It was always going to be bittersweet.
Samurai Jack creator Genndy Tartakovsky promised a tear-jerking ending in July — when a conclusive fifth season of the cartoon was just being teased — when he told fans “if we get it right, it’s going to leave people in tears.”
But did he get it right?
Tartakovsky’s magnum opus drew to a close Saturday night with a mostly satisfactory ending plagued by several clichés.
Following his defeat at the end of the penultimate episode, Jack is imprisoned by Aku and Aku-form Ashi. Aku — in classic supervillain fashion — monologues, broadcasting the series’ original opening to the entire world.
About to finally solidify a truly unopposed reign of terror, Aku is at his most fearsome. But then, his classic dry humor returns when he finds himself unable to figure out how exactly to kill Jack.
Aku remembers Ashi and orders her to kill Jack for him, but as she readies the blow, the army of Jack’s allies arrive. The Scotsman and his daughters arrive as reinforcements when the situation starts to look dire. Jack and the Scotsman finally reunite; the Samurai tries to hug Jack but (being a ghost and all) goes right through him. “Right,” the Scotsman says. “Keep forgetting about that.”
The Scotsman offers Jack whichever daughter he wants — humorously rattling off 28 of their names (yes, I counted) — but he admits he “met someone.”
Jack, in a final act of desperation, tells Ashi that he loves her, driving out the evil within her. She repels Aku but keeps his powers, using them to open a time portal.
The scene shifts to a scene from The Premiere Movie from all the way back in August 2001. Aku flings Jack into the time portal to the future — then Jack and Ashi arrive in the past. In a slow-motion sequence reminiscent of The Matrix, Jack strikes down Aku, capturing his essence in his sword and destroying his stronghold.
This all seems pretty sweet, right? Where’s the bitter?
In a Disney-esque ending, Ashi, dressed in white, walks down the aisle towards Jack. She collapses and, in Jack’s arms, vanishes from existence. Without Aku, she explains as she dies, she wouldn’t have existed.
Jack walks through a forest, grey and foggy, and sits at a tree. A ladybug — just like the one he encountered in the fourth episode — flies onto his hand and reminds him of Ashi. He smiles.
The sun breaks through the clouds, breathing color into a glorious landscape that will never be razed by Aku.
The final scene is fantastic — the tear-jerker that Tartakovsky wanted — but the rest of the episode has major faults.
It’s rushed and far too quick. That’s understandable given the show’s time constraints, but it’s still annoying.
If Ashi vanished from existence, does that mean that all the other secondary characters — the Scotsman, the Woolies, the inexplicably British talking dogs — no longer exist either? Some closure there would have been nice.
Most of all, though, the finale falls back on too many classic tropes. This is especially ironic given that the series decried “fortune cookie nonsense” in a prior episode.
“Fortune cookie nonsense” was rampant in the finale, though. The monologuing villain (The Incredibles made fun of this 13 years ago), the hero who rides off to nowhere, the romantic hand-holding before the final battle, the reinforcements that ride in at the perfect time (see The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones). The list feels endless.
The worst was Ashi’s triumph because of the “power of love.” Ugh.
The most painful — and most nonsensical — trope, though, was Ashi’s death as she walked down the aisle. Instead of vanishing right when Aku was vanquished, which would make far more sense, she ceased to exist right at the most tragic point.
It’s a shame that these tropes held down what was a fitting ending to a fantastic season and a legendary show.
It was always going to be bittersweet, but it didn’t need to be overdramatic.
Rating: 4/5
