The Most Confusing TV Series Endings Explained

Series finales can be tough to pull off for even the best TV shows.
They have to wrap all of the show's plotlines and character arcs in a way that is satisfactory
and sensical.
Sometimes, that means a show will close on a question mark to allow fans their own interpretations
or perhaps even room for a spin-off.
And while that might work with some programs, an open ended finale can often seem so unfinished
that fans are left clamoring for answers years after the fact.
To help resolve some of the most frustrating show endings, here's a look at what showrunners
really meant for fans to take away from these confusing conclusions.
Lost
For a show that was already redefining weird, Lost's last episode really went off the rails.
The fifth season ended with Jack and the crew setting off a hydrogen bomb on the island
while visiting the 1970's, so the sixth and final season picked up with two separate timelines:
one where the survivors are still stuck on the island in the present, and another where
the plane seemingly never crashed.
This alternate timeline soon revealed itself to be much different than the original, and
many of the characters were living completely different lives.
The final episode revealed that this timeline was actually the afterlife.
Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof later explained that the afterlife plotline was supposed to
demonstrate how the events on the island weren't purgatory, as many suspected.
Unfortunately, the message was so, well, lost in the chaos of the sideways world exploration
that even they couldn't really explain all the finite details.
The Sopranos
The fade-to-black finish for The Sopranos was so unexpected that many viewers thought
their cable feed had been interrupted when it happened.
Fans of the show had spent months and months speculating about what incredible drama would
befall Tony Soprano and his family to close out such an eventful show, but … none of
that happened.
Instead, Tony, his wife Carmela, and their kids met up for dinner -- after an excruciatingly
drawn-out parallel parking job by Meadow.
With Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" blaring out over all the inaction, Tony noticed a
suspicious man lurking around the diner and ...
"(Ding)"
"Don't stop"
According to series creator David Chase, the ending implied that Tony was always going
to be paranoid as a result of his mafioso history and that endings for guys like Tony
tend to happen just that quickly and unexpectedly.
Thanks to some frame-by-frame analyses after the fact, it's pretty clear that the guy Tony
was eyeing, who went to the bathroom nearby his table, probably ended his life right then
and there.
But the fact that Chase chose not to actually show his death was irritating, considering
the show wasn't shy about showcasing some serious brutality before.
Parks and Recreation
The final season of Parks and Recreation jumped forward in time a few years to 2017, in which
Leslie Knope has become a regional director of the National Parks Service.
But if that time-tripping wasn't enough, the series finale skipped even further ahead to
detail the next few years in the lives of all the main characters, particularly Leslie
and her husband, fellow Pawnee government worker Ben Wyatt.
Both are approached to run for governor of Indiana, with Leslie said to have served two
terms in the post, while Ben went on to serve in Congress.
"Joe Biden knows his way around a seafood risotto."
Then, much farther along in the future, they attend the funeral of Jerry Gergich with a
Secret Service detail in tow.
That means either Leslie or Ben is President of the United States, but who is it?
Show creator Mike Schur, inspired by the ambiguity of the finale of The Sopranos, says he felt
"there was room for one big question mark."
Schur told Variety that he "wanted people to be able to fill in their own blanks and
make up their own minds."
Considering the fact that Leslie Knope always had Oval Office ambitions, it was probably
her, but the fact that we didn't get to find out for sure meant fans had to order extra
waffles to cope.
30 Rock
NBC's 30 Rock seemed to have a relatively straightforward finale, going full meta by
having their faux show, TGS, wrap in conjunction with the real show's end.
But there was one element of the big finish that was extremely odd.
In the very last scene of the show, which takes place several generations in the future,
Liz Lemon's granddaughter is all grown up and is pitching a show about her grandmother
to the new head of the network, who just so happens to be... an apparently immortal Kenneth?
Throughout the show, Kenneth was an NBC page who was painted as something of a simpleton,
but in retrospect, the show might've been building to the reveal that Kenneth was a
timeless creature all along.
After all, how many references did Kenneth make to old actors and songs that were so
obscure even those in the entertainment business around him couldn't keep up?
"I was pretty addicted to coke back in my Wall Street days."
Mad Men
After nearly a decade of failed marriages, salacious affairs, a bunch of booze, and a
deep dive into his abandoned identity, Donald Draper escaped his life as a snazzy Madison
Avenue executive and sought solace in a hippie commune.
His journey to rock bottom was the very fabric of Mad Men's seven seasons, so when he showed
up at a California hideaway desperately weeping over his mistakes and emotional disconnections,
it seemed like Don might finally change his ways.
But that final shot of him peacefully meditating en masse was not the end-all be-all for the
creative genius' days in the sun.
The series ended with a credits cutaway to the famous 1971 Coca-Cola commercial of a
cross-cultural singing group chanting about wanting to buy the world a Coke and indicated
that Don's take away from so much self-discovery was really just another awesome ad idea.
Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner later agreed that Don indeed remained an ad man to the
end, as the commercial suggested, saying, "Why not end this show with the greatest commercial
ever made?
I am not [into] ambiguity for ambiguity's sake.
But it was nice to have your cake and eat it too, in terms of what is advertising, who
is Don and what is that thing?"
As a result, viewers were left thirsty for more, so the choice of a soda ad was certainly
inspired.
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The Most Confusing TV Series Endings Explained

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