The ‘Shrill’ Series Finale Ended on a Cliffhanger

If you’ve been a longtime fan of Shrill, Lindy West and Aidy Bryant’s show about life, love, mistakes, and body positivity, this is a rough time. Shrill not only aired its final season this May, but Season 3 ended on a cliffhanger that will likely never be resolved.

Spoilers ahead for Shrill Season 3 past this point.

Ever since Shrill first premiered, Annie (Aidy Bryant) and Fran (Lolly Adefope) have been trapped in a self-created limbo. For Annie, that meant working at a job that didn’t respect her, and dating a series of self-absorbed man children. For Fran, it manifested as a long line of meaningless hookups and unexpressed frustration toward her best friend. Over the course of Shrill’s first two seasons, some of those issues have been broached. Annie’s head butting with her boss Gabe (John Cameron Mitchell) led to some major professional achievements; some empowering, others deeply questionable. Similarly, Fran managed to find herself in a relationship despite aggressively avoiding them. But it’s not until Season 3’s frustrating final episode that audiences can fully appreciate how much these two women have grown.

“Move” revolves around transition. As Fran gets ready to move in with her partner Emily (E.R. Fightmaster), Annie eyes her future with her new boyfriend, the sweet Will (Cameron Britton). It seem like Annie and Fran are poised to move away from each other and forward with their own lives. The same seems true of Annie’s relationship with The Thorn. As anyone familiar with the current media landscape could have predicted, the formerly independent magazine is on the verge of being purchased by a corporate entity. By the episode’s start Annie has no roommate and possibly no job; but she still has a new, hopeful life ahead of her.

It seems like a great opportunity to wrap up loose ends and call it a series, right? Wrong.

After Emily makes a passing comment about Fran and Annie’s codependency, Fran panics. Instead of looking at a house with her loving partner, she makes the insane proposition that she, Emily, and Annie all move in together, something the level-headed Emily immediately rejects. The last time we see Emily, they kiss Fran on the cheek and leave. So that happy ending is shot.

The same can be said about Annie’s happy ending. In a bout of Season 1-inspired obsessiveness, Annie goes to the bakery owned by Will’s separated wife. Will was sort of annoyed by Annie inviting herself to live with him, but forgave that overstep. Stalking his wife is a bridge too far. Will tells Annie that they need to slow things way down and asks her to leave. Two out of three endings, gone.

Then there’s The Thorn. At the very last minute, Gabe buys the publication. Whatever hope you had of Annie leaving this clearly toxic work environment and setting out on her own just like Lindy West did? Throw it away. Gabe does decide to give Annie and Amadi (Ian Owens) leadership positions, so that’s nice. But Annie’s professional life ends much in the same way it began: tied to the unpredictable Gabe’s whims.

Shrill’s final moments feature Fran and Annie sitting on a bench, drinking their once-celebratory champagne in sorrow. They’re single again. They’re unhappy with their lives again. But at least now they know that the path to changing their lives lies in changing themselves. As they drink Fran quietly says, “We can just fix everything.” After a beat Annie agrees.

That’s how Shrill ends. Not with an empowering celebration or a pastel-colored happy ending. It ends with a sad vow on a lonely park bench.

It’s clear that this isn’t the ending that West envisioned for her sweet saga of female rage and battles with inner demons. The fact that every detail of this finale feels like a cliffhanger is indicative of that. But there is something oddly cathartic about Shrill’s non-conclusive conclusion. More than anything else, Shrill has been a story about agency. At its beginning Annie was a breathing doormat for everyone in her life: her friends, her boss, her coworkers, her hookup buddy, even random coffee house ladies. Little by little she’s learned that, though gaining control over her life is undoubtably a fight, it’s one she has control over. She’s the one who chose to let these people walk all over her. And she’s the one who finally chose to stand up and scream until her mistreatment changed.

It may not be the most fulfilling ending, but there’s a certain kind of poetry to Shrill ending with Annie as a work in progress. Yes, Annie still needs to work on herself, and she needs to stop being defined by her pettiest impulses and other people’s opinions. But at least Shrill gave Annie the tools to fix herself, even if we’ll never get to see her use them.

Watch Shrill on Hulu