When Mad Men ended a few weeks back the final episode was something that had many people talking, myself included. Some loved it, some hated it, some didn’t quite know what to make of it. I’ll admit I had to run it through my head for a few days to solidify my final thoughts on the episode and the series as a whole. No matter what you thought about the ending it does bring a thought to mind about how much endings matter to a series. TV series, book trilogy, album discography, etc. How much does ‘sticking the landing’ effect everything else that happened before?

I’ve been an anime fan for a long time and not getting the ending you want, or one at all for that matter, comes with the territory. I’m actually surprised half the time when I get closer on something here.  Deadman Wonderland leads you to read the manga to complete the story, the third season of Rurouni Kenshin was basically bad fan fiction, and then we have a great ending with Space Dandy which was unexpected for how sporadic the series was overall.  I share this to say that my overall perspective on how important ending are is a bit skewed. If it’s 98% done well they can still count me in for liking the series. Similar thinking to when working on Jaws Steven Spielberg told Peter Benchley, the author of the original book, who was saying that you couldn’t blow up a shark by shooting an air tank in it’s mouth and making it explode, “I’ve had them for 118 minutes, I can have them for 2 more.”

I think this question stirs a wonderful debate because there really isn’t a right answer. It all depends on your expectations, how well the series lead up to the finale, or how much story ‘Kool-Aid’ you’ve drank before its over. I would like to say I’ve found some semblance of a trend over the years but it seems less a venn diagram and more spin art.  I’ve picked a few titles to talk about that’s endings are normally as much a part of discussions of the series as the series itself is.

I’m betting you thought I was going to lead with the end of The Sopranos right? I didn’t finish watching the series so going with something that seems to have just as much popular dislike for the ending.

I liked the first few seasons of Lost, then it became a delicious train wreak up until the end. I do know people who loved the series all the way through for not-WTF factors as well so there is plenty of room to debate the series on the whole of course. From my perspective the series finale jumped shark (which was hard to do since jumping the shark had been a staple for a few years now so I came to expect it by now) on the last episode. The people I talked to about the final episode who loved the series still were a bit miffed by it’s ending. This didn’t seem to sway them from enjoying the series as a whole though.

The Dark Tower series took Stephen King over 20 years to write. 7 books that seemed to get thicker as the series went on. I started reading these in high school and can highly recommend the first three books in the series if you are looking for a fun action packed post-apocalyptic story to read. The series mellows out as it progresses. By the time I got to the final book I was mostly reading to see how the story would end. For anyone who has read this series just bring up the ending can make the hairs on their neck stand on end.

I’ll keep this to the minimum of spoilers here in case you haven’t read the series. When you get to the end of the book there is a conclusion to the story, but not everything you want answered is answered. Very similar to the ending of Mad Men. King has a brief chapter after the book ends that he wrote for people who have to have a full ending of a story. King leads in to this chapter with a page basically stating “you really don’t want to read this so I recommend you stop here.” This alternate ending gives you more closer but also makes you want to throw the book at the wall afterwards. I of course read this ending but don’t consider it the main ending of the series since King is clearly trolling people who can’t live with not having all the answers to a story. I ended up being satisfied with the original ending overall. Would have liked to have been given more but can live without it none the less.

I can already hear a lot of you saying, “which ending are you referring to?” so let’s talk about both the TV series ending and End of Evangelion. Neon Genesis Evangelion was a ground breaking anime series from the mid to late 90’s that is still talked about today. The final two episode of the TV series went from epic giant robot battles and the internal struggle of teenagers at the end of the world to something that looked like it was produced by a 32-box of crayons and a script written on the back of napkins. After making it through all this the ending felt so different from the rest of the series it was hard to adapt to such a juxtaposition. The studio that produced the series seemed to feel the same way, basically pretended these didn’t exist, and made a movie to end the series.

The end of End of Evangelion had all the wonderful feelings of global annihilation and school kids singing. To say it was a trip is like saying the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey was ‘colorful’.  I personally love this movie. It’s one of my favorite anime films of all time. I do see though how the film, and ending of the film, have lead many people to discuss the series as a whole. Overall I don’t see many people not liking the series because of either ending but it sure is something brought up from a WTF perspective from many angles.

I do enjoy the debate that comes from endings like this. How much of the internet is devoted just for these sort of debates? If anything this puts out a conflict discussion that’s just silly enough to get heated over but has little to no real consequences.

Which series finales stand out most to you as departing from what lead up to it? How did these endings effect your perceptions and enjoyment of the full series?  I would love to hear your thoughts on this in the comments below or feel free to hit me up on Twitter at @neumaverick.