Karl Puschmann: White Lotus, Mafs and this column: What makes a satisfying finale?

Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood in The White Lotus. Photo / Fabio Lovino, HBO

Warning: Contains spoilers

It’s been a big week for endings. Three long-running personal favourites all wrapped up. Their arcs completed, their seasons over, their journeys done. A quirk of timing seeing these conclusions coincide with the arrival of our cold, dark winter.

As the weeks ticked over and those final episodes drew nearer, I found myself thinking about what makes a satisfying finale. Get it wrong, and you wipe out your reputation and years of good work. You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who speaks favourably about Game of Thrones after its bitterly disappointing ending.

Sitting down for each of this week’s three finales, I caught myself wondering how I’d handle this inevitable challenge. How would I connect the final, weaving dots of The White Lotus’ dark social satire? Could I conjure a happy ending out of the entertainingly lowbrow, exploitative mess of Married at First Sight Australia? And what words, exactly, would I select for the final sentence of this very column?

There are a million different ways to end a story. A million different ways to disappoint. The last thing you want to do is flub it.

The last episode of the third season of The White Lotus did not disappoint. We knew someone would die. In this dark dramedy, someone always does. Also, word had leaked that we’d all collectively hate creator Mike White once we saw his choice of victim.

Rick killing Jim. Photo / Max

The movie-length finale kept you on the edge of your seat as White toyed with both his characters and the audience. The intertwined narratives, along with the haunting memory of the season’s violent flash-forward, suggested that any number of beloved characters could meet their end.

It was an intense 90 minutes. More than once I cursed White’s name as death crept ever closer. There was more than one fake-out. And then there was a blood bath.

And while I didn’t expect The White Lotus to borrow its shock twist from Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, I do have to admire the audacity.

Sritala holding Jim's dead body.

The only people left disappointed by the last episode of Married at First Sight Australia are the participants who didn’t find true love. Which, for the most part, was nearly all of them.

Out of the 10 couples thrown together in this grand “experiment” that marries strangers and then locks them in a small apartment for three months, only one couple made it out together.

It was an outrageous season. I can’t remember another show that has left me spluttering in baffled disbelief as often as this season of Mafs Aus did. Given the litigious nature of some of the participants, I’d never use words like “unhinged”, “bats*** crazy”, or “bunny boiler” to describe any one of the 20 people who went on the show to find true love. Others might. But I certainly wouldn’t.

A sister standoff caused chaos on Married At First Sight Australia. Photo / Nine AU

Besides, we all know villains are made in the editing. Let us have our fun.

Well, all except for one particularly bad egg, whose gaslighting traits and toxic behaviour were decidedly not okay. The producers clearly wanted the lovebird couple to be the show’s happy ending, but it was the bad egg’s brutal comeuppance that left him blubbering and heartbroken at the Final Vows ceremony that really gave you the warm fuzzies.

Which brings us to this week’s third and final ending. Which is the one for this column. What words, exactly, should I select for its final sentence? The final sentence.

The column began 10 years and eight months ago in blunt, unrefined fashion.

“I’m pissed,” I wrote as a way of introduction, “at Guardians of the Galaxy.”

It’s not a terrible first sentence to start this journey with. Its bluster masked the terror I felt when I agreed to write a weekly column. I didn’t know if I could do it. But I did it anyway. And then got it done over 500 more times. A number I still can’t quite believe.

I certainly didn’t expect it would run for over a decade. In the beginning, all I thought about was making it through to the next week without stumbling. Eventually, it got easier. But also, somehow, it didn’t. That’s showbiz, I guess.

Like many writers, I’m spinning off into the wonderful world of newsletters. If you’d like to keep reading this column, then I encourage you to join me at screencrack.substack.com, where I’ll keep on truckin’. And who knows, maybe, just maybe, I’ll return for a second season.

But to get back to the beginning, I do like that opening sentence. It has energy. It feels excited. I remember typing it at a small hotel desk in Queenstown, feeling like it was the start of something. The possibilities felt endless.

Since then, I’ve written about the starts, ends, and in-betweens of hundreds of shows, movies, and music. Through this, I’ve learned one thing. No matter how long the journey, a start can only ever lead to one place.

The end.