A good story never ends. Which isn’t to say it doesn’t have an official ending—for no matter how prolific the writer/creator, there will be a final page, a series finale, a last moment or word. But the best writers craft an ending that doesn’t feel like one, an ending that ties up major loose ends and then let its characters live on, sending them on another mission, another mystery, another adventure. After all, our affinity for our favorite story comes from its characters, catch phrases, and the very feeling of being in its world. So the best ending those stories can have, is, clichéd as it sounds, a new beginning. A new stepping-off point that allows them to continue, to live on, in our imaginations—the place they really came alive. It’s a final moment without a feeling of finality. Not wrapped up with a bow, not clean and tidy. It’s leaving the story world a little messy. A little, well, unresolved. Because life rarely comes to a standstill in the middle.
In television, series finales are notoriously difficult to craft. Even those series lucky enough to go out on their own terms have to balance fan service with actual satisfactory resolutions for each of the subplots, relationships, and the overall tone and themes of the series. A poorly received ending can effectively ruin the audience’s memories of the series’ entire run, no matter how successful it had been up to that point. (Now is the time I add yet another nail to Game of Thrones’ coffin.) Whether it’s just a bad idea all around or a botched execution, we’ve sadly all experienced what feels like the bludgeoning of a beloved series, causing us to drape a black veil over the years of enjoying previous seasons. In these cases, writers manage, through unpopular or left-field ideas, to produce the most divisive or despised finales, like with Lost, HIMYM, or Dexter (turns out one is the loneliest number of sad, sisterless, serial killing lumberjacks). Then there are those series that take the easy way out with a “happily ever after,” like Parks and Recreation, TrueBlood, Timeless, or Castle. Throw in a marriage or a full-cast dinner scene (often in a flash-forwards) and end with a wide shot, pulling out ever farther, distancing ourselves from the contented characters, and fade to black, effectively closing the lid on their life stories forever. Sometimes, especially with sitcoms, this is even the most appropriate way to go. It just isn’t the most interesting.
But there is, I propose, a happy middle ground between safe/bland and risky/divisive. I was introduced to this type of ending through a source I’ve written about before—the book series Animorphs. At a time when the blissful ignorance of youth had taught me that the “happily ever after” was the best possible ending, this series delivered a shocking, and to me, world-changing, blow. In the last book, the team rallies to finally defeat the alien parasites that threatened Earth and its inhabitants, but in the aftermath, the team has dispersed; in fact, most of the remaining protagonists disappear into ambiguous futures. Yet in the final sentence, after fighting and hoping and struggling for 54 books, three of our peace-deserving heroes are left in outer space, about to risk their lives once more, preparing to ram into another spaceship. I was stunned and a bit frustrated that my heroes had been deprived of the peaceful rest they had earned by saving the planet time and time again. And then I flipped the page, and read K. A. Applegate’s author’s note:
"I know, I know, it's rotten of me to leave you hanging at the end like that. But I figured the Animorphs should go out the same way they came in: Fighting.”
At the time, it wasn’t just the lack of a happily ever after, of a satisfactory denouement, that bothered me, but the unknowability and uncertainty of their futures. But over time, I have actually come to see this as one of the best possible endings (and one I maybe should have seen coming, considering the book’s title, The Beginning). This is because when stories are neatly and definitively ended, you have no reason to go on thinking about them. When stories are left messy, with some sort of uncertain future, you are forced to use your knowledge of the characters and the world, as well as your imagination, knowing that they will continue to march on and fight for justice, cause trouble, or do whatever it is you loved them for doing. I, for one, want to think back on my favorite series and know that my heroes ventured on, not settled down into obscurity.
Most recently, I was given this gift by the writers of the Space/Syfy series Killjoys, who, like in Animorphs, left some ambiguity as to our space-traversing characters’ ultimate fates, but gave them momentum—another space mission—in their immediate future. The “Awesome Force” trio had taken me on so many Quad-saving adventures, overcame (or, more likely, befriended) so many green-blooded foes, dug deep into Dutch’s origins and the Johnny/Lucy love affair, and more than anything, supplied a fun-loving team worth cheering for. I don’t know what a happy ending would look like for these bounty hunters extraordinaire after defeating The Lady, but for thrill-seeking and danger-defying Dutch and D’avin, at least, settling down into a quiet life wouldn’t have made any sense. So I applaud the writers for knowing their story and their audience, and sending the quippiest space cowboys since the Serenity crew back out on another mission.*
In crafting a fitting ending, then, it really comes down to identifying what viewers love about a show, and remaining true to the core themes. Even on Desperate Housewives, when the finale sees all the major characters moving away from Wisteria Lane to continue their lives elsewhere, the final moments endow yet another dramatic twist. As Susan leaves her driveway for the last time, she passes the literal ghosts of characters past, allowing viewers to reminisce on all the drama that came before; and as she drives out of frame, she passes a moving truck that pulls up to her old house, in which a new housewife, with a classic look of desperation on her face, locks away a mysterious jewelry box to the narration line “most people go on day after day, trying to keep secrets that will never stay hidden.” The familiar faces may be gone, but the melodrama lives on—because what viewers loved about that show was the strained relationships, the interpersonal conflicts, the poorly concealed secrets, and this show promises more of that to come even while giving the major characters a respite.
