Not every TV series lets its audience know when they’re saying goodbye to certain beloved characters. They can’t all be the emotional group hug of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, or the time-traveling check-in of Six Feet Under. Some shows with sprawling casts, like Mad Men, send characters off far in advance of a series finale. These exits can happen swiftly, and with little fanfare.
When Girls ended its six season run Sunday night, the HBO series didn’t quite go that route. Sure most of the cast didn’t make it to the series finale—but the show did a good job of letting the characters that matter most go out with a sense of finality and direction. Here—with apologies to characters like Hermie (R.I.P.), Fran, and Dill, who just missed the cut—is how the major characters of Girls spent their final seconds on camera. Spoilers, obviously.
Charlie Dattolo (Christopher Abbott)—Season 5, Episode 6
The last time we saw Charlie—the only major figure to leave the cast over the course of the show—was back in Season 5. After Abbott’s character returned to the show in 2016 to spend one long, surreal day with his ex, Marnie, he wound up making a mistake we’ve all made in relationships from time to time: trying to pass heroin paraphernalia off as medical supplies for diabetes. Live and learn, Charlie. Marnie hightailed it out of there, and never looked back.
Evie Michaels (Rita Wilson)—Season 6, Episode 6
Marnie’s mom went out doing what she does best: making scatological scat noises and mortifying her daughter into the dust.
Desi Harperin (Ebon Moss-Bachrach)—Season 6, Episode 6
Marnie’s ex-husband also left the series doing what he does best: being a garbage person. Sensing a theme with the people in Marnie’s life? Perhaps that helps explain her undying loyalty to Hannah, who is, at least, not as bad as these people.
Laird Schlesinger (Jon Glaser) and Laird’s Hat—Season 6, Episode 8
The final scene featuring Laird and his ever-present beanie saw Hannah’s well-intentioned (but misguided) neighbor offering to help her raise her kid. He’s a single dad, she’s a single mom. What could possibly go wrong?
Caroline Sackler (Gaby Hoffmann) and Baby Sample—Season 6, Episode 9
When last we saw Adam’s sister, she was urging Hannah to take a teaching job in upstate New York and leave the mentally damaging city behind. Caroline argues that since she left the city, she feels entirely mentally repaired. Clearly.
Tad Horvath (Peter Scolari) and Keith (Ethan Phillips)—Season 6, Episode 9
Hannah’s (gay) dad and his partner, Keith, looked pretty cozy as they also urged Hannah to leave the city for upstate New York. After the pair swear they’ll visit her there, Tad gets to end his run on a high note by hollering at a drum circle.
Elijah Krantz (Andrew Rannells)—Season 6, Episode 9
Elijah gets, without question, the best final lines of this show. Maybe of any show. They were too lengthy to put into gif form, so here’s the full transcript: “I got it. I got the part in White Men Can’t Jump the fucking musical spectaculahr, you feckless whores. Hannah, I will see you at home tomorrow roughly at noon, when I’m through partying this out. Eat a dick.” And yes, if you didn’t watch this season you missed out on an entire, amazing White Men Can’t Jump musical episode. That episode—Season 6, Episode 7, “The Bounce”—is the best argument for HBO greenlighting a spin-off series for Rannells called Elijah. Would watch.
Ray Ploshansky (Alex Karpovsky) and Abigail (Aidy Bryant)—Season 6, Episode 8
If Elijah gets the best exit line, Ray probably gets the most objectively happy ending. White Men Can’t Jump the musical is all well and good, but Ray washing his hands forever of both Marnie and Shoshanna, and landing a sweet girl like Abigail, and inheriting Hermie’s coffee house empire? He wins. Showrunner Jenni Konner said in a post-episode interview that they wanted to give Ray something lovely to make up for all the hell they put him through at the hands of the show’s often-callous female leads.
Adam Sackler (Adam Driver)—Season 6, Episode 8
Adam fans were surprised to see him exit the show early: a full two episodes before the finale. And his last moments seem to be more about Jessa’s reaction, really, than Adam himself. Still, Driver and Lena Dunham killed his penultimate scene, where Adam and Hannah sit across from each other in a diner and come to the silent, tear-strained realization that their tumultuous relationship will never work out.
Jessa Johansson (Jemima Kirke) and Shoshanna Shapiro (Zosia Mamet)—Season 6, Episode 9
There was a smidgeon of controversy over the fact that Shoshanna and Jessa didn’t make it to the Girls series finale. Instead, we said goodbye to them last week, at Shosh’s engagement party. We can take comfort in the fact that though Shoshanna isn’t really interested in being friends with Hannah, Marnie, and Jessa anymore, she seems entirely at peace with her new life and with her fiancé, Byron. Meanwhile, Jessa is presumably still trying to work through her relationship with Adam; at least she got some closure in this episode by apologizing to Hannah for both dating Hannah’s ex and keeping it a secret. The last time we see Shosh and Jessa, it’s through a window as all the girls dance their hearts out one last time.
Marnie Michaels (Allison Williams) and Loreen Horvath (Becky Ann Baker)—Season 6, Episode 10
The only non-Hannah (and her baby) characters to survive into the finale were Hannah’s mother, Loreen, and her default best friend, Marnie. The latter gets, perhaps, the most bittersweet ending of the series.
Loreen’s life isn’t tied up in a neat bow. She doesn’t meet someone new, or find her entire life’s purpose in helping to raise Hannah’s baby. Instead she’s still grappling with both a lot of anger over the dissolution of her marriage and frustration with her daughter. She does, however, get off a few scathing lines aimed in Hannah’s direction, and though the show doesn’t promise her happiness, we get the feeling that Loreen will be okay.
Marnie, on the other hand, is still rather aimless as Girls draws to a close. She’s manufactured some purpose for herself in trying to co-raise Hannah’s baby, but, as Konner points out in a post-episode interview, Marnie is not staying in that house for the long haul. Marnie leans on Loreen a bit for advice, and Hannah’s mom delivers. Whether Marnie takes that advice or continues the familiar, self-destructive pattern of the last six seasons will have to remain a mystery.
Hannah Horvath (Lena Dunham) and Baby Grover—Season 6, Episode 10
Konner, Dunham, and Judd Apatow were determined not to give Hannah a fairytale happy ending with her baby and cushy teaching gig. They wanted to reflect some of the vagaries of motherhood—including Hannah’s obvious co-dependent relationship with an infant. But the show used Dunham’s naked body—not an unfamiliar sight on Girls—to drive home a final point.
Throughout the series, the writers have used Hannah’s body in order to challenge sexual norms and standards of female beauty. Here, though, we see Hannah stripped of her pants in a maternal act (she gives a pantless stranger her jeans), and in the final moments of the series we see Hannah’s naked breast one last time. But instead of sexualized nudity, this flash of nipple represents motherhood. This is breast feeding, and a moment of pure catharsis for Hannah. Her last lines are words of comfort for her baby, and we get the sense that for the first time in the show’s entire run, Hannah is really, truly thinking about someone other than herself. Will that outlook last? We have no way of knowing.
