How to end a TV show

Finishing any story is difficult, but this is especially true for mystery-filled TV shows. string like lost At first, it attracts viewers with secrets and questions that constantly accumulate, to the point that they can often seem incomprehensible. But the promise is that it will all pay off in the end, a feat that few shows ultimately manage. This creates tension as viewers try to put all the pieces together in the hopes that the show’s creators know what they’re doing in the long run. The most recent example is from On MGM PlusA lostA horror series along the lines of the series that has just concluded its penultimate season, with the fifth and final season arriving in 2027. Naturally, endings are currently top of mind for the team behind the series.

“By doing this kind of show, you’re making a contract with the audience,” he says. fromContent creator, John Griffin. “You say, ‘Look, if you guys invest, we promise we’ll take you somewhere worth going.’”

from It tells the story of a group of people in a small town they can’t leave, all while dealing with roaming monsters, dwindling food supplies, and other existential threats. The Season 4 finale was a perfect indicator of how these shows often work, mixing intense drama with bizarre mysteries. A beloved character was turned into a monster, and there were more than a few unexpected deaths, strange and violent weather patterns, potentially deadly dream sequences, and some rules that everyone had to live (and die) by over the past four seasons.

Keeping track of everything that’s happened so far is a huge challenge on a show like this – both for viewers tuning in at home and for those who work on the show. According to showrunner Jeff Pinkner – who has previously worked on series such as… lost, Aliasand margin -The solution is fairly straightforward: remember what is most important.

“One of the challenges of making a show this complex is that we expect the audience to watch a show this complex,” he explains. “If we had some sort of master document that we relied on, or it was necessary for us to keep it all in our heads, we would expect too much from the audience. The honest truth is that we keep it all in our heads because that’s what the audience should be able to do. We just want it to be as complicated as we can care to make it.”

Knowing how the series would end from the beginning helped the creators from He remained focused on coming to this conclusion even as they delved into side secrets. Unlike many shows, they always had a specific end goal in mind while making narrative decisions. This does not mean that the proposal has not changed from the initial vision. Griffin likens the experience of creating the show to that of a road trip, where there is not necessarily one direct journey, but the final destination remains the same. “We set out with intention, and on any journey things change and things evolve along the way,” he says. “Some of what was initially planned was abandoned in favor of other methods.”

According to Jack Bender – an executive producer who has directed several films fromepisodes, and is perhaps best known for his emotionally charged direction lost Conclusion – One of the strengths of a long-form TV mystery is its cast’s ability to change and adapt. While creators may have specific ideas in mind at first, those ideas can change based on everything from fan feedback to input from other members of the crew, whether they’re actors or production designers. “That’s one of the great creative things about this kind of storytelling, where you have 50 episodes to tell this story,” Bender says. “It gives you time to go into the woods and take some turns, and still get back on the trail you want to go.”

But one difficulty is that there are no guarantees in the world of television. fromThe show’s creators may have had an ending in mind early on, and may have planned a story spanning five seasons, but getting there depends on the show reaching audiences and being renewed multiple times. This result was not guaranteed. It’s a reality that most TV writers have to deal with, but it becomes especially difficult for a series like this from Which has specific plans for its beginning and end. Emergency plans have become a necessity.

“If MGM Plus had come to us at the time and said, ‘Hey, listen guys, the numbers are bad, we’re going to have to wrap this up next season,’ would we have done that,” Griffin explains. Absolutely.” “There are 9,000 ways to tell any story. But the fact that we allowed the story to breathe, let it lead us where we wanted it to go, and fulfilled the original vision we all had, was very satisfying.”

All of these factors combined make a successful ending all the more important and rare. As M. Night Shyamalan told me before the finale of his Apple TV thriller Servant“I’m amazed now when I think of any peers who have done this.” In the case of a mystery show, the ending has a lot of loose ends to tie up and mysteries to uncover.

But according to the team behind fromChecking off unresolved storylines from the list is not the goal; It makes viewers feel intensely about the world and characters in order to leave a lasting impression. Controversial like lost Final what It’s still something people talk about today. “You only miss characters you care about,” Griffin says. “You only miss the shows you’re interested in.”

“We want the ending to be both surprising and inevitable,” Pinkner adds. “We want the ending to feel like it was set up in the first frame of the first episode.”