What went wrong with the final episode?

What went wrong with the final episode?

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Personally, I felt it should have been a 2 parter

Rushed, like every episode starting from 5 and onward.

Yeah

no Guardian

JACK, I HAVE AKU POWERS! WOLOLOLOLOLO

It was half-assed.

LONG AGO, IN A DISTANT LAND, I, GENNEDY, CHANNEL SWITCHING MASTER OF CARTOONS UNLEASHED AN UNSPEAKABLE CHARACTER. BUT A FOOLISH AUDIENCE WIELDING A MAGIC IMAGEBOARD STEPPED FORTH TO OPPOSE ME.

BEFORE THE FINAL BLOW WAS STRUCK, I TORE OPEN A PORTAL IN TIME AND FLUNG THEM INTO THE FUTURE, WHERE MY OC WAIFU IS LAW! NOW THE FOOLS SEEK TO RETURN TO THE PAST, AND UNDO THE BAD WRITING THAT IS SEASON 5

What went wrong with the last episode was that it was really rushed and Ashi used a Deus Ex machina at the last second. Then Gennedy pulls a heel faced Gurren Lagann on us when we have our guard down. Plus Gennedy threw up a few middle fingers this season, one being the Scotsman, the other being the Guardian. I wish we would've seen the Guardian and Jack have a rematch before he goes to slay Aku. As a 16 going on 17 year old, I LOVED watching Samurai Jack as a young grasshopper. Season 5 was mainly a slap in the face at some points, but its' saving grace was Tom Kenny Robot.

Not once did they implicate the possibility of Jack returning to his original time period, nor did they explore the potential consequences of such a decision. Even after seeing how he helped those living in the future, such acts become meaningless when you decide to wipe everything away at the eleventh hour.

Also, no proper finale battle with Aku.

You should watch the first episode of Season 1. Aku was always at a disadvantage, even against a brash inexperienced Jack. Aku knew he couldn't win as long as he had the sword so he flung him into the future where his evil is law.

People didn't know what they wanted for a finale so nothing would have been good enough

Not true
Fans would've been more than pleased with just three changes:

>Make Jack fulfill the prophecy of the guardian
>Let Jack have a fair fight with both the guardian and Aku and prove that he is worthy of restoring order
>Let Jack accept fate and stay in the future

If Ashi was a spawn of Aku that he left in order to keep his legacy and Jack decided to raise her as his daughter it would've been a more fulfilling and touching story.

agree with everything but the last part

I don't know where people even got the daughter angle from. I mean sure if she were a child maybe but that clearly isn't the case

I'm hard to please. To me the best ending would have established that even if Jack went back in time, the timeline where Aku ruled would have still existed, meaning that the sacrifices Jack made for the people in the future weren't pointless and they wouldn't have gone back in time before Jack defeated Aku in the future. The sword was the only thing that could defeat Aku, so even if the future timeline still existed, Jack and Ashi would have left everyone to be slaughtered by Aku. The fact that a part of Aku still exists inside of Ashi would mean he was never completely destroyed, so either way Ashi would have had to die.

He should've just went with an Ocarina of Time ending

youtu.be/InkKkTcw9_A?t=2m54s

It's probably because Jack is in his seventies or eighties or so and spend most of season 5 looking pretty old.

Too short.

>not once

Did you even watch the fucking intro man

Come on

>It's probably because Jack is in his seventies or eighties or so and spend most of season 5 looking pretty old.
No, the show established quite clearly that he hasn't aged at all since he traveled to the future. He might have lived for 70+ years, but he's still physically in his 20's.

Ashi should have died when Jack killed her sisters

But mentally he's a completely different person. His dynamic with ashi was him trying to show her the way the world works.

SAMURAI JACK! For fifty years I have been fighting you. I have destroyed every time portal I know about that can return you to the past, for one simple reason, I've been using you to find the portal that I DON'T YET know about! You can not undo this future, Samurai. I already know that you'll return to the past, I just don't yet know WHEN or HOW you do it, but when you do I emerge VICTORIOUS!

I wish the other two sisters could have come back near the end, just to contrast how much Ashi had changed.

>Also, no proper finale battle with Aku.

Why would there be one? Jack+Sword vs Aku= Jack wins. This is established the very first time they fight. Only way you could have proper final fight would be if Jack would've 1v2'd both Aku and Ashi while trying to talk Ashi back to his side in the process.

