Warning: This article contains spoilers from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend‘s series finale.
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend officially came to an end after four fabulous seasons on Friday, April 5. Going into the series finale, titled “I’m In Love,” the show’s lovable but flawed heroine, Rebecca Bunch, was getting ready to choose between three love interests, Greg, Nathaniel, and Josh. So, who did she end up with?
No one. In part because, as Rebecca pointed out toward the end of the episode, romantic love is not about “ending up” with anyone. It’s not an end at all; it’s a beginning. But also because she realized — through a fantasy sequence with dream Dr. Akopian, natch — that none of them could make her happy until she could make herself happy. And to do that, she needed to find out who she was and what she really wanted from life.
Opening up about their decision to end the series in such a unique way, co-creators Aline Brosh McKenna and Rachel Bloom told Entertainment Weeklythat it was their plan all along.
“We knew the last scene and the last couple lines. Knowing the destination was part of the pitch,” McKenna told the outlet. “Everybody has a different way of making the outside of them fit the inside of them, and that really is what this show has been about, finding your place once you know what you want it to be. Women have been told in stories [that relationships are] their terminus point, and Rachel and I both think that’s a weird thing to say to people.”
Although there was discussion about having Rebecca pick one of her suitors in the end, they ultimately decided that it didn’t feel right. “It kind of doesn’t matter how great the guys are. She’s not ready to embark on that because she’s still trying to figure out who she is,” McKenna explained. Bloom elaborated, “There’s actually a world where she did pick a guy and then still wasn’t happy and then went on this journey anyway. Why we ultimately chose to not have her go with anyone was that she was still very much a teenager until that moment, and then she could step into a relationship. But it wasn’t the point of the series. It never was.”
Bloom made sure to point out that they greatly value romantic love — she’s been married for five years, McKenna for 20 — but that the timing has to be right. “We very much have been made better people by our partners,” she said. “[But] I want young women to watch the show and walk away with a feeling of, I need to get to know myself, and I need to be grounded in who I am and what I really want and appreciate the escapism of romantic love, but not be sold that bill of goods.”
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(Photo via Greg Gayne/The CW)