The final scene, or even final shot, of a series carries major weight, and can in itself make or break a series. I would like to call attention to two shows whose final moments hit the mark in terms of keying in to the show’s overall message, and in creating uncertain but ongoing futures for its characters: Alias and Nikita. Both series follow a woman recruited to a rogue black ops agency that she then decides to take down from the inside, following the assassination of her fiancé by said agency. (Strangely, both also feature handlers-turned-lovers named Michael.) Considering these similarities in plot, it is all the more interesting that their endings should diverge, which speaks to each story knowing its theme.
Alias is about Sydney Bristow, a CIA double agent, who, as the seasons wear on, wants out of the spy game. As we learn throughout the series, Sydney was practically indoctrinated in childhood to become a spy. From her heritage of two spy parents to her training and talent in CIA-developed puzzles and programs, nature and nurture were not colliding in favor of a peaceful vocation. (And that’s not even touching on the show’s unexpected turn into science fiction, what with the whole Rambaldi prophecy plot.) So become a spy she does, enduring the deaths of loved ones, torture, isolation, and emotional anguish that such a career brings, despite her father, handler, and herself trying to turn her away from espionage and all the pain and loss it brings her. Sydney perseveres, and by the end of five seasons, she has brought down the man (Sloane) who was the source of so much strife, and a flash-forward in the final minutes of the finale shows her literally walking off into a sunset with her family. But the key moment I so adored comes just before that, as Sydney is brushing off the CIA director’s plea to go on another dangerous mission, and we see her daughter in another room, building the same puzzle structure that Sydney was so adept at as a kid, proving her propensity for spy work. Just as we begin to worry that history will repeat itself, Isabelle hears her mother’s call and knocks the structure over as she runs out to her family, reducing it to rubble and signifying that she will use her talents on a different path, the path Sydney would likely choose for herself if she had a second chance.
On the flip side of this, then, is Nikita. Like Sydney, Nikita’s start in spycraft was not entirely by choice, though her main issue is her lack of control to live her life as she wishes, what with governments or agencies always holding something over her head. But in the tight, twist-filled six-episode final season, once Nikita has finally tracked down and eliminated the last vestiges of the shadow corporation that ruined her and innumerable other lives, she doesn’t want an out. Sure, she resents being turned into an assassin, but this series diverges from Alias in that Nikita wants to continue using her skills, just on her own terms. That’s why it’s so satisfying, when she and her new husband appear to be on a beach honeymoon, that the last scene shows the two of them gearing up to take down a child soldier recruiter who has stopped just outside their restaurant. With her major foes defeated and her freedom restored, like those in Animorphs and Killjoys, she’s going out the way she came in—fighting. “Now that we’re finally free, I get why we fought so hard. The real gift isn’t freedom; it’s what we get to do with it,” Nikita narrates. “I don’t know about you, but I could never just sit on a beach anyway.” Nor should we want her to, what with the show having established her proclivity to fight injustice whenever she encounters it.
A good story ending, then, balances what we want with what the story needs. Of course, I hesitate to say there exists a “perfect ending,” considering that each person has her own opinion, and each story has its own trajectory, so like the two spy dramas above, satisfaction can be derived in opposing ways. As a Mental Floss article says, “no matter what series you may be watching, you want a finale that ties up loose ends without being annoyingly completist, gives you heart without seeming overly sentimental, and of course makes you feel just as happy, sad, thrilled, or compelled as you did with each previous episode.” Whether it is highlighting dread like The Sopranos, posing yet another question like Twin Peaks, coming full circle like Alias, or setting off on new adventures like Killjoys, what matters is that the ending leaves us with space to continue imagining.
That is how a show lives on.
*Shout-out, too, to The Magicians' final episode. For though I would have liked to see our lovable, angsty crew go on many more world-jumping, time-bending, gods-defying, rabbit-messenger-involving quests, it was heartening enough to see them all accepting the latest consequences of their world-saving actions, fresh-faced and ovaried-up for their next undoubtedly bonkers adventure. Cue Margo, summing up the series in her final line: "Do you guys realize our lives are about to get even weirder, in some insane way we can't possibly predict?" I can, and will, only imagine.