Twelve Monkeys
metre travel stories can be tricky things , and when they ’ve been handed the privilege ofspinning their particular narrativeweb for a few seasons , bringing the whole affair to a ending can require some fancy storytelling to put everything right . After all , the inherent challenge of recount a good time travel story , especially the one being assure in12 Monkeys , is that the story in question wo n’t just undo the past in an attempt to save the future , but in lastly reach its conclusion , the story will be undone entirely . That ’s the Southern Cross of a show like this : it ’s finish is to rewrite the past in such a way of life that the case audiences have just spent the past few years watching and becoming invested in are changed irrevocably , or never happened in the first position .
As far as the12 Monkeysseries finale , the two part ‘ The Beginning , ’ is relate , that is a major part of what ’s at stake : victory for the series ’ heroes effectively signify resetting their timeline , rewriting their personal story , and potentially rendering the human relationship that have define who they are in the circumstance of the story null and null . It ’s an interesting slant for the series to explore , one that puts a seemingly substantial and personal toll on the otherwise less touchable conception of the Witness ( Alisen Down ) and her army collapse all of time in on itself so as to create a never end now . That elementgrants12 Monkeysa far more human through - lineas it work to deliver a compelling and emotionally fulfil end to the series .
More:12 Monkeys’ Aaron Stanford Reflects On The Series Ending After 4 Seasons
Unlike some other show of former , ’ The Beginning ’ does n’t dish up as a finale to the intact series;12 Monkeystells its news report mighty up until the very goal . That helps make the two - hour finale a more propellant experience , as James ( Aaron Stanford ) , Cassie ( Amanda Schull ) , Jennifer ( Emily Hampshire ) , Katarina ( Barbara Sukowa ) , and even Deacon ( Todd Stashwick ) and Ramse ( Kirk Acevedo ) are in a competitiveness against meter itself for nearly two 60 minutes . give all that the show has live on through this time of year , to set its characters at the variety of do - or - die moment seen throughout the finale , it feels like a upstanding payoff to a surprisingly expansive story — one that was , admittedly , made to feel a bit more summary as a result of the final time of year ’s condensedscheduling .
12 Monkeysis , in and of itself , a pursuit tale , and that seeking has been in particular specific in season 4 , with James and the others search throughout prison term for a “ weapon ” made by the Primaries to potentially undo all that the Army of the 12 Monkeys has done to take about the red forest and collapse time . The melodic theme of a “ weapon system ” no one seemed to have any concrete details of is about as good a MacGuffin as you could hope for in a series like this . But it ’s also easy to forgive as the search for this special MacGuffin took the character reference down a roll road , revealing Hannah ( Brooke Williams ) was James ’ mother — in effect make Katarina his nan — and that James , despite — or rather , because of — all his time - jump , was the cause of and solution to all of time ’s problems . By the end of the series , James Cole became the thread that , when rend , would untie the terrifically tangled knot of12 Monkeys ’ narrative .
Armed with the noesis that the hero has to not only die but be scrubbed from being entirely , in ordering for all of humanity ( and time itself ) to be saved,12 Monkeysrevels in sending its characters on a serial of suicide missions that efficaciously serve up as prolonged adios , delivering some emotional closure with characters like Deacon and Ramse . Deacon ’s belated - episode reaching , engineer by Jennifer in a separate timeline , came when it look all was turn a loss and deliver a strong contender for one of the episode ’s in effect moment . The move basically reset Deacon to his default status as a charismatic rogue , the guy rope who have a convincing line as a lead character had some aspects of his story fiddle out just a lilliputian other than . The same is reliable of Ramse ’s involvement after he ’s brought into the final mission by final Cole . After all that ’s give out on with the part over the year — especially in the early part of the serial — Ramse ’s willingness to not only go along with James ’ wild design , but to do so knowing his reinforcement will be a fateful slug from his best champion , offers up a astonishingly substantial storyline for a grapheme who has n’t been directly call for in the series for a while .
These thread append the story and facilitate mitigate the sameness of the Witness ’ programme to spud an DOE beam into the sky to bring about the human beings ’s destruction . They ’re substantial ways to satiate some time , but because the series did n’t wrap up its central storyline in ‘ One Minute More , ’ nothing — not even the flushed beam of death — feels too much like filler . rather , the finale pull in its two - time of day status by sticking to a intimate structure that take the play up narrative to a solid conclusion while pose breadcrumbs for how the series is going to wield its big obstacle : make James ’ demise excited and meaningful and also , undo it in a way that does n’t obliterate the work that was done just moment before .
The key to the first part of the equating is Schull ’s work as Cassie . There have been prison term throughout the serial where James and Cassie ’s “ intend to be ” love story felt a picayune forced , and only served to bring the lineament back to a place12 Monkeysneeded them to sell a constituent of the story the show did n’t necessarily take . There was nothing inherently untimely with James and Cassie ’s never terminate beloved narration , but the series did n’t rely on it . In fact , Cassie was often far more compelling a character when her motivation was n’t related to her feelings for James . Nevertheless , showrunner Terry Matalas ( who also wrote the finis ) and Schull come after in reach the Cassie - James relationship feel like the base on which the show was based . That , in issue , allows the finale to pivot from its frenetic stop - the - remainder - of - the - world plotline to that of Cassie ’s reluctance at the last minute , paving the direction for a satisfactory stopping point to both .
There ’s a brief moment in the finis ’s denouement where12 Monkeyssells the what is on the face of it the best and bad case scenario : James Cole never live and everything ( minus one liveliness ) is as it should be . It ’s a bold conclusion that , had it not been undone , would have feel like an vastly daring way for the story to stop . But undo the story that characters are experiencing is the crux of12 Monkeys . As such , it echo straight that James would be given another chance ( no matter of how much signified it makes ) and that it would be Katarina , spurred on by an encounter with James and Cassie ’s boy Athan ( James Callis ) , who pulled the strings to make it chance . Happy endings can sometimes hail too well , but for12 Monkeys , a happy ending rightly feel like the hardest struggle triumph .
Next:12 Monkeys’ Final Season: James Cole Is A Man With ‘Everything To Lose’
12 Monkeysseasons 1 - 4 are available to rain cats and dogs on Hulu .
