This is my personal opinion about movies and books—you have been warned!

My partner likes to poke fun at me because I have a pet theory: the final series of a TV show is always the worst series, and the final episode of a given season is always the worst episode.

Part of the reason for this is that I find the most compelling fictional worlds to be those that generate questions and limitations, not abundant answers.

I’ve observed this pattern in a surprisingly diverse set of contexts:

  • Consider Mike Flanagan’s adaptation of The Haunting of Hill House, which is a 10-episode horror series on Netflix. The first 9 episodes build pressure almost until breaking point—we see the characters navigating a potentially haunted world, figuring out where their childhood went wrong, and dealing with some intense psychological challenges. I found episode number 6 to be one of the most compelling episodes of television that I had ever seen. In contrast, the final episode resolves all of this tension and answers most of the questions of the series; I enjoyed this episode much less and found it quite disappointing.
  • As a queer teen growing up in the 2010s, I was of course an enormous fan of Glee. Glee has 6 seasons. The first 3 seasons are fantastic. Seasons 4 and 5, in contrast, are terrible. Watching them back now, as an adult, I am surprised by the apparent lack of coherence in the plot and the characters; characters are constantly introduced and cut from the show. The reason why this happened is that the writers would write and produce some number of episodes of the show, then seek viewer feedback and incorporate that feedback into subsequent episodes. I think this is a terrible idea; rather than a single, compelling vision of what the series should be, you end up with a team of writers pandering to the disparate and inconsistent demands of viewers. The writers tried to provide abundance, when in fact they should have provided limitations.
  • Many people are a fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I once had an office buddy, a few years ago, who had tattoos of the main Marvel characters and would closely follow every new movie release. Great for him, of course. But I generally find these movies overwhelming and unsatisfying because they are so abundant that the viewer is rarely left wanting anything; we see all of the character combinations and key events that we want to see. I have a preference for movies and TV series which do a single thing very well and then quit while they’re ahead. The seminal example is Fawlty Towers, a creative masterpiece that famously ended after just 12 episodes.
  • Consider the film Star Wars, now known under the title Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. This film is a masterpiece. Even watching this film 50 years later, I am astonished by how compelling and immersive the plot and dialogue are. Now, I love the rest of the Star Wars universe as much as the next nerd. I have a large tattoo depicting a symbol from the TV series Star Wars Rebels. But the many later Star Wars projects come close in quality to this original masterpiece. This may be precisely because the original film was so suggestive and even elusive, while today we are spoiled for choice. There is an almost pathological compulsion for the writers and producers of the many Star Wars projects to fill in the gaps. There is a throw-away line from Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, “That business on Cato Neimoidia doesn’t… doesn’t count.” This line was turned into an entire Star Wars novel, in which we witness first-hand what the business was and why it didn’t count!

The observation that questions, not answers, build compelling worlds also has power beyond fiction per se.

  • There is a surprising parallel between Star Wars and biblical literature. I described above how the current owners of Star Wars seem compelled to fill in every little gap in the narrative of the Star Wars universe. There was a similar development in biblical history. The oldest existing Gospel of the Bible is the Gospel of Mark. This book begins its narrative when Jesus is age 30 and ends its narrative as soon as Jesus’s followers discover his empty tomb. The later Gospels fill in the details of Jesus’s birth and his post-resurrection appearances. There are non-canonical Gospels, written later in history still, that fill in further details about Jesus’s childhood, Mary’s life, and so on. Certainly, all of these books can and do carry profound spiritual value. But to me, none of these later books quite capture the simple but powerful magic of the Gospel of Mark.
  • I have played the trading card game Magic: the Gathering since I was 12 years old. This is now over half of my life. When I began playing this game, many cards provided unique effects or unique characters. Today, in part because time has passed and in part because the makers of Magic continue to experiment with new types of products, we have returned to many popular settings multiple times. If you want a card that provides a certain effect or depicts a certain character, you probably have a dozen choices. More recently, the makers of Magic have begun printing cards in collaboration with the owners of other intellectual properties; we have a Lord of the Rings set, a Doctor Who set, a Final Fantasy set, and an upcoming Spiderman set, among others. There are now also entire sets printed for specific game formats. For example, I am certainly not alone in feeling that Modern began as a fun and restrictive game environment; however, we have now had multiple installments of Modern Masters and Modern Horizons sets which are designed specifically for the Modern format, and this seems to have sapped that format of its magic. It is an irony that Magic’s lead designer for many years often repeated the saying: “Restrictions breed creativity.”