Ain't nuthin' new under the sun
I've been up since 3:30am today, so bear with me if this doesn't make a ton of sense.
I keep thinking about the reactions I've seen to the Good Omens finale. I watched Good Omens, I read the book, I liked them both, I understood why people loved them, but I was not living in the walls about them. I was not making playlists and reading meta at 2 a.m. and developing strong opinions about the emotional significance of someone’s left eyebrow.
With BBC's Sherlock, unfortunately, I was. Yes, friends- I was a Sherlockian. And even more- I was a die-hard JohnLocker. (still am, tbh)
So, I recognize some of what I’m seeing now, even if I don’t think the situations are identical and I’m not interested in flattening them into the same thing. It’s not just Sherlock, either. We’ve seen versions of this happen with Supernatural, where years of devotion and subtext and fandom labor collided with an ending that left a lot of people feeling mocked or dismissed or emotionally stranded. We saw it with Game of Thrones, too, in a different register, where the backlash was less about one relationship and more about the feeling that the story had spent years building toward complexity and consequence, only to sprint through the landing and ask everyone to accept an ending that seemed to be at odds with everything it had been building to be. Different shows, different failures or perceived failures, different levels of textual support, different fandom cultures, but there is a particular flavor of fandom grief that looks very familiar from the outside: not just “I disliked the ending,” but “wait, was I watching the same story you were telling?”
That was the thing with Sherlock, at least for me. It wasn’t only that the ending was disappointing. Lots of endings are disappointing. It was that the show had spent years training a certain kind of attention. The lingering looks, the domesticity, the jokes, the emotions all mattered. The music swelled in certain places for a reason, or at least it sure seemed like it did. And then, when people said, “Hey, this emotional thread was the thing we cared about,” the response, from the show and from plenty of people around it, felt very much like, “Why would you think that?” Which is maddening, because it is genuinely maddening to feel like a story taught you how to watch it and then acted surprised that you learned.
So, when I see Good Omens fans saying they feel hurt or betrayed or foolish for having cared so much, I get it. I may not be feeling it with them in real time, but I remember getting that bruise. I remember how weirdly embarrassing it is to be that upset over television, and how that embarrassment makes it worse, because then you’re not only sad, you’re also mad at yourself for being sad. And no, I don’t think it is “just a ship,” because that phrase has always felt like a way to make people sound sillier than they are. Sometimes the relationship is the emotional architecture of the story. Sometimes it is the reason the rest of the plot has weight. Sometimes people aren't angry because two fictional people didn’t kiss enough- they're angry because the ending seemed not to understand what the story had asked them to carry.
But then I see some of the reaction going past “I’m hurt” and “I hated this” and “I think they fumbled the ending,” and that’s where I start to lose the thread. Not because fans have to be grateful. They don’t. Nobody has to sit there clutching a little fandom napkin and whispering thank you, sir, may I have another just because a show gave them an ending, any ending. Bad writing can be bad writing. Rushed pacing can be rushed pacing. A finale can be disappointing or hollow or weirdly evasive or just not enough. I understand feeling betrayed by a story. I understand feeling like the people making it knew exactly what mattered to the audience and then either didn’t care, couldn’t land it, or made choices that felt almost designed to miss the point. But there’s a point where the anger starts sounding less like criticism and more like ownership, and I don’t quite know what to do with that.
Because here's the thing: creators don't owe us the ending we wanted. They don’t owe us our preferred emotional resolution. They don’t owe us our head canons with a blockbuster budget. They don’t owe us the version of the story that lived in fandom for years, even if that version was beautiful and meaningful and, in some ways, better. That’s the part that gets uncomfortable, because fandom does make things feel shared. We build so much around these stories. We make art and fic and meta and playlists and jokes and private languages and entire cities of feeling. We keep the lights on between seasons. We sometimes make the thing richer than it ever was on its own. So, when actual canon comes back and does something that doesn't match head canon, it can feel like someone walked into a house we helped build and knocked down a wall. But it was never really our house. Or maybe it was our house, but canon was never the landlord. I don’t know. The metaphor gets wobbly if I poke it too hard. (3:30 am, remember?)
I just know there’s a difference between saying, “I don't like this version" or "this ending hurt me,” and acting like the people who made the thing committed some kind of personal offense by making choices we didn’t like. And there is definitely a difference between being angry online and threatening actual people. I hate that this even has to be part of the conversation, but apparently it does. If you’re sending threats to writers, directors, producers, actors, or anyone else because of a finale, you’ve left the realm of fandom reaction and wandered into something else entirely. Be mad in your own space. Write the post (but don't tag the show runners etc.) Make the meme. Refuse to rewatch. Decide the finale doesn’t count in your house. (Sherlock S4? Don't know her.) Go write the fix-it fic where everyone gets the emotional resolution you think they deserved. That is a normal and honorable fandom tradition. But real people are still real people.
I feel bad for the fans who are hurting. I really do. I remember the trenches. I remember loving something so much that the ending felt less like a bad episode and more like being made to feel stupid for having cared in the first place. But I also keep flinching at the entitlement in some of the reaction, because disappointment is not the same thing as being wronged. Criticism is not the same thing as custody. Loving a thing deeply does not mean the people making it are obligated to hand us the keys.
I’m not saying that from above it all. I have absolutely been ridiculous about fictional people before and will almost certainly be ridiculous about fictional people again. (seriously- have you WATCHED Heated Rivalry??) I just think there has to be some space between “this meant something to me and I’m hurt” and “how dare they not make the version that lived in my head.”
I’m also not judging anyone for being sad, or mad, or for deciding canon can go sit in the corner while fandom fixes it. That’s practically a sacred tradition. I just think, somewhere in the middle of all that, it helps to remember that caring deeply is real, but so are the people who made the thing. Maybe some of them are sad too. Maybe some of them know it didn’t land the way they hoped, or that it couldn’t be what everyone wanted, or that the version they got to make wasn’t the version they imagined either.