I actuaklly just added that last Ashi part just so Genndy could have an excuse to shove in the character in a non meaningful way without scrapping the idea entirely (He basically made a whole season around his waifu)

it was the last 3 episodes and it's forced rushed romance

much like season 5 itself, it was just fanservice

>All of Jacks character development was wiped away
>Hyping up the idea of him killing for the first time and having to deal with that was pointless, the entire conflict was resolved through a flashback and never brought up again after episode 4
>The antler warrior was a waste of potential and completely pointless
>They killed off the scotsman and brought him back five seconds later for no reason.
>There wasn't a single good fight scene after episode 4
>Ashii's fight with the orcs is one of the worst in the series
>Episode 8 was entirely pointless and could have been about anything else
>The friends that Jack made over the years gave their life for him and he literally did not give a shit
>They never explain who that girl was that told Ashii how to find Jack
>"I WUV YOU!"
>"I have akus powers!"

>They never explain who that girl was that told Ashii how to find Jack

I'm still going with Kuni. It makes some amount of sense, and that was a good episode

/thread

They both have completely different eyes.

Well, are there any female characters who have identical eyes?

The biggest problem was the timeline.
Jack prioritizd saving people over returning to the past before. This implies that time travel would create branching timelines, and thus puts some value on Jack choosing to save others. But if it's all linear than Jack was just being a massive fucking idiot before. Just let the monks fucking die, they'll be erased if you succeed anyway.

Jack actually returning to The Past completely shits on the themes of the show and Jack's arc as a character.

Jack's entire journey is about him grieving the loss of his family and his people, overcoming the guilt he feels about not being there to stop it, and ultimately accepting what happened and moving on, creating a new life for himself in The Future. Season Five is the culmination of that arc... Jack reaches his lowest point, but comes back from the brink when he realizes how much he has to fight for in The Future - the lives he's saved, the wrongs he's righted, the people he loves.

Then in the last five minutes he goes to The Past, erases the lives of everyone he's ever saved, the potential of everyone he's ever helped better, the sacrifices of everyone who was lost, and resettles into a life he hasn't lived in decades rather than growing as a person.

Jack was never supposed to return to The Past. He was supposed to choose The Future.

Fuck if I know.

inb4
>muh intro says he's going back to the past
Except the number of times he's sacrificed going back to the past to help others. Had Jack been season 5 Jack, he would have abandoned the Archers, or the Monks.

Fully agreed. Or at the very least with the alternate timelines simply have somebody else go into the past and kill Aku, while Jack stays in the future.

>flings him into the future

There was no Scaramouche, that's what's wrong. And, you know, how rushed/mangled the finale's execution was. Made everything feel hollow.

Scaramouche wasn't funny and was part of the problem in which everyone talked too goddamn much.

Fuck you. He was great in the first episode. Unfortunately that's where he should have stayed.

He would have been fine was a one off villain. Not some kind of meme driven into the ground.

Yeah, but what can you do?

I can shitpost. And mention that I binged a the whole SJ series before the new one aired. One thing I found was the over abundance of dialogue. Just one of many issues.

More like, what went wrong with every episode after the third one?

Last ep longer...
Also, Jack with the help of others should've kill future Aku. Then a sudden realization that Ashi could send him back to the past. Jack would have to choose between staying in future with Ashi and correcting the world, or timetravel and kill Aku there, erasing the future completely, without that dissapearing act at the end.

Well technically the Archers were already saved, the reason he destroyed the time portal in that one was because it was a monkey's paw thing that he didn't want anybody else to fall victim to, and that probably wouldn't have given him what he wanted anyway

I would have liked that Ashi survived but only came to after Jack was gone. Then you'd have Jack going on adventures like usual while Ashi lurks in the distance planning her attack as she learns about the world around her.

We don't really know if he would have. See, Jack's main character flaw resonates with Aku's. Aku is a being made of pure evil who will take any chance he gets to be a dick, despite the fact that it has bit him in the ass numerous times. Aku has been close to killing Jack around as much as Jack has been to going back to the future before his needless cruelty was his undoing. Jack, on the other hand, is as pure and good as he can get. The absolute antithesis of Aku. So, in Jack's case, it's his inner compassion and goodness that gets in the way of his objective.
To put it plainly, Aku is too evil and not pragmatic enough and Jack is too good and not pragmatic enough. The main reason both of them managed to prolong their conflict for so long it's because of that.

jack need to kill aku in the future and the past.
-if he undo everything that happen in the future, good.
-if he create another timeline where aku was only killed in the future, at least they can rebuild now.

ashi shouldnt have died. jack got transported forward to a time where he should be dead. but he didnt age and die when arriving in the future.
time travel disconnect you from the time stream. it a point in season five.

season five needed at least 3-5 more episode to flesh things out correctly.

