#because your season was inextricably intertwined with him even though he left you behind

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The Art of The End

written by @robinwritesallthethings

It’s hard to see the things we love come to an end. This is true of fans, but it’s also true of creators. For creators, endings are honestly kind of terrifying. And once you’ve created something popular, people have expectations, and there’s a lot of pressure to get the ending just right.

The problem is that how a story should end and how we want a story to end aren’t necessarily the same thing. Creators might have multiple endings in mind, and fan desires also pull more endings into play, since fans tend to hang their endings on the fates of their favorites. Really, there’s no way that everyone is going to be happy, so as a creator, how do you decide what’s best for the story you’ve put so much time and effort into? This is especially nerve-wracking when fan reactions to an ending they don’t like can be so extreme these days.

The important question is how do you know what ending is right for your story? As a creator, you really only need to ask yourself three basic questions to decide. First, what genre is your story? This reminds you of what endings are traditionally expected in that genre, and therefore, helps you decide if yours will deviate from that tradition or not. Second, does your ending tie up all loose ends that are left in your story? If your story is ending, you don’t want to leave your fans with any questions. Third, does your ending make sense based on what came before it? Everything should come to a natural conclusion that isn’t contradictory, and you certainly shouldn’t introduce any new elements that magically fix everything against all odds. The deus ex machina is all washed up, and no one’s a fan anymore.

Let’s use an example to break down how you can eliminate potential endings from play. I’m going to use Twilight, since it is a fairly simple story with only a few possible endings. The ending of Twilight relies on Bella choosing her own fate. She can choose to be with Edward or Jacob, who are the only logical choices by the end of the narrative. She can also choose to be a vampire or not, a decision which largely depends on which man she chooses. And, after she has become a vampire, the Volturi’s offensive presents two options. One is that the Volturi win and either split up the Cullens or kill them all. The other is that the Cullens win and live happily ever after.

So how do you know which ending is the most appropriate? First of all, consider the genre. Twilight is a romance first. Romance always has a happy ending. If it doesn’t, readers are unsatisfied, so we can automatically take the ending where all of the good guys die off of the table. Of course, that still leaves us with the questions of who Bella should choose and whether or not she should become a vampire. So what other loose ends need to be tied up in order for the story to work? Bella needs to pick someone to be with, obviously, but the person she doesn’t choose also needs to find an appropriate resolution. Edward is in love with Bella, and will be forever. If she does not choose him, he will never love someone else, and will therefore be left drifting. And if Bella chooses Jacob, he could potentially imprint on someone else and leave her behind, despite how much he loves her. In addition, Jacob will never imprint if Bella and Edward aren’t together, because then Renesmee will never be born, giving him no resolution either. The obvious choice is for Bella to choose Edward, and to choose to be a vampire so that she can be with Edward forever.

The only thing left to ascertain is whether or not this ending makes sense with the rest of the story, and it obviously does. Twilight is about Bella and Edward meeting and falling in love. Though Jacob becomes inextricably intertwined with the story eventually, his role is always secondary to Edward’s. It makes complete sense that Jacob still becomes a necessary part of Bella’s life so that they both get to preserve their friendship and he gets closure. And, since we have seen the Cullens stand up to obstacle after obstacle, it’s not hard to believe that they could conquer one more. All in all, whether you enjoy the story of Twilight or not, you have to admit that it’s all tied up in a neat little bow. And it was chosen with fans breathing down Stephenie Meyer’s neck threatening that they would never read anything she wrote again if Bella ended up with Edward, so good for her for sticking to her guns and choosing the ending that was best for her work.

The trick is to not set yourself up for failure before your ending, though. Twilight was so obviously romantic and happy that everyone would have been horribly thrown for a loop if it hadn’t ended well. Avengers: Endgame was recently guilty of this. While the Snap in Infinity War was an awful fandom moment, everyone was hanging onto the hope that all of the deaths could be reversed. After all, this is a universe with time travel, magic, and alternate realities, not to mention Loki, who had supposedly died on previous occasions only to come back just fine later. The Snap may have been reversed, but the results weren’t what fans expected. Not all of the character deaths were undone, and to add insult to injury, Tony died and Cap decided to stay in the past, which many fans were not pleased about. Marvel failed to manage the expectations of what could happen, and while fans will most likely get over it eventually, it was a hard pill to swallow.

You can also be so concerned with surprising your fans that you make the huge mistake of changing the ending to your story to its detriment. This happened recently in the last season of Game of Thrones. Popular rumor hints that a fan guessed how the final season would play out, so the writers changed it so everyone would be surprised. The fan reaction was so bad that there was even a petition to redo the entire season. The writers forgot to ask themselves those three basic questions. They forgot that a high fantasy genre is one of the most predictable there is, especially when there are only a few outcomes left to work with. They introduced far more loose ends than they wrapped up, and the chain of events didn’t match what had come before in previous seasons. Perhaps they could have gotten to a point where their new ending made sense, but they needed a lot more time and character development to pull it off. They shot themselves in the foot, basically, and now their reputations are suffering for it. Hopefully it’s a lesson they learned from, but we’ll have to see.

Everything has to end, as much as we don’t want it to. As a creator, the most important thing to remember is to give your story the best ending that you can. As fans, we have to learn to accept the good endings to the stories we love. For the bad ones, never fear. There’s still fanfiction. And remember that the best part of one story ending is that it leaves room for another to begin. You’ll be lost in another new world in no time.