‘Mad Men’ Ending: Say Goodbye to Don Draper as Series Finale Airs Tonight on AMC

After seven impressionable seasons, one of the last of shows from the “Golden Age” of television comes to a close tonight. “Mad Men,” created by Matthew Wiener and starring Jon Hamm, is about the men and women of an advertising company in 1960s New York. Like many of the shows that premiered around the time the series also started, “Mad Men” was an exposition into the anti-hero. What will happen to its main character and its equally interesting supporting cast?

In the penultimate episode of the show, Don Draper (Hamm), the magnetizing lead character, was seen driving off, running away from everything. It looks like he was leaving behind his cushy job, his house in Manhattan and his family.

All throughout the series, Draper has chased off a secret life he’s been keeping, and it seems, this has finally caught up with him.

Fans have come up with theories  as to how the show will actually end. The most obvious being that he’ll jump off a high-rise window, a literal translation of the the show’s opening credits, to end his ordeal and inner conflict.

But some of the most notable fan theories are:

– That Don, just like before, will assume a new identity, the hijacker D.B. Cooper, in the West coast.
– That Don will wise up and return to New York, coming off stronger and better for his self-exposition, and landing a big account for his advertising firm.
– That Don will keep driving until he fades away, leaving the audience drawing their own conclusions as to what could have happened to him next.

“Hopefully, it’s dramatic and appropriate. It’s not very high-concept. It’s in the style of the show. This is not ‘Lost’: I didn’t have a big mystery to solve,” said Wiener, in reference to the end of the series, in a report from Associated Press (AP), as published on ABC.

Weiner said that the ending has been in the works since the show was conceived seven years ago, “though what I envisioned was vaguer, a feeling. The actual concrete version came to me about three or four years ago, and that’s exactly how we filmed it.”

“All I can say is, that we followed the rules of the show. And that I hope the entire series won’t be judged by five minutes at the end,” Wiener adds.