What happened?
A super-powered psychic brings back ghosts from the gang’s past. Sally visits Simon, believing she is there to seek revenge for the murder of her boyfriend. However, her boyfriend arrives and tells her that she is not there for vengeance and, with their spirits having found each other, they disappear.
Whilst Simon and Alisha go through a rocky spell as a result of Sally’s actions they make up. However, another spirit, who the gang once killed after she attempted to brainwash them, believes she is there for vengeance and slashes Alisha across the throat and kills her.
Now believing Simon has found his destiny, of being in an endless loop of going back in time, saving Alisha and then dying, he acquires the power to time travel and goes to his past. The remaining gang members figure all they have left to do is see out their probation period and try to live happily ever after.
Thoughts
There’s a great temptation to wonder, with this being the series finale, if this episode doesn’t mark the end of the show. There’s a sense of a closed loop regarding the Simon and Alisha romance and timeline, and this episode practically closed out having briefly returned to the beginning. The remaining characters have mostly found resolutions but, although it might feel anticlimactic, there’s a definite vibe that if this were the very last Misfits episode it did provide closure.
I don’t think that’s the case. There’s still one or two ruffles in the plotting that hang in the balance and, with this show being the way it is, nothing can ever be considered final. This episode saw the return of characters long since dead from the first series, and far from being incidental they were instrumental in what happened.
Simon being reunited with the wonderfully distant Sally was the main drive of the episode. Sally was always good for possessing a chillier side to her crocodile smile and she effortlessly brought that back from the afterlife, too. Her ploy to destroy Simon’s life wasn’t exactly an arch-mastermind plan, and it’s arguable that it was too-easily resolved – although the old romantic in me did enjoy seeing her get back with the probation worker and then disappear after a kiss.
I did also like seeing that first probation worker return. He was barely in the first show for five minutes before he became a snarling, raging madman. So barring a few fire extinguishers to the face he fared very well. And his conversations with the others, them detailing how the other probation workers had fared, was very amusing. In hindsight, Alisha’s defiance about how they had just been trying to save their own lives and she considered they had been doing very well would turn out to be bitterly ironic.
Alisha’s death was the big shock moment. Even in this show, where anything can happen, the moment it did it felt like one of those events that was tragically permanent. Curtis could have resurrected her but only as a zombie – he no longer had the power that has previously undone the terrible. There was, indeed, bitter irony soaked through this episode.
It did make sense that Alisha had to die in order for Simon to find the will to travel back. (I can’t believe it never occurred to me that it would take something like that to make it happen, actually. Probably because he went back to save her life made me figure hers was a life that stayed saved.) Yet as Kelly romantically noted (and hasn’t she discovered her softer side thanks to Seth!?) it was a beautiful notion that Simon had plunged into an endless loop, to save her and allow their love to blossom over and over.
Yet there is a fly in the ointment, unless I have really missed something. The photo of the two of them in Las Vegas. Now, maybe I’ve missed something here, but I was under the impression that this photograph existed almost like a permanent marker of a future event and until that future event occurred then Simon would never go back. Now (again, assuming I haven’t missed anything) the photo has come to mean something else: hope.
Simon took the photograph back with him, presumably because it’s a picture of something that has yet to happen even for him. Which does suggest there is some hope, some possibility, that he can properly save Alisha and the two of them will make it to Las Vegas. If that’s the interpretation I am supposed to reach then it’s really clever writing. (If I just bloody missed the fact that they’ve already been to Las Vegas and had that picture taken then I am a complete idiot that hasn’t been watching closely enough.)
It was a fine end to the series. I wasn’t at all hopeful that there would be resolution to the Simon-Alisha timeline in this final episode so it was thrilling to see him assume the role, organise everything he needed to go back with him and become the man in the mask. Misfits was right to allow itself to get serious and let its hero have his big hero moment with the music and the direction of the sequence and it was a real treat to see.
Just like the remaining band of heroes were left on a rooftop, staring into the distance to their hero theme tune, Misfits signed off on an epic chord leaving me wanting more. As I understand it, this isn’t to be the last series. It’s a show that’s gaining in popularity and credentials and quite right, too. Hopefully they will all be back next year!
What was the best part?
Whilst I did appreciate the shock value of Alisha getting her throat cut (and I also liked the fact that it was righteous vengeance – our heroes do have blood on their hands!) the best part was what followed, with Simon becoming the man in the mask, facing up to his own future (and certain death, no less). Way to finish on a high.
What do I think will happen next?
Tough question, considering the ending to this was left more wide open than the rooftop view the series closed out with. If Simon and Alisha have now just been written out of the show then the Misfits world will certainly seem like an emptier one. At time of writing I am still scratching my head about the Las Vegas photo, though, so that being said I’ll predict: If Simon and Alisha are in the next series then Simon will develop a power that will allow everything that has happened to happen and still save the pair of them! If they are done, then there’s room for more new faces to join the gang – and that’s not something I can predict at all!