>episode should have started with the "Long ago in a distant land..." thing
>aku, who had already been reduced to a joke in this season, does the cliche incompetent villain thing and waits fucking ages to finally execute jack, just enough time for everyone to come rescue him
>the "king jack" thing from season 3 was entirely meaningless aside from the last comic
>ashi only existed as a boring plot device and should honestly have fucked off immediately after aku died since they wrote her so poorly anyway
>her last words were pointless exposition
>jack literally doesn't give a shit about his friends he made in the last 50 years dying and being erased from existence
>callbacks! because episode 6 wasn't enough right guys
>final battle with aku sucked
>the whole ghost samurai thing never went anywhere
I actually think a lot of Sup Forums anons greatly exaggerate how bad this finale was but that doesn't mean it was not bad. The writing was so poorly done that you'd almost think this was a parody. When a highly anticipated finale for a beloved series like this gets handled this badly, the disappointment is completely justified. I don't hate the ending because of Ashi or her romantic relationship with Jack or anything else, I hate it because everything still could've been great had they spent more than 30 minutes in the writing room.

What was the point of the 50 year time skip?

You can't have it both ways though - either Jack's inner compassion and goodness compels him to do the right thing, even at the expense of an opportunity to return to The Past, or he's a utilitarian who sees no problem in wiping out the lives of everyone he's ever known in The Future.

If you embrace the former, Jack should have chosen to remain in The Future.
If you embrace the latter, Jack should have let everyone in The Future fend for themselves and gone for the first time portal he could find.

We erased everyone including ashi, and the bad end felt like a kick in the stomach. Fuck you genndy and your immature need to have an edgy ending, jack deserved to be happy

Any episode except farting dragon >>> latter half of season 5

If Jack ended Aku's existence in the past wouldn't he save the people he met and the untold generations of people across other planets from his cruelty?

You are forgetting something; Jack didn't get to choose whether he stayed on the future or not. Ashi pushed him in as soon as she had the chance. He just rolled with it.

Should have had the timeline split into 2. 1 timeline where Aku is defeated in the future, and 1 timeline where Aku is defeated in the past after Jack travels back in time.

It cheapens and diminishes the struggles and sacrifices of those generations. They never happened, so they don't matter.

And that's why it's a bad ending. You basically take away the protagonists' choice and their role in the events of the finale. Everything is decided for him.

If I could add more changes

>Aku taunts Jack if he dies, his magic will no longer keep Jack alive
>Jack feints hesitation and cowardice and straight up cuts Aku's throat.
>Jack insta ages 50 years with gray beard and the rebels crown Jack
>cue Guardian's prophecy image

Nothing, the only thing that went wrong was us letting the stupid crossboarders post.

The actual execution of the idea is irrelevant to me, if they added those three points, no matter what, the audience would be pleased.

basicly half the season was rushed and a great chunk of it was pointless filler to boot, it was inevitable that the finale would be underwhelming

almost all the romance subplot

This, the intro started to become half artifact half "this was the original goal but here comes a twist"

The issue with that ALSO stems from Ashi, if Jack didn't need to converse with a sidekick and give her exposition he'd have been silent like he was in the episodes of the same season before they paired up and had to talk. It's fucking bullshit.

I don't get why the "limited series" promos focused on the edgy bloody shit and why the first 3 episodes were that but then they went back to pretty much Seasons 1-4 tier violence and beating around the bush, not saying there isn't but after that episode where Jack and the Wolf get together, was there any blood at all?

Even the fucking promo image this season has jack covered in blood, it's ridiculous.

It's basic 'Want vs Need'. The Want is a stated goal the character wants to achieve which is the motivation that drives the initial plot, and the Need is what the character ultimately needs to do in order to grow and develop. In most Western film, television, and literature this dynamic culminates in the character ultimately choosing and embracing Need over Want in the climax of the story, leading to the catharsis of the character's emotional arc.

Fir example: In Up, Carl Fredrickson *wants* to be left alone to grieve for his wife. To accomplish this he ties balloons to his house and flies it to Paradise Falls where they'd always planned to travel to. He *needs* to stop grieving and live his life. This emotional conflict is concluded when, during the climax of the story, Carl lets the house, the physical embodiment of his grieving for Ellie, go.

In Samurai Jack, Jack *wants* to return to The Past and undo the future that is Aku. Jack goes on a quest to find the means to accomplish this. Jack *needs* to forgive himself, accept what happened, and move on with his life and focus on The Future. The people Jack encounters and helps on his quests, and the lives he changes for the better, help him accomplish this. That story needs to and should have ended with Jack choosing to stay in The Future and embrace his new life and the friendships and love he's found there. It didn't, and is thus, for many viewers, an unsatisfying ending.

Fan service, bad writing, Genndy losing his touch.

>Not once did they implicate the possibility of Jack returning to his original time period

You mean aside from it being Jack's goal since the very start of the show?

Good post

Waifufags ruin everything, and Genndy was a waifufag for Ashi.

I legitimately forgot I was watching it on Adult Swim until he made the comment about that dude looking like a penis.

THESE.

This.

The last few episodes could've been an excellent way of establishing a 'look forward to the future, and overcome the past' theme. But instead in the span of a few minutes, after the epic battle and all the sacrafices for a better world, Jack pops into the past, kills aku, and OBLITERATES each and every person he's known for the past 50 odd years of being in the future. They no longer exist. They are gone.

And it was never established in the show they knowingly accepted this. It all seemed like they were fighting for a better future. No one was all "we'll give our lives, it won't matter. You win and we don't exist anyways". They wanted to live and thrive.

But Jack is the ultimate villain. He wiped out thousands of years of lives in a few sword swipes. Yes, shitty years and abused lives, but years and lives nonetheless were DESTROYED.

>this

Nicely worded user.

Is Sup Forums more butthurt about the ending to Samurai Jack or Legend of Korra?

I'm not defending the ending, I think he should have stayed in the future too, but why do you people all automatically assume he erased the future instead of just creating a diverging timeline? Ashi ceased to exist, yeah, but she never existed in ancient Japan at any point, unlike Jack, so she was expunged.

Because the time traveler shouldn't be just exspunged from the past, unless he or she erased themselfs.
It doesn't really sound right that one would be drawn back into the timeline one is from when just visiting the past... Yeah timetravel wobly

I'd say Jack. Korra was a gradual sliding decline, people were realizing it was gonna have a shitty outcome for a while. Jack started out strong and then immediately nosedived in the last 4 or 5 episodes.

>Korra was a gradual sliding decline
No, it was a gradual sliding decline that suddenly fucking great halfway through but then completely shit the bed in the last half of the last season.

She wasn't just "visiting" though, she was clearly going to stay with Jack and presumably start a family since he was going to become king.

korra was always shit
s3 was just somewhat ok by having a decent villain but everything else was complete shit

for me, korra was way worst.

>Genndy losing his touch.
Genndy was never about great writing, he was always about style, comedy, and artistry. I hate to say it, but the ending of Samurai Jack was under-written.

Usually cartoons (and live-action) is overwritten and filled with garbage, but the ending of Samurai Jack could have certainly used someone to tell Genndy "look, we know Jack says he has to go back to the past, but what if he's WRONG?"

Jack was never about romance. The fact that they added this plot point made the entire last season worthless. Jack was written back then as great action series, having it changed was the biggest failure. This is why the ending felt flat. The story wasn't about jack and aku anymore it was about ashi and jack. This is why it failed

>Too short.

>Aku spent most of it dicking around and messing with the army. Which would have been fine if he dropped the act at some point and went berserk and do something similar to what he did to the Scotsmans army earlier in the season.

>Future Aku doesn't face off against Jack one last time

>The episodes leading up to this failed to build up to this. Only one episode built up to it which was Ashi being taken over by Aku. While every episode before that doesn't do that.

>Scotsmen appears last minute and doesn't get a good talk with Jack.

>Scotsmen says earlier in the season he's gonna build another army. We never see that. Just shows up with his daughters at the last second.

>Ashi doesnt die right away. For no fucking reason then a half assed effort to get the viewer to be sad that Ashi died at Jack's wedding while walking down the isle. While everyone can't help but think Why the FUCK didn't she die earlier.

I did like that final shot though. Loved that music

>Why the FUCK didn't she die earlier.
No matter what, you can't logically justify the grandfather paradox, so it's shit either way.

A better question: what went wrong with the final season?

What's the point of the 50 year time skip when all themes and side characters ended up still being intact? It could've been 5 years and the story would've been the same.
What's the point of making a big deal out of Jack killing a person when he's been raised to fight any kind of opposition since childhood (be it man, monster, or robot)?
Why the fuck didn't Jack immediately go searching for his sword when he dropped it? It's just a damn big hole!
What's the point of giving him all these new unique weapons, attire, and vehicles when they were immediately discarded?
Why did Jack never run into the many people he saved in his 50 years of being a depressed wonderer? Sword or no sword, they still would be appreciative of Jack making the world a better place.
Why have the fucking ravers, woolies, and dogs fighting when the archers, spartans, and the Scotsman's army were more memorable to people and more appropriate?
Where the fuck did all of Aku's minions go and why weren't they in the final battle?
Why did they think that shoving in a tagalong romance more with more screentime than recognizable side characters was a good idea?

Genndy himself said at a con during development of S5 that this season would approach "themes not explored in western animation before." What a load of bull that was since what we got was the same needlessly melodramatic crap we've seen since in cartoons the past half-decade with Legend of Korra and Steven Universe. Instead of being "mature," the final season was written pretty childishly.

>>The friends that Jack made over the years gave their life for him and he literally did not give a shit
>Why did Jack never run into the many people he saved in his 50 years of being a depressed wonderer? Sword or no sword, they still would be appreciative of Jack making the world a better place.

These. What's the point of having a supporting cast when they won't, y'know, SUPPORT the MC?

EVERYTHING

I think jack should've learned to live in the future and been there to help rebuild it, rather than go to the past, where everything is boring, and he has less friends.

Guess he has his parents and is a leader sorta.

Agreed, he should never have gone back to the past.

>That story needs to and should have ended with Jack choosing to stay in The Future and embrace his new life and the friendships and love he's found there.

Except you abandon the want in the first place. The whole point of "Want vs Need" is that the wants are always accomplished. I.E, defeat, ask the girl out, or find forgiveness. The need is internal struggle that happens to achieve these goals. An example is the hero must kill the villain, but the hero is a pacifist. Cue him internally accepting he must kill him and do it. Again, Jack going back to the past was his want and must be accomplished. His need, was all that you said, and he accomplished his need and then got his want. This ties to the ending where Jack loses Ashi, and while saddened, still accepts the future. This was the entire point.

>either Jack's inner compassion and goodness compels him to do the right thing, even at the expense of an opportunity to return to The Past, or he's a utilitarian who sees no problem in wiping out the lives of everyone he's ever known in The Future.

Except that Jack couldn't just let go the immediate suffering he saw. He couldn't let the people he saw clearly suffering and just go to the past, he helps them first and then worry about the past. In the final episode, he didn't saw no of that and was his chance of finally stopping Aku's future without the expense of someone suffering.

Always with the "What went wrong" threads. I watched S5 same everyone else and I thought it was fine aside from pacing issues, but suddenly no one on Sup Forums has anything good to say?

What's really nutty is that most of the complaints boil down to "It went in a slightly different direction than I expected."

>last episode is an hour of just Jack and Aku fighting, broken up half-way through with Ashi being killed in the fight and Jack giving up on going back to the past
Happy now, Sup Forums?

jack represents the human condition: to struggle endlessly against cruel and indifferent forces, generally nature
the season started out strong by humanizing him, and showing how no true paragons exist and that this struggle eventually takes its toll. this would have been good because they could have explored how depravity and desperation are learned in order to survive and persist in the environment that tries to break him.
INSTEAD they decided to go all in on the waifu romance plot and it just wasn't very satisfying. it wasn't what it could have been and what it had been built up to be. it felt like a hasty decision and the latter half of the season felt like hasty writing.
imo they could have turned it around if jack actually did kill ashi and channeled his rage into a final showdown and completely annihilated aku. having defeated him in the future he would be seen as a worldwide liberator, and he could adopt that king-like vigil we saw in the guardian episode. idk, maybe im wrong, maybe im just shitposting because i got way too invested in the whole guardian episode but i think it would have been a way more satisfying end. it could have gotten really existential where jack has to make an ethical decision about condemning the future by undoing it if he goes back, and that the struggle against aku was what gave his life meaning and without any of that his whole story becomes nothing.

>INSTEAD they decided to go all in on the waifu romance plot and it just wasn't very satisfying. it wasn't what it could have been and what it had been built up to be. it felt like a hasty decision and the latter half of the season felt like hasty writing.

So...Sword Art Online?