11.22.63 (TV Mini-Series)

[Maxwell Everett]

Originally Posted by kevin87

As much as I dislike Franco, I actually enjoyed it for the most part... until that last episode.

[Show spoiler]If he had maybe gone back and forth to fix his many mistakes that would've made it better, and maybe do more than a few minutes in the Kennedy didn't die post-apocalyptic timeline.. or if they hadn't just gone back to the start to reset it all and basically void the past 8 hours we've spent on it.

But that would've

[Show spoiler]betrayed the theme that King (in the book) and Carpenter (in the show) were trying to get across, namely that changing the past is a fool's errand, that you break more than you fix -- there are always unintended consequences you couldn't have predicted (I think Cooper's character even mentions the butterfly effect in the pilot). Franco's character learns to accept the past for what it is and that he just doesn't belong there. That last point is virtually hammered into your head every time the Yellow Card Man appears.

And I would argue that the ending doesn't void the rest of the show. Franco is the main character. We go through the story from his perspective. It's more the journey than the destination. I think they absolutely nailed the last scene, and of course it is the same ending of the book. They were smart not to second guess King on that. Everything is resolved properly and emotionally and it is thematically consistent with what came before. It's a perfect denouement, in my opinion.