The season is produced by Kilter Films, Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. Television, with Jonathan Nolan, Greg Plageman, J. J. Abrams, Bryan Burk, Chris Fisher and Denise Thé serving as executive producers and Nolan and Plageman serving as showrunners.

[3] The season stars Jim Caviezel, Kevin Chapman, Amy Acker, Sarah Shahi and Michael Emerson.

The series revolves around a team led by a mysterious reclusive billionaire computer programmer, Harold Finch, who has developed a computer program for the federal government known as "the Machine" that is capable of collating all sources of information to predict terrorist acts and to identify people planning them, as well as detecting all lesser crimes, known as "irrelevant" crimes.

The season revolves around the team's last fight against Samaritan, a mass surveillance system that aims to destroy the Machine.

The Machine is reinstated onto a makeshift network of computers in hiding, but takes some time before it works reliably again due to damage sustained from power failures while it was in storage.

At a Samaritan facility, advanced VR technology is used on a captured Shaw to run thousands of neural simulations in order to get her to reveal the Machine's location.

Samaritan engineers a lethal infection in order to force people to provide their DNA during vaccination, which will be used to decide who will be allowed to live.

The Machine also falls victim to ICE-9 and ceases to function after showing Finch its prediction of the world and his friends' futures if it had not existed - Samaritan would have arisen anyway, but without means of restraint.

A while later, Shaw is unexpectedly contacted by the Machine; it has restored itself from the satellite back to a land-based computer, to continue its work.

"[21] While promoting the season at the 2015 San Diego Comic-Con, series creator Jonathan Nolan said, "We're going to make 13 kickass episodes, and drop the microphone.

As life has come to imitate Person of Interest, it's been our great privilege to work on show for the past five seasons.

"[34] Series creator Nolan commented on the final season, explaining that despite being announced as the final one, they brought closure to the show, "It became abundantly clear to us that we were a part of a business model that did not work for the network anymore, despite loyal fans and the better part of 10 million people watching every week.

I think it allowed the writers' room to set aside their need to create palatable side stories or a murder-of-the-week or whatever, and really just get focused on wrapping up the loose ends of this thing.

"[36] Executive producer Greg Plageman mentioned that despite the late announcement, the ending was exactly as they envisioned it, "It seemed to spring organically from the sacrificial nature of what Reese was doing.

"[37][38] Regarding the idea of a sequel series, Plageman said "I would say never say never in a world where we've seen the X-Files and 24 and a number of really strong premises come back as well."

"[39] Nolan also commented, "What's great fun about the early episodes is watching the two of them argue about, if they can adjust The Machine's secret formula, should they?

I'm definitely on the side that Shaw can do no wrong, and even if something had happened, I think Root feels like their relationship is strong enough that she has the power to turn her back.

"[42] Kevin Chapman also commented, "Fusco has always carried a fondness for Shaw for the simple fact that she saved his son's life in Season 3.

"[45] Talking about Finch's subsequent interrogation scene, Plageman added "We have to give that character license to and why and what does it mean?

"[50] Emerson also talked about the finale, saying "The ending, I thought, was really satisfying - and still ever so slightly open-ended, so that if someone, someday wanted to reboot this thing, or have a Chapter 2 of some sort, it wouldn't be out of the question.

And the opportunity for Reese to repay that, as he says in the beginning of the episode, pay it back all at once, for me and for Greg I think, was just the most moving version of how this story ended.

"[52] Nolan also commented, "You almost knew at some point in time that sort of sacrifice was going to be required in order for them to ultimately defeat Samaritan and for one to allow the other to go on.

So there's no better actor to present that and no better character on our show, potentially with the exception of Finch himself, which I guess is another way the narrative could have gone, than Amy Acker, to have someone to convey all that complexity and all those multitudes contained within the Machine.

[54] In August 2015, Keith David was announced to guest star as Terence Beale, "a smart and cunning CIA supervisory agent" and described as "the kind of guy who knows where the bodies are buried... mostly because he put a few of them there himself.

"[55] In January 2015, Josh Close joined in a mysterious recurring role, which Plageman described as a "very interesting character — in what is poised to be the series' strongest season to date.

The site's critical consensus is, "Person of Interest concludes in a satisfying fifth season that both deepens the characters that audiences have grown to love and delivers a cracking arc about the dangers of technology.

Throughout its run, Person of Interest figured out how to juggle procedural and serialized storytelling pretty well (season 3 is a high point) and created strong and moving relationships at the same time.

"[85] Emily St. James of Vox wrote, "When Person of Interest debuted, the series was written off as slightly cold, as a techno-thriller that lacked anything human to it.

As the series went on, it became ever more clear that it had that chilly feeling because so many of its characters were, themselves, machines, made that way by an increasingly impersonal society.

The implication is clear: If we survive the coming AI war, it won't be because we've placated either superintelligence; it will be because we've remembered what makes us human in the first place.