So What Do We Do Now?

"Arak: No more executions, torture, nothing.

Etta: It's all changed. We're free.

Arak: Are we?

Etta: Yes.

Arak: What shall we do?

Etta: Dunno."

- Doctor Who, "Vengeance on Varos"

Some kids just want to be normal. Others Jumped At the Call to get into the action right away. They've had wacky hijinks, great adventure and dramatic changes to their lives, but now it's over. The Big Bad has been defeated. The universe is saved. The balance has been preserved. The need for a hero has seemingly gone away. The hero can go back to his ordinary, safe life again... which will promptly bore him out of his skull.

It turns out that the hero liked the increase in excitement. And his normal life is missing some things. Friends he made from the adventure. The thrill of flying in a spaceship. All of these are gone now. He's no different from anyone else again.

This trope seems to suggest that life is like a Video Game: Beat the last boss and it's game over. Nothing else to do. You go back to normality and everything special goes away. While not always, typically this trope is applied to the ending of the series, where it might be the last step of The Hero's Journey.

Depending on the writer or director's choice, it can be a Downer Ending where the hero figures he has to just get used to it, or a more optimistic ending where things suggest that the Weird and Wonderful aren't entirely gone, or are coming back -- or that the hero can bring them back if he chooses. The optimistic version sometimes ties into a Sequel Hook. Alternatively, the writers can make it look like a happy ending, and Fridge Logic will kick in when you start thinking about this trope.

Subtrope of In Harm's Way.

Why We're Bummed Communism Fell is this trope applied after the end of the Cold War.

Compare And Then What?, the version of this trope that occurs when The Bad Guy Wins.

Contrast Send Me Back, where the hero wants to go back to how things were because they didn't save the day.

See also What Now? Ending.

As a pseudo-endings trope, some Tropers forget their spoilers. Consider this your only warning.

Anime and Manga

 * Used in the first few episodes of ~Battle B-daman~. Yamato finally gets his own B-daman and his first battle is against Gray, someone who's generally considered a really tough opponent. After this, even though Yamato now has the B-daman he's been wanting all these years, he gets bored with every last thing he does. Mie lampshades this and suggests he goes out and look for Gray.
 * At the end of Buso Renkin, when the kakugane are collected, Tokiko feels uneasy because she was so used to having hers. Then, of course, Kazuki promises that his will be with her forever...
 * Digimon Adventure both subverted and exemplified this.
 * About midway through the series, Taichi and Koromon are stranded back in the Real World after defeating the current Big Bad. However, Taichi's the only one who seemingly escaped, and this fact depresses him. However, as Digimon begin appearing and causing destruction in the Real World, Taichi and Koromon realize that unless they fix things in the Digital World, they can't go home, and thus they return to the Digital World.
 * Played straight at the end
 * Digimon Tamers has a similar ending
 * Digimon Frontier does it . It's kind of a "imitate the past series, even if it doesn't make sense here and now" thing.
 * Gundam Wing does this in The Movie Endless Waltz. Most of the pilots find normal lives after the war & seem to be enjoying themselves, but Arrogant Kung Fu Guy Wu Fei can't find meaning in his life without battles and ends up joining a rebel group so he can help start a new war. Post-Movie he joins the Preventers, an organization dedicated to stopping wars from breaking out in the first place.
 * Kurau's human half in Kurau Phantom Memory has fond memories of the time she was taken over by her Rynax entity, but comes to terms with the fact that it is all over now.
 * Saber Marionette J does this rather egregiously. After the three Japoness Saber Dolls sacrifice themselves to revive the one female (who was stuck in cryogenic suspension for centuries), the main character wistfully remembers all the good times he had with them and wishes they'd return. Lo and behold, without any explanation, they do.
 * Tenchi Universe, as shown in the quote above, begins like this in a How We Got Here fashion, as Tenchi remembers the days before.  And this all leads straight into The Movie...
 * Happens to from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: after finally destroying the Anti-Spirals and bringing peace to the Universe, he puts on his cape, says goodbye, and spends the rest of his days Walking the Earth..
 * Twisted in Saikoroshi-hen (Dice Killing Chapter), a bonus chapter for the Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni game that was released after the main storyline. After depressed musing over the hard work that almost came to nothing, Rika wakes up in a perfect world without any of the tragic backstories or danger from the previous worlds.
 * After episode 5 of FLCL, Haruko and Canti leave Mabase, and life for Naota briefly returns to normal. Naota is rather glad to have Haruko back in episode 6, well in time for the climactic showdown and the series' explosive finale.
 * In the ending of both the anime and manga of Tokyo Mew Mew, everyone seems to have returned to normal permanently. Their marks have disappeared, they can't talk to animals, and Ichigo stops turning into a Catgirl. Then one day, depending which version you're watching, either Ichigo's cat ears reappear just as Berii looks in the window or the girls are informed that their powers have returned and there's a new enemy to fight.
 * Happens to Yu Yu Hakusho protagonist Yusuke after his final battles with Toguro and Sensui. Kuwabara smacked him for it.
 * This is a major point of contention between Rurouni Kenshin and many of his antagonists. Unlike them, he's willing to settle for an ordinary life. Kenshin, for one, ends his adventure by
 * Hime Chen Otogi Chikku Idol Lilpri the girls transformation bracelets are taken away and the mapets return to Fairyland along with Wish after they save Fairyland. They're pretty bummed about it. In the end however Wish returns to Earth saying he liked being an Idol and the final shot shows the mapets sneaking up on the girls from behind.

