Finale FinalityList about TV season finales, series finales, cancelations, remakes, revivals, adaptations, and everything else you need to know for tomorrow morning's discussions at the water cooler.
From Bran's real agenda in Game of Thrones to the sad reality surrounding the Seinfeld finale, people are taking to Reddit to share their wild fan theories about series finales and it is fascinating. Be it good, bad, or just strange, these theories have given us pause and made us view several series in a whole new light. Vote up the wildest fan theories this side of the small screen.
It was all planned from the start. Bran has not shown an ounce of want, or pleasure or happiness until this final episode. Bran has done Jack all except set things in motion. He set everyone on their path. He knew from the start how to pull all of the pieces to become the king. Bran knew to use his power to pull together his biggest threats and contenders, to eliminate all of the potential kings and queens until only he was left.
It's why he was there.
The backstory examining the Children of the Forest, and Night King, and the 3-Eyed Raven: The Raven is known to the Children as the Last Greenseer. Stories describe the Greenseers seeing through the faces of their Weirwood trees, influencing animal and plant life, and possibly seeing into the past and future.
The Greenseers were the leaders of the Children of the Forest. They fought against the first men and were defeated by the Starks and the First Men. In retaliation, the Children converted a Stark into the Night King to form an army to stop humanity, but was repelled and they failed. The 3-Eyed Raven knows of this return, and develops a new plan with the Children.
If creating the Ice King is not enough to bring down the fire in humanity, then they will become the King. So the 3-Eyed Raven develops a plan to use yet another Stark to take over. Even Bran says "I am not Bran Stark anymore." The Stark will manipulate the houses along the way into destroying each other and now he can focus on spreading the Weirwood trees and the return of the magic that once was.
Background: That '70s Show is known for having one of the worst, inconsistent timelines in all sitcoms. However, rewatching it, I realized that in the first half of the series, the timeline really isn't all that bad. There are 13 episodes in 1976, and mid-season one until near the end of season three is in 1977 (containing one Halloween episode and one Christmas episode).
It's after it turns to 1978 that things get hairy, with the year lasting until season six, with several holiday episodes repeated, and birthdays not making sense. The year 1979 lasts until the final episode (season eight).
Proof: In the episode Tornado Prom (4x15), it centers around Eric and the gang going to the Snow Prom. Eric forgets to pick up Donna at the radio station, and ventures out to get her, without hearing that a "Code Red" tornado warning has been issued for the town. On his drive, the tornado is even shown behind the Vista Cruiser. A side story takes place in the basement with Kitty and Red. Nothing about this is important EXCEPT their last scene, where they find out the tornado warning has been lifted. If you listen, after the announcer mentions it's been lifted, you'll hear this:
"And updating our top story, a local teen is in critical condition...."
This theory thinks that teen is Eric. The tornado is shown going REALLY close to his car. None of his friends would suspect anything was wrong until the storm died down. Donna was at the radio station, assuming he didn't come because of the storm (she's surprised he turns up at all in the episode), and everyone else was at the prom, thinking he was safe with Donna. With the tornado warning in effect, if the Formans received a phone call from the police or hospital, it's possible they didn't hear it. The nearest phone is in the kitchen upstairs, and their lines could easily be down anyway.
I think the announcement is the first the Formans have heard about the situation. Eric is in a coma from injuries sustained by the tornado, and the reason the timeline beyond that episode is so messed up is that it's Eric's mind filling in the blanks. His mind tries to resolve any unresolved conflicts, and possibly forms new ideas (like new couples or careers) by his friends and family talking to him. Maybe some of those things actually did happen, but just not in the same timeline (or same situations) that he imagined.
In the last season, his brain decides that it's time to test what his loved ones' lives would be like without him. He sees that everyone would eventually be okay and move on, and he finally lets go. Him returning in the last minutes of the last episode is most likely his mind's way of saying goodbye to his loved ones.
The significance of finally leaving the '70s is Eric's mind finally being ready to let go.
Fleabag constantly made jokes and looks towards the camera as she goes about her life. It’s a common trope and could be seen as that but I believe it’s deeper than that. At the end of the first season we find out she caused the death of her best friend by sleeping with Boo’s boyfriend. This broke Boo’s heart and led to her ill advised stunt to win the guy back.
In Season 2 however, the Priest actually calls her out on her habit of talking to the camera. Unlike everyone else around her he knows she’s talking to the audience somehow, or is she? At one point while talking to the Priest, Fleabag has several quick flashes of Boo. I feel like this isn’t a coincidence. Boo is haunting Fleabag, either literally or figuratively.
