Mad Men Series Finale: What happened to Don Draper?
By Josh Hill
The Mad Men Series Finale was tonight, and the burning question of what happened Don Draper as his reign came to an end and time pressed on without him.
With Mad Men officially coming to an end on AMC this Sunday, we finally learned what Don Draper’s fate would be. But unlike other powerful television characters of this era like Walter White or Nucky Thompson — both characters who met grizzly ends in their respective series finales — Don Draper’s fate was more poetic than anything else.
There were no drug lords after him or gangsters looking to gun him down, rather there was a much more terrifying fate waiting Don Draper as infinite loneliness seemed to await him. That’s a much more gruesome fate for a character, especially one like Don who had so much and drank it all away.
In the end, Don Draper ended up as a ‘new you’ at a hippie commune where he seemingly found peace. Did he finally discover how to show human emotion and not be so soulless? It appears so, then again he may have just happened upon his next scheme? The ad that the show ended on was not there coincidentally, and it’s meaning will be something we debate for years to come.
It was a fitting end for a man who was polarizing for the entire run of the series. Mad Men was more than just a show about a man destroying himself, but that was a pretty large part of what was going on. Don Draper was both a guy we pulled for and a despicable human being who we despised and wished ill on.
But we rooted against him because he had human problems — he had our problems. Sure, we may not all be as gigantic of assh-le as Don Draper was at times but his struggles had nothing to do with anything we couldn’t understand.
In our lives, we knew a Don Draper, lived with a Don Draper, worked for a Don Draper or were, at times, Don Draper ourselves. That’s the tragedy of his character and it’s why his end was fitting for more reasons than we can list.