Ok I'm back, finally got to watch the Ghosts finale & took some time to articulate my thoughts.

I totally understand why it was divisive, but honestly for me it was just the issue every sitcom finale has where they have the baggage of multiple seasons weighing on them and needing to be wrapped up in one episode. Any sitcom finale that wants to end-end has to decide whether to do a "very special episode" vibe where it's completely different in structure to a typical episode, or keep the structure of a typical episode and wrap up quickly in the way that every episode of a sitcom usually ends quickly. The Ghosts finale chose to do the latter, and given the 30 minute runtime, they just didn't have the time to really sit with everything that happened. A longer ep, or one that didn't follow their usual structure likely would have helped to make it all feel smoother / land better, but that would have required it to be something different than any other episode of Ghosts. What we got, then, was something with the structure of a typical episode but the emotional baggage of a finale, meaning things are inevitably just less funny and much higher stakes than usual because you don't have the expectation that everything will be back to normal next episode.

But I'm not at all disappointed by Alison and Mike leaving, and had basically expected it as the ending since I started watching the show-- I think the ghosts choosing to let them go (and especially to let Mike and Mia go, since Mike has never been able to see them and Mia won't very soon), was great and showed the growth they've all had over the last 5 seasons.

And while I was briefly worried about it, I think they'll have a great time in the hotel! The show has portrayed boredom as the biggest issue every ghost has had with their afterlife, and a difficulty with change as being the biggest point of growth for basically all of them. The hotel certainly solves the boredom issue, and the realization that this change could be good shows how much they've grown.

This finale for me was not at all a destruction of the found family they've cultivated. The ghosts are a family to each other now in a way they weren't emotionally able to be before Alison opened them up to it. And now Alison and Mike come back every year to be with them because they choose to, because they love them, not out of obligation. Because they're all still family, even if they don't literally live together anymore.

One of my favourite things about Ghosts is how it portrays the weird messy difficult parts of life as just as important to being human as the nice parts. And I think this finale did exactly that.

So all this to say, while I don't think the execution of it worked for me, I do think Alison and Mike taking the hotel deal at the ghosts' suggestion was the right ending for a beautiful five seasons of television. ❤️

I only just joined this fandom in November of this year but god I love this show and can't wait to keep obsessing over it. I hope you will all stick around and continue to write fic and make edits and play in the space for a long time :)