Looking back, all of her asides are the kind of thing you would say, glance, etc.. to your best friend. Private jokes only they would get to hear or see, and for Fleabag, that would be Boo even after death. And this plays into the ending. It also plays into the fact that the Priest can notice this since he does this too, with God, Jesus, etc...
Boo lost her love due to Fleabag’s bad decisions and Fleabag has to live with that. In Season 2, Fleabag finds love, but again it’s a bad decision. She loves a priest, and while they spend the night together, he cannot be with her. He chooses the church. Fleabag has her love ripped away like Boo did. She finally hurts the way she hurt her friend, and coupled with her helping Claire find real love, allows her, and Boo, to finally move on.
Boo would want to stay and help her friend, but Fleabag wouldn’t let her. That’s why she shakes her head and waves while walking away. She’s finally saying good-bye to Boo for good.
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Toby Was Fired In The Finale Of 'The Office' Because Of The Documentary, Not Dwight
In the finale of The Office, Dwight fires Kevin due to his years of incompetence as an accountant. When the rest of the office tries to fight this, their only defense is that Toby will not allow this to happen... only for Dwight to reveal that he is also firing Toby.
Dwight firing Toby is somewhat significant due to how easily he is able to achieve this. For the first seven years of the series, we watched Michael try and fail to get rid of Toby. He's unable to do this because Toby is technically an employee of corporate, who will not allow Toby to be fired without cause. ("It's because I hate him!")
However, the finale takes place after the airing of the documentary. This means that nearly a decade of workplace ethic violations were revealed to corporate and the general public for the first time. Nearly every act of harassment, racism, violence, and general misconduct that the Dunder-Mifflin Scranton branch ever experienced is neatly documented whether these events were recorded by Toby or not (and we know he probably didn't record all of them, due to him not reporting many of Dwight's complaints against Jim at the end of Season 2).
David Wallace clearly did not like the content he saw in the documentary (At the talk-back, he says "It’s like seeing a documentary about how your food is made. It’s kinda disgusting. You learn a lot, but I didn’t wanna know any of it"). He also probably has something of a PR nightmare on his hands due to how much the Scranton branch was able to get away with for so long.
It would make a lot of sense for Dunder-Mifflin to use Toby as the scapegoat for all of the documentary's controversies. These events almost always fall under HR, and the fact that Toby allowed it all to happen for so long doesn't look good for him (he's even the cause of many of these issues). Besides, corporate can't lay-off the entire staff, as they're presumably still the company's most successful branch.
It's also very possible that Toby as a person is a cause of a lot of controversy due to Michael portraying him as a villain. Just like Joe Exotic's years of war against Carole Baskin are now putting the latter in a negative light around the world, it's very possible that Toby has a similar degree of negative notoriety. Evidence of this may include just how sad Toby is in the finale. He makes it very clear that life has not worked out for him since the airing of the footage. Unfortunately for him, that's also not a great look to have for your company.
So in the end, Dwight probably didn't fire Toby. It was very likely David Wallace trying to salvage Dunder-Mifflin's image after the release of the documentary.
Leslie Knope is indeed the President, and Ben Wyatt is her VP.
The finale of Parks and Recreation left it ambiguous whether Ben or Leslie was the President. We were presented with what seemed to be the Secret Service directing the aged couple away from Garry's funeral in the far-flung year of 2048. But in a recent-ish interview, show creator Michael Schur pulled the Ambiguity Lever even further, acknowledging the possibility that neither of them is President, and that their security detail is privately-operated. He further said that the ending's openness is meant to leave it to the viewer what is going on there. So if you don't like this theory, bully! It's not at all definitive.
In Season 2, episode 12, "Christmas Scandal," Councilman Dexhart is accused of having another of his numerous sexual affairs. Leslie ends up caught up in this as his alleged mistress. At one point, she addresses the camera in a talking head to say, "I would be lying if I said that I never thought I would be involved in an incident like this. Except I always assumed that I would be the politician and the man would be accused of sleeping with me. And that man would be the Vice President, and I would be the President."
Now, surely this is just a silly joke referring to Leslie's political aspirations and possibly to her feelings toward a particular Vice President. It has no bearing on what actually ended up passing in the distant future beyond the year 2017.
However, I like to believe that Leslie was able to overcome her political foibles (if not while running for Governor of Indiana then in a national election) and become President. And who better to run with her than her super-supportive husband who also just so happens to be politically-inclined? Well... Ann, of course, but she likely wouldn't be in. With her husband as her running mate and eventual VP, she can easily live out her sick executive fantasies.