Comic Books

 * Nextwave ends with the titular squad's members asking each other what they should do now that they've defeated the H.A.T.E organization, as they stand on the top of its former mothership. Monica's answer,
 * This is how the story ended for Link in the The Legend of Zelda comic that ran in Nintendo Power. Zelda thanks him for his trouble, he puts the Master Sword back and that's it!
 * In the Marvel Universe, Richard Rider aka Nova went through this situation when he choose to give up his powers to leave the planet Xandar to return home. As it happens, his life was completely ruined with a disrupted education, dead end jobs and no future. At best, Rider tried to live as best he can while wishing with all his heart that he could get the powers back and become a superhero again. Unfortunately, the planet Xandar was destroyed later, which seemed to mean that any chance of Rider getting repowered was gone forever. However, Night Thrasher, wanting a Flying Brick for his planned superhero team, deduced that there might be a way through a high stress situation. To do so, Night Thrasher abducts Rider, drops him off a roof and sure enough, Rider's powers reignite before he hits the ground. Naturally, Rider overjoyed at this and even though he didn't care for the fact that Night Thrasher didn't know if his plan would work, Rider still owes him big time.
 * The ending of Mark Waid's Empire. Golgoth has succeeded in conquering the world and . Now what?

Film

 * The Candidate (1972) ends with Robert Redford's title character, a dark horse candidate for U.S. Senate, winning the election (which nobody, least of all the heroes, had expected). During the victory party in his hotel suite, he finds a quiet moment to ask his campaign manager, in a horrified tone, "So. What do we do now?".
 * Um, be a Senator, perhaps?
 * Lord of the Rings almost ends with Frodo feeling like this.
 * Firmly averted by Sam, though, who comes home, marries his true love, raises a family, and lives happily ever after.
 * In the book, it's mentioned that eventually he ends up leaving Middle-Earth as well.
 * Only after the death of his wife, decades after Frodo left Middle-Earth.
 * The Graduate could be the most famous example of this.
 * A later Broadway play shows what happened after they get off the bus.
 * The movie Rumor Has It is about the main character's discovery that The Graduate was based on her mother and grandmother's life.
 * Heck, the whole movie could be seen as post-college "what do I do now" on the part of Ben Braddock.
 * Jim Henson's Labyrinth ends with this trope: With everything back to normal, Sarah is disappointed that all her magical puppet friends are now gone and is hit with the hard realization that the payoff of her adventure boils down to her parents not blaming her for being the crappiest babysitter on Earth. Soon enough, though, the magical puppet friends appear to tell her that they'll always be there for her, "should [she] need [them]" - She doesn't have to give up the Weird and Wonderful, as long as she keeps her imagination! Awww... EVERYBODY (DANCE, MAGIC) DANCE!
 * The Proposition. Charlie didn't enjoy his adventure, but the ending just screams of indeterminacy. It doesn't help that.
 * The gangster spoof Johnny Dangerously has a Framing Device of the title character as a pet store owner, seemingly retired from his life of crime, and telling the story of his life to a kid--complete with The Aesop of "crime doesn't pay." Then a limo pulls up, and he remarks "Well, it paid a little..."
 * In Prince Caspian Peter in particular is none too happy to be a young teen dealing with stupid schoolboys again, as opposed to a full-grown man and a king.
 * Almost happened to Inigo in The Princess Bride.
 * Kind of a central theme in The Hurt Locker.
 * Cheerfully averted in The Last Starfighter.
 * In L Change the World, Watari is dead, the Kira case is solved, and L only has 20 days left to live. He tries to pass the days alone solving as many cases as possible but is clearly frustrated and despondent. In the end, once the Blue Ship case is over he realizes he really did want to keep on living.
 * Subverted in Disney/Pixar's Up; Carl makes it to Paradise Falls, then seems at a loss for what to do next ... until he takes another look at Ellie's "Adventure Book".
 * The Stinger of Finding Nemo has the Tank Gang finally escape and make it to the ocean. But Bloat sums it up in the last line of the film: "Now what?"

