ‘Well, it’s gone. She doesn’t have a reason to talk anymore because she has confessed, it’s open and the audience knows her secret’.”

Fleabag aside, Waller-Bridge has had a busy few years. As well as executive producing Killing Eve (and writing the first season), Waller-Bridge was brought in to “spice up” the forthcoming James Bond film, and was an executive producer on the comedy thriller series Run, which premiered in April this year.