Of course, this might seem "kind of cheesy" (Mike Schur quote), but this is also the show that allowed Jerry to live to 100 with an ageless wife and a great family, so why not give Leslie a similarly-happy ending?
In the first part of the infamous two-part Seinfeld series finale, we see Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer nearly [perish] in a plane crash. However, seemingly last minute, the pilot regains control and the plane is righted in time to avoid catastrophe. The pilot emergency lands in a small town in Massachusetts where the group gets busted on a phony "Good Samaritan" law, endures a lengthy criminal trial that parades their ethically dubious characters in front of the world, and winds up in jail together.
But what if the pilot never actually regained control and the plane went down, killing everyone on board? What if what we (the viewers) saw as an arrest and trial was actually an eternal judgement on the characters of each group member? What if jail was actually a punishment of purgatory, where the four are forced to relive their mundane, sinful lives over and over again?
Consider the following:
1. Something more serious was wrong with the plane accident. We see the incident come about by Kramer trying to slap a water bubble out of his ear, losing his balance, and toppling into the cockpit. A lovable dufus bumping the controls and causing a nosedive would, for an experienced pilot, be fixable in seconds, especially with a smaller private jet. However, this nosedive lasts over a full minute before the plane is suddenly righted up. This seems fishy and suggests that the plane really went down, everyone on board perished, and that the four group members are only under the impression that they were saved in time.
2. The small, quaint, fictional town of Latham, Massachusetts where they emergency land the plane is a sharp contrast to the busy, more bleak looking NYC where the vast majority of the rest of the series takes place. This is indicative of crossing over from real life to some kind of paradise or pre-heaven.
3. Having all four get arrested on a "Good Samaritan" law is about as ludicrous as the basis of the law itself. This is something that would never happen in real life. Perhaps the overwheight man being mugged in front of them was some kind of final test of character or one last chance to demonstrate kindness and compassion over apathy and cruelty (which they failed spectacularly at).
4. There's no way a small crime like a hypothetical Good Samaritan violation would result in anything more than a misdemeanor and a small slap on the wrist, like a fine (if anything at all). It's unlikely that a citation like that would lead to an indictment for criminal trial, even less likely that a full trial would be played out without some kind of plea bargain, even less likely that the prosecution would parade dozens of character witnesses from the group's past, and even less likely that the judge would allow even a fraction of those unrelated witness testimonies to stand in court. The whole trial is so unrealistic that it's laughably farcical, a common point of contention for many of the episode's critics. But, the farce makes more sense if the trial was really a final judgement on each of Jerry's, George's, Elaine's, and Kramer's characters. The character witnesses are all used to frame a snapshot of each group member's ethics and actions throughout their adult lives, something a judge deciding one's eternal fate might do.
5. Jail. No way anybody would get actual jail time in real life in the United States for laughing at a fat man being mugged, no matter how mean or apathetic it is. This suggests that jail is the metaphor for some kind of cosmic punishment. I personally lean towards purgatory (something you're stuck in, but can eventually get out of on certain conditions) since the judge does provide the group with a limited one year sentence. To throw a theory inside theory out there, perhaps after the group is released following their one year sentence, they get another chance to prove themselves worthy or fail and receive more punishment.
6. After the group sits down in their cell together, Jerry famously begins to talk about the buttons on George's shirt, a conversation that mirrors the series' very first conversation between the same two characters in the pilot episode. The last words of the series is George asking "Haven't we had this conversation before?" and the two surmising that indeed they had. One could say that it was a fun, quirky way for David and Seinfeld to bring the series full-circle, but what if part of the group's punishment was to be forced to relive all of the mundane, "nothing" events of their lives over and over again, like some kind of psychological torture loop?
7. Bringing this theory into real life, David and Seinfeld (especially Seinfeld) have been adamantly clear on multiple occasions that there are zero intentions to bring the show back for a reboot. If the original creators have it their way, we will never see a new episode of Seinfeld again, for better or worse. If the actual ending was a genuine and relatively short one year jail sentence for the four main characters, then the plot leaves it open for a potential comeback. But since the creators don't want that to happen, it would make sense that their real intention with the characters was to kill them off in the finale, thereby making the scenario impossible.
The finale is controversial and was disappointing for many fans of the show. If you fall into that category, try watching it from the perspective of this theory; if nothing else, it changes it up a little and helps you see everything in a different, possibly more fun, light.
