The Nerd Blog

Alexei: *drunk* Well, I’m gonna turn in. 

Alexei: *shakes Natasha’s hand and pats her on the back* It was nice to meet you, young man.

Alexei: *kisses Bruce on the forehead* Goodnight, sweetie.

Natasha: Papa…

Talking about crappy and happy endings, I feel like popular media completely abandoned the“feel good” ending. And this started way before the recent fuck ups of Supernatural and Marvel’s Avengers.

I grew up with pop-cultural narratives in which everything ended well in a given moment. The Star Wars OT ended with everyone sitting around the fire having a good time. Although sequels and follow-up novelizations later filled the gap, the movies deliberately chose not to tell us what happens in the future. Will Leia and Han get married and have five kids, will they go on a big voyage of space exploration, or will they break up only two weeks into the future? The first Pirates of the Caribbean movie ended with Elizabeth and Will saving Jack before sharing a kiss. There’s no wedding, no flash forward to their 25 kids, no end note that Jack eventually got hanged after stealing from a pimp in Bridgetown. How things went after the end of the story told by the movie was entirely up to the individual viewer to answer - and I liked it that way!

Unfortunately, this type of feel good ending has now entirely been replaced by bittersweet endings where the big bad is defeated but a fan favorite (or more than one) dies for the greater good (Avengers), or by white picket fence endings in which we are informed about the names of the grandchildren the main characters will have in a far-away and completely irrelevant future (Harry Potter). The finale of the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy that ended with At World’s End is a weird amalgamation of both. 

Reading reviews and Tumblr rants, it is obvious these endings work for next to nobody. And funnily enough, there’s nothing in the respective narratives that necessitated them. Harry Potter would have been just as fine without the ridiculous and useless epilogue. Same goes for Pirates of the Caribbean, which would have worked just as well without the wedding and resulting waiting-chastely-for-10-years-with-child plot which was basically resolved in an after-credits scene no one asked for. Why couldn’t Supernatural’s Dean Winchester just have a happy hunting life with the angel he so obviously loved, while Sam got out and married a woman (Eileen) already established as a fan favourite? Up until the VERY LAST episode, there was nothing in the narrative contradicting such an ending.

By now, it looks like a deliberate fuck up to me. What are the authors trying to tell us? Life is cruel, but we can always find solace in conservative family idylls?

SIMON BASSET in Bridgerton (2020-)

Bonus: