Samurai Jack gets his happy ending

Iron

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Samurai Jack gets his own happy cannon ending. If you say it's not cannon, you can fight me for it.

WOAH this came out 3 years ago. Discuss!
 
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Shadyside

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The ending went against the theme of the season. They were building up the idea that even if Jack couldn't go back to the past, there were still a lot of people that supported him. Would have been great to see him as an immortal king.


 

Asita

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The ending went against the theme of the season. They were building up the idea that even if Jack couldn't go back to the past, there were still a lot of people that supported him. Would have been great to see him as an immortal king.
Going to have to agree with that. Not necessarily the immortal king part, but that the story which formed the backbone of Season 5 was the logical extension of the formulaic nature of the prior seasons. Jack wanders seeking a way to undo Aku's reign of evil by traveling back to the past and preventing it from happening. In his wanderings, he finds good people in need of his help now. And as the good man who will not sit idly by and let evil triumph, he fights for them, slowly pushing back the darkness that has overtaken the lands. ...And then he moves on to the next villain of the week.

Every lead he has on returning to the past ends up blowing up in his face. The time machine was a lie, the wish-granting well is a monkey's paw, and Aku manages to destroy the crystal that would have sent him home. However, even if he's stymied from undoing Aku's damage, he consistently fixes it. He then leaves, the people he helped out of sight and out of mind. He's so fixated on the idea that returning to the past is his win condition that he's almost oblivious to fact that he's not only succeeding in doing good, but his one man war against Aku is actually succeeding in pushing the demon's influence back.

Season 5 was acutely aware of this, to the point that episode 6 was fully devoted to it, both in the inciting incident from the previous episode (Jack falling into despair because he didn't bother to check if the children he had been trying to save had actually died), and in Ashi's journey in the episode itself, wherein she sees the lasting impact Jack left on the people he helped. He didn't just give those characters a momentary reprieve, he changed their lives. Even so, he still thinks of himself as a failure because he's so fixated on returning to the past as the only measure of success. That fixation is the very premise of season 5, as so succinctly summed up by his anthropomorphized despair: "There's no way home, there's nothing to fight for". It's the reason he's despondent and the reason he lost the sword. And that's his headspace for the first half of the season; a headspace that he has to snap out of before the series can end.

And then we get to the finale. Jack has failed. He's fully at Aku's mercy, and as Aku himself gloats, the sole spark of hope he represents in this world will be extinguished with him. Except, in gloating to the world about his capture of Jack, the spark turns into a bonfire. Everyone Jack helped is more than eager to return the favor and rally to help him. They're fighting a force that they could never hope to even damage, but they do not care. Jack's in trouble and that is enough to break the meek subservience they'd been trapped in. The world at the time of this climax is not one where Aku never took power, but it is no longer one where Aku's evil is law. The people he helped are no longer cowed into submission. They are willing to put their lives on the line to fight for the side of good. Jack had not undone the evil that is Aku by retconning it out of existence, he undid it by righting the wrongs that allowed it to fester.

The satisfying conclusion to this arc is not "Jack returns to the past and retcons his adventures out of existence", it is Jack realizing that even if he can't return to the past, the future is still filled with good people; it is that even if the evils of the past cannot be undone, a good future is still worth fighting for.
 
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Samtemdo8

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The ending went against the theme of the season. They were building up the idea that even if Jack couldn't go back to the past, there were still a lot of people that supported him. Would have been great to see him as an immortal king.


The ending/climax we were denied in favor of a love story.
 

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I am fine with either ending. I haven't looked at the video yet, but I don't care. As long as Jack is okay and happy, that is more than enough for me.
 

gorfias

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Samurai Jack gets his own happy cannon ending. If you say it's not cannon, you can fight me for it.

WOAH this came out 3 years ago. Discuss!
OK. Darn you. Darn you all to heck.
I need some tissues now.
Stop making fun of me. I am NOT crying. Allergies.
Wow.