Cancellation

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The show was cancelled just before the third anniversary of its original air date. Most of the main characters were given happy endings.[17] Ben and Meg and Michael and Vanessa married in a double wedding. Casey and Sara got engaged, Cole and Caitlin were happy in their marriage, and Olivia was happily raising her children alone. Maria gave Ben a divorce so he could marry Meg and met a new man, Ross English. Maria also adopted Benjy, the little boy she had regarded as her own, and she and Ben planned to raise him together. The 'baddies' all got their comeuppances. Derek was accidentally shot and killed by Ben; his accomplice Tess went to jail, as did Gregory Richards (Francesca's real killer). Tim Truman, who though not a villain spent most of the three years causing problems for Ben and Meg, was murdered by Derek. Virginia remained in a mental hospital of the criminally insane, while reformed Annie also got a happy ending, finding love with relatively new character Jude.

In a twist ending, Meg appeared to wake up in Kansas and realize that the entire three years in Sunset Beach had been a dream – and the characters from the show were actually her friends and family in Kansas (a reference to The Wizard of Oz).[original research?] However, at the last minute, Meg woke up in Sunset Beach and was in bed with Ben, the day after their wedding. Probably the dream was poking fun at how many writers use the sloppy ending of "it was all a dream" to bring a story to a close, as was done in stories such as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland or more aptly, evoking the dream (9th) season of the prime-time soap, Dallas.

The show gained a cult following in the UK, doing especially well in the ratings for Channel 5, with some universities holding Sunset Beach parties where students would go dressed as their favorite character. Channel 5 tried to save the show when its cancellation was announced, offering partially to fund it and trying to get other networks involved, as had happened previously with Baywatch, but NBC was not interested. It did buy NBC's other soap opera, Days of Our Lives, to air in Sunset Beach’s place, even running promos during Sunset Beach’s final week, but the show failed to catch on and Channel 5 dropped Days approximately a year later.

To date, Sunset Beach is the last regularly-scheduled NBC network program to air at 12:00 p.m. Some NBC affiliates did not air Sunset Beach at its scheduled time due to the affiliates' longstanding practice of airing local newscasts or other syndicated programming in the noon hour; this resulted in some affiliates airing the show in a different spot on their schedule while others did not air it at all. In some media markets (especially in WKBD-TV and KTXH, where Graham Media Group, the owner of WDIV-TV and KPRC-TV at the time, preempted it for its entire run), Sunset Beach aired on affiliates of other networks or independent stations. In most markets that did air the show at its regular time, its second half-hour went up against the first half-hour of The Young and the Restless on CBS and Port Charles on ABC. After the series ended, NBC returned the 12:00 p.m. time slot to its affiliates.