According to Mad Men director Scott Hornbacher, the series finale fans have been anticipating with a mixture of excitement and dread will stir up controversy. “I’d be surprised if there wasn’t some amount of controversy, because everybody has expectations,” Hornbacher said in a recent interview with Deadline. “I feel like on some level every year when the show goes on the air people are a little bit upset that it’s not what we did the season before.”
It’d be an understatement to say that Mad Men fans have high expectations for the series’ conclusion, which, after last night’s “Severance,” is a mere six episodes away. Death has hovered just behind Don Draper ever since the show began, and fans have gone back and forth about whether Don’s arc will have a fatal conclusion. Hornbacher said he feels “very strongly that the way the show ends is a culmination of Don’s story and the series in a way that it is very appropriate and gratifying.”
So what exactly does “controversy” mean? Will Trudy Campbell murder everyone? Will Joan and Peggy quit their day jobs to become feminist vigilantes? Will Sally Draper take over the world? If Mad Men’s final season follows the show’s usual, unpredictable pattern, anything’s possible.