If you have also felt emptiness, sadness, pain and even denial when a series ends, you can be calm, because it doesn’t just happen to you. The grief of seeing your favorite series end forever exists, and provokes a real reaction within you.
There are already several studies that have proven why we experience grief when we watch that final episode of the last season. If a grief similar to the loss of a loved one or when some stage of our lives ends.
‘Neighbours’, the series that broke Australia’s heart
The most recent is a study done in Australia, after the end of ‘Neighbors’ in 2022. We talk about a series that began airing in 1985, so it was 37 years and 40 seasons on the air.
As you surely imagine, the impact of the final episode of a series as long as that one was something brutal. “Fans talked about the end of the series as if they were losing a friend,” said Adam Garace, who led the study, published in the journal PLOS ONE.
Pain, sadness, feelings of loss, loneliness, anger and even the feeling of meaninglessness, were some of the emotions that the audience of that series experienced with the end. The results were obtained after surveying 1,289 people who watched the series for years, some since 1985.
Why do we experience grief when a series ends?
And what has been said, Experiencing grief when our favorite series ends is not something imaginary or an exaggeration. Watching a series generates very real reactions, an emotional stimulation that is broken when that final chapter arrives.
It is normal to experience grief at the end of a series, but you have to be careful about taking it to the extreme.
Returning to the study carried out after the end of ‘Neighbors’, Adam Garace also emphasizes that although it is normal to feel sad or down, It can reach an extreme point if we forget that this series is not part of our reality, and that its characters are not living in our world.
In cases like this, consulting a specialist could be a good idea.
What to do when you experience grief over the end of a series?
Now, even if grief remains at healthy levels, that feeling of emptiness and loss can be there and feel dull. New York Times critic Margaret Lyons suggested a few years ago that producers should put together a one-hour special to help their audience say goodbye to their favorite series.
But in case that does not happen, the psychologist Julia Pascual (cited by the express newspaper), recommended trying to remember only the good things about the series, what you liked most about her. Furthermore, it might be useful to keep in mind that thanks to streaming, Now it is possible to rewatch your favorite series and episodes over and over again.
We only have to ask, Which series broke your heart or which one took you the longest to get through when you reached its final chapter?
