Spoiler Alert: Ending Explained

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Today’s advertiser is Huel, a company about which I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I think we’re all better off cooking meals from actual food ingredients rather than consuming ultra-processed meal-replacement drinks like Huel. On the other, something you just can’t be bothered to cook, yet you still need nutrition. I guess that’s what Huel is for? Really, though, the big thing is that for each of you who clicks their ad, I get $1.60. So click the damn thing!

Today’s newsletter is the 75th I’ve published in 75 days, meaning I’m three-quarters of the way through my stated goal of getting to 100. First of all, dudes and dudettes, this is fun! When I started, I was not entirely sure what I was getting into, but I really do enjoy juggling my thoughts, crafting these sentences, launching each missive into the void, and finding out what, if anything, happens next. There’s even starting to be a lot of you reading these! But now, at 75 out of 100 essays, a new thought is creeping in: How does this whole thing end?

This is not a new experience for me. I always want to know how things end. I’m a spoiler addict, eager to learn the revelations even if I barely have a handle on the basic beats. (Don’t worry, I won’t spoil things for you.) I will stick with shows, stories, real-life plot lines far longer than is warranted by their quality (especially in the case of real-life drama), just to see how, or whether, everything gets wrapped up in the final 20 minutes. I have lived so much of my life thinking about the future, wishing for the future, that I will take any opportunity to learn what the future holds, even if it is wholly fictional.

This is not to say I don’t enjoy the story along the way, or that I always turn to the final pages long before I reach them. I do appreciate the drama. I crave the suspense of slow revelation. I like the in-between moments in a story, when the characters are allowed simply to be without getting called away by the overweening necessities of the plot. Give me hours of Hurley and Charlie goofing off—and to hell with the mysteries of the Island! Let the new overseers of my country tear at each other’s throats—I will cackle with glee at every bloodletting! If the journey is the destination, I will enjoy the fuck out of the journey. I know where I’m going, and that I’ll get there one of these days.

But I still want to know everything there is to know about the destination.

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The waypoints make the journey. I won’t deny that. They may be grand—a war declared, an election won, a cataclysm whether natural or manmade—or they may be in a minor key: dinners with friends, a good book in a warm place on a snowy day, the reassuring familiarity of folding laundry. I inhabit the latter especially well: I have less to say about the big things than the small. Or, put another way, I know how to elevate the overlooked, the underconsidered. I can find meaning wherever I look; those stones are juicy with blood.

But if those moments are only ever just moments, blips in a sea of blips, then I’m stricken. I want the events of my life, of our lives, to feel connected—to amount to something. I might not be able to step back and see the grand outline of this plot, but when we get to the dénouement, I want to recognize it. In fiction, this is easy: From Wikipedia to Wookiepedia, I can dip in and look it up—not just the whats but the whys, the lore and the backstory and the fan theories to boot. Battlestar Galactica, ending explained! The Rise of Skywalker, ending explained! Nosferatu, The Sopranos, Yellowstone, Wicked, Only Murders in the Building, The Brutalist—all the endings are explained, somewhere, by someone. I will look up the endings of books, TV series, and movies I don’t even follow, just to understand how they arrived at their conclusions.

Life is not so neat. The seasons end and restart with a regularity that has nothing to do with viewer demand. The plots meander, with beloved characters disappearing from view for long stretches only to reappear suddenly and awkwardly, with no foreshadowing. Meanwhile, the worst roles refuse to cede the spotlight, hogging the headlines with developments we’d all rather ignore. The dialogue tends to be sloppy, the pacing disastrous. Who gave this crap the green light? Fire the show runner!

And yet the suspense! If there were someone “up there” writing our stories—spoiler alert: there isn’t—they would get credit for their mastery of suspense. Because no matter how absurd our lives are, no matter how awful the twists and idiotic the turns, we are all always left hanging, eagerly anticipating a satisfying resolution to the infinity of plots in which we’re involved. Who would say, “Meh, I know how this one ends,” and walk out in the middle of this quintessentially bingeable dramedy? It may not so easily line up with M.F.A. fiction-workshop standards or the dictates of Hollywood writers’ rooms, but Life: The Series—in which we are by turns stars, supporting players, extras, and audience members—is compelling nonetheless. Better yet, it streams for free¹ and there is no buffering. I will follow it through every single season.

Until, of course, I can’t. As on Netflix, so in life: All binges must end. There will come a point for me, as it will for all of you, when we will have to be satisfied with the mid-season finale. I can’t convey to you how much I loathe and fear this. I want to know not just my resolution, not just the resolutions of my friends and my kids, but humanity’s resolution: Will we get over our shit and make some progress? Will we fix this planet? Will we leave it behind and find a destiny among the stars? Will we come to understand the laws governing our universe in ways we can manipulate and master, to unimagined ends? Will we survive the next 100,000, the next million years? Will we become something else entirely? Will anyone remember the early 21st century as a turning point? Will anyone remember me?

I know I will never know. But knowing that—knowing the absolutely 100% certainty of that—doesn’t make it any easier to let go. I want to know more than anything, and even if I could live a thousand years I still wouldn’t learn enough about our future². There’s nothing I wouldn’t give to be able to could connect the dots from the late 1970s to a future so distant we number the days differently. I don’t know how to give up that desire that has motivated me since I was a little boy watching a Tantive IV corvette and a Star Destroyer race over my head in a movie theater in Amherst, Massachusetts. I want—I will always, always want—to be there when the horns blare and the credits roll and the tension drains from my body. And I want to see the sequel.

For the moment, I count on mini finales to get me through, each small resolution chipping away at my overgrand expectations. The next novel by Paul Beatty. The albums the Cure has promised. The failure and death—preferably in that order—of the most odious politicians and public figures. The academic careers and, eventually, adult lives of my daughters. The no-knead bread I’ll bake tomorrow. The shallow glass of Cabernet next to my keyboard. Climbing into a bed with clean sheets and Jean at my side. The moment I select the publish time of this essay—as always, 10:03 a.m. ET—and click “Done.” 🪨🪨🪨

It’s Good and I Like It: Jenny’s Tofu

If you’ve never had good soy milk, well, I pity you. Especially because now Jenny’s Tofu, an organic maker out of Chicago, is increasing the breadth of their distribution. This stuff is just great: We buy equal amounts of sweetened and unsweetened and mix it together; heated up in the microwave for, say, 66 seconds, it’s the ideal winter drink. I can’t wait to chug it cold this summer.

Notes

1. Alas, it’s ad-supported.

2. Unless it turns out really bad and I’m, like, the only one left.

Read Yesterday’s Attempt