Spoiler Alert!

Mad Men Finale Hits Reset Button

“A wrenching mash-up of loss and possibility.”

Stop reading if you’re behind on your DVR. Last night’s Mad Men finale was packed full of beginnings and ends for the inhabitants of Matthew Weiner’s fictional world. Perhaps most significantly, Don and Betty Draper ended their marriage and Betty headed to Reno with Henry Francis, an aide to Governor Nelson Rockefeller—and, more importantly, a man she believes she can trust. Don has a new beginning as well, one that includes getting his own coffee and typing memos—the fallout from departing from what The New Yorker’s recap calls “the lockstep respectability of his marriage and suburban life” and setting off from Sterling Cooper to start his own advertising firm with his former colleagues. Desspite these challenges, hope for the future rises from the characters’ losses, and The New Yorker suggests that “the lingering sadness, a sense that there is nothing else left to lose” after the previous episode’s focus on Kennedy’s assassination, which set the stage for the Season 3 finale’s dramatic tide-changing.