Let stories end

Amanda Hess for The New York Times in 2018: The End of Endings

Didn’t endings used to mean something? They imbued everything that came before them with significance, and then they gave us the space to reflect on it all. More than that: They made us feel alive. The story ended, but we did not. This had been true at least since the novel supplanted the oral tradition. In his essay “The Storyteller,” Walter Benjamin wrote that the novelist “invites the reader to a divinatory realization of the meaning of life by writing ‘Finis.’” He continued, “What draws the reader to the novel is the hope of warming his shivering life with a death he reads about.” We needed stories to end so we could make sense of them. We needed characters to die so we could make sense of ourselves.

I think a factor in my general dissatisfaction with franchises and TV shows is that a key part of storytelling, the ending, isn't really a thing. Here's how they usually go:

1. Beginning
2. Middle
3. More Middle
4. Yet more middle
5. Middle
6. Somehow more middle
7. OH FUCK WE'RE NO LONGER RELEVANT SO HERE'S SOME SHIT ENDING BECAUSE THE MONEY FAUCET STOPPED SPITTING OUT BILLS

Patrick Willems has a very good video out now called Let Franchises End and I highly suggest you check it out.