A super-powered psychic brings back ghosts from the gang’s past. Sally visits Simon, believing she is there to seek revenge for the murder of her boyfriend. However, her boyfriend arrives and tells her that she is not there for vengeance and, with their spirits having found each other, they disappear.
Whilst Simon and Alisha go through a rocky spell as a result of Sally’s actions they make up. However, another spirit, who the gang once killed after she attempted to brainwash them, believes she is there for vengeance and slashes Alisha across the throat and kills her.
Now believing Simon has found his destiny, of being in an endless loop of going back in time, saving Alisha and then dying, he acquires the power to time travel and goes to his past. The remaining gang members figure all they have left to do is see out their probation period and try to live happily ever after.
Thoughts
There’s a great temptation to wonder, with this being the series finale, if this episode doesn’t mark the end of the show. There’s a sense of a closed loop regarding the Simon and Alisha romance and timeline, and this episode practically closed out having briefly returned to the beginning. The remaining characters have mostly found resolutions but, although it might feel anticlimactic, there’s a definite vibe that if this were the very last Misfits episode it did provide closure.
I don’t think that’s the case. There’s still one or two ruffles in the plotting that hang in the balance and, with this show being the way it is, nothing can ever be considered final. This episode saw the return of characters long since dead from the first series, and far from being incidental they were instrumental in what happened.
Simon being reunited with the wonderfully distant Sally was the main drive of the episode. Sally was always good for possessing a chillier side to her crocodile smile and she effortlessly brought that back from the afterlife, too. Her ploy to destroy Simon’s life wasn’t exactly an arch-mastermind plan, and it’s arguable that it was too-easily resolved – although the old romantic in me did enjoy seeing her get back with the probation worker and then disappear after a kiss.
I did also like seeing that first probation worker return. He was barely in the first show for five minutes before he became a snarling, raging madman. So barring a few fire extinguishers to the face he fared very well. And his conversations with the others, them detailing how the other probation workers had fared, was very amusing. In hindsight, Alisha’s defiance about how they had just been trying to save their own lives and she considered they had been doing very well would turn out to be bitterly ironic.
Alisha’s death was the big shock moment. Even in this show, where anything can happen, the moment it did it felt like one of those events that was tragically permanent. Curtis could have resurrected her but only as a zombie – he no longer had the power that has previously undone the terrible. There was, indeed, bitter irony soaked through this episode.
It did make sense that Alisha had to die in order for Simon to find the will to travel back. (I can’t believe it never occurred to me that it would take something like that to make it happen, actually. Probably because he went back to save her life made me figure hers was a life that stayed saved.) Yet as Kelly romantically noted (and hasn’t she discovered her softer side thanks to Seth!?) it was a beautiful notion that Simon had plunged into an endless loop, to save her and allow their love to blossom over and over.
Yet there is a fly in the ointment, unless I have really missed something. The photo of the two of them in Las Vegas. Now, maybe I’ve missed something here, but I was under the impression that this photograph existed almost like a permanent marker of a future event and until that future event occurred then Simon would never go back. Now (again, assuming I haven’t missed anything) the photo has come to mean something else: hope.
Simon took the photograph back with him, presumably because it’s a picture of something that has yet to happen even for him. Which does suggest there is some hope, some possibility, that he can properly save Alisha and the two of them will make it to Las Vegas. If that’s the interpretation I am supposed to reach then it’s really clever writing. (If I just bloody missed the fact that they’ve already been to Las Vegas and had that picture taken then I am a complete idiot that hasn’t been watching closely enough.)
It was a fine end to the series. I wasn’t at all hopeful that there would be resolution to the Simon-Alisha timeline in this final episode so it was thrilling to see him assume the role, organise everything he needed to go back with him and become the man in the mask. Misfits was right to allow itself to get serious and let its hero have his big hero moment with the music and the direction of the sequence and it was a real treat to see.
Just like the remaining band of heroes were left on a rooftop, staring into the distance to their hero theme tune, Misfits signed off on an epic chord leaving me wanting more. As I understand it, this isn’t to be the last series. It’s a show that’s gaining in popularity and credentials and quite right, too. Hopefully they will all be back next year!
What was the best part?
Whilst I did appreciate the shock value of Alisha getting her throat cut (and I also liked the fact that it was righteous vengeance – our heroes do have blood on their hands!) the best part was what followed, with Simon becoming the man in the mask, facing up to his own future (and certain death, no less). Way to finish on a high.
What do I think will happen next?
Tough question, considering the ending to this was left more wide open than the rooftop view the series closed out with. If Simon and Alisha have now just been written out of the show then the Misfits world will certainly seem like an emptier one. At time of writing I am still scratching my head about the Las Vegas photo, though, so that being said I’ll predict: If Simon and Alisha are in the next series then Simon will develop a power that will allow everything that has happened to happen and still save the pair of them! If they are done, then there’s room for more new faces to join the gang – and that’s not something I can predict at all!
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