Imagine being part of an incredible journey. You sit down on your couch and you start so,me new story. Is a Netflix show that particularly catches your attention or a book, or a videogame. It can be absolutely everything.
The plot is amazing and you are lost in it, you get to know the characters and god knows you even learn some names but then seasons go on and then you start that last length of journey and you seem emptiness into yourself.
The feeling of discomfort I feel toward the beginning of the end is always consuming and I recently started to try and figure out why that is.
For a massive amount of time I thought that this was because of the drop in quality that many stories have into their final seasons and this is true sometimes.
Many shows do lose quality over time, or they get repetitive in the long run or maybe they change the cast.
I still remember my first time watching Star Trek: Voyager. I was a wee dick and I still lived in Italy. I didn’t speak English at all and, like every tv show out there I watched it dubbed in Italian and somewhere at the beginning of season 4 Tom Paris doubler got replaced and the voice well, it was different and I wasn’t able to enjoy it for a long time. Just up to the time I got the habit of the new voice.
But this is just to make examples of why seasons can reach their downfall but they are not yet the core topic of this post.
I want to talk about the emotional impact of the fact that a story is approaching the end. The plot is starting to wrap storylines and character and soon the massive journey you had with them will end. You won’t be able to journey with them anymore unless they are brought back in some kind of sequel, spin off or fanfiction that will destroy the story you loved, drawing it into the deep black sea of capitalism.
They say that the greater test of character arrives when you have to say goodbye to loved ones, to leave the characters, to let them go their way without putting them on another rail. Let them retire after the adventure they have and to cut out ties and blinds you created with them. You don’t need to know where they went after they depart, you just need to know their arc is complete and new amazing characters and stories will in fact wait for you.
But nonetheless is a sad long goodbye that grows inside you for the entirety of the final season and this, at least for me, is not avoidable. It is inevitable and it makes it impossible for me to not feel alone and lost during the last season.
Usually I simply choose another show to watch but usually I can’t find the strength to watch a show past its sixth or seventh season and sometimes I just start the show all over just to see if I can get to know the characters from scratch again.
That is in fact a sad goodbye in disguise, a farewell whose anagram is: season finale.
-ldmarchesi