Mad Men

I don't think the ending is very ambiguous other than us not getting an actual scene of him walking back into the Mccann offices. He turns his back to the ocean. He's facing east. He gets a little smirk on his face and then that ad rolls. Mccann Erickson is the firm that actually released that ad in real life and the people in the commercial look exactly like the hippies he was just around. There's one girl in pigtails that's a dead ringer for the receptionist that checked him into the commune (this one I pulled from the internet I wouldn't have noticed that level of detail myself).

There's also everything that happened with Coke in these last seven episodes. Fixing the vending machine. Joan trying some of the real stuff. I think there were more.

As far as him reaching some level of inner peace? Maybe. He's back to fully embracing Don though...not being truly happy as Dick in California. I just kind of took it as this is the Don we know. We've seen this same behavior from him before. I would have loved the closure of the series ending with him at the bus stop, Dick rather than Don, presumably on his way to the west coast, but Weiner gave us the opposite. It's just as good, it's just not as fulfilling.

Peggy and Stan felt a little forced, but it's ok to give us a happy ending for her. Those two have been a great on screen "couple" since Stan was first introduced. The I love you scene might have just been fan service.

Personally I was fine with the ending we got for everyone in the previous two episodes and would have been ok with this episode being 100% Don.

I said above I had mixed feelings about the ending after first finishing it. 12 hours later here and I'm less conflicted. I might have preferred something different, but this was fitting and it certainly doesn't change my opinion of the show as a whole like some other finales have in the past.

Royal_sl said:

The person that Don reached out to at his lowest and most desperate moment, Peggy, was still at McCann at the close. I think he would have maintained that relationship even if he never went back to his old life. Did the Coke account get tossed to her after she proved her value to the company and she gave life to an idea that came from Don? Don returning to do it is only the easiest assumption.

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Easiest and by far most likely, I think.

But let's examine your scenario a bit. That commercial airs three months after the show ends. Peggy is given creative control over an ad for the firms biggest client in a matter of months? Especially after what we've seen about McCann and their views on women in the workplace? I think that interpretation is decidedly unlikely.

I think the takeaway is that Don is Coke. He is the thing that united everyone around him and made their dreams possible.

Peggy wouldn't be where she was without Don to spur her into being awesome at what she does. Ditto Pete, ditto Joan. Roger wouldn't have met his future wife if not for Don. Sally wouldn't have grown into the woman she became.

Don didn't necessarily work selflessly to make all these dreams possible, no. A lot of it was happenstance, or people succeeding in response to Don being an asshole. But regardless, Don is the common link. He is the magical togetherness-power that the Coke commercial wishes Coke actually was.

The Coke ad is Mad Men's response to Don's assertion that he made nothing of his life, and was an echo of Peggy's rebuttal that yes, he did. The world, at least as regards this handful of people, is a better place because Don was in it.

Now, Don is in a new place. He can start over. He's not Dick and he's not Don. He doesn't have the shadow of his father looming over him, he doesn't have the spectre of the man whose life he stole. He is a blank slate, and he can write on that slate whatever he wishes.

I don't think he'll go back to advertising. That was Don's world, and I think he's done with that. Don didn't make the Coke ad. He just made the Coke ad possible..

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