Literature

 * At the end of book three of Secret of the Unicorn Queen, Sheila gets to go home. By page two of book four, she's decided she can't focus on algebra and baseball, or her "normal life", so she goes back.
 * The soldiers in All Quiet On the Western Front worry about this, because being so young, they have left no roots behind in the world to return to. Lucky for most them, this problem is solved when
 * In Dan Abnett's Gaunts Ghosts novel Only In Death, Rawne, who has long hated Gaunt, finds himself feel lost and bewildered, believing Gaunt to be dead.
 * The last of Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe books has this as a central theme; after a quarter of a century of bloody warfare, Europe is finally at peace - and the world is full of old soldiers who have done nothing but fight their entire adult lives. Many of them have come to enjoy it. So what next? Two solutions are presented; you can either head for South America and join the first rebellion you come across, or you can do what Sharpe does and walk away.
 * The TV series solves the problem by sending him to India.
 * At the end of E.R. Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros, after the heroes' final victory, they are feasting in their hall, feeling melancholy over their inability to complete any more great deeds, when one of their powerful magical allies offers them a gift for helping her earlier.
 * Last line of Alan Dean Foster's Flinx Transcendent --
 * Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere. He gets to go back to the Magical Land, though.
 * The whole book revolves around the idea that the price of getting what you want is getting what you wanted.
 * Norton Juster's book (and the cartoon based off of said book) The Phantom Tollbooth ends with Milo returning home. The next day, after school, he rushes back home to return to the tollbooth... and finds it's disappeared. In its place is a note saying it's moved on to the next kid that needs a dose of the fantastic, but that Milo knows how to find it. (Presumably this means his imagination.) After a moment's thought, he smiles and admits he does know how... and he doesn't need to go back just yet, there's so much to do where he is now!
 * In the novel series The Demon Princes by Jack Vance, after killing the last of the titular "Princes" (the five most evil men in the Universe who destroyed the protagonist's homeworld), the hero is asked this question
 * Captain Vimes from the City Watch novels in the Discworld series nearly falls into this in Men At Arms, since he's rather reluctant to retire to the life of a nobleman. Luckily
 * The Vorkosigan Saga. Miles found himself constantly increasing his challenges every time he succeeded, and realized it was becomes of "So What Do I Do Now?" He gave it a name: "playing wall". He was forcibly divorced from his Naismith identity in Memory, which allowed him to get over his rut.

Live Action TV

 * Buffy the Vampire Slayer ends with this. After, Dawn asks Buffy "what are we going to do now?" The final shot of the series is a closeup on Buffy, smiling.
 * It's later revealed, in Angel crossover episodes and the canonical Season Eight comic that they've gone out looking for new Slayers and created a multinational demon-killing organization. That'll do nicely.
 * There's a very minor one in the Musical Episode "Once More With Feeling", which ends with a song with these lyrics: "The battle's done / And we kind of won / So we sound our victory cheer / Where do we go from here?"
 * The new series of Doctor Who has explored this with respect to his companions. The episode "School Reunion" has Sarah Jane explaining to him that her life was a bit of a wreck after he dropped her off; after what she'd seen, going back to a normal life proved undoable. It's implied this is universal among his "voluntary" companions.
 * It was especially tragic with Rose (and later Donna) because it was so sudden and unexpected. You're expecting to go off to the next adventure, when bam, . Sarah Jane had a fairly similar situation. However, Martha made the choice to return to her old life, and was shown to not have regretted it.
 * Well, sort of. Before she met the Doctor, she was a medical student, and after she leaves him she joins UNIT and becomes an alien-fighting Badass. Though she does find time to qualify as a doctor. It's implied that even though she chose to leave, she couldn't just pick up where she'd left off, particularly after her year-long Walk the Earth nightmare situation.
 * They made sure to wrap up some loose ends in the last episode of the Tenth Doctor. Martha's engagement, apparently, didn't work out and she left UNIT; she does, however, end up with Mickey, and the pair spend their time fighting aliens. Donna finds her true love and gets married, with a little gift from the Doctor. Even Captain Jack, who is shown sulking in an alien bar after is a little cheered up by the Doctor, who introduces him to Alonso (the midshipman from the Titanic starship). He also saves Sarah Jane's adopted son from being hit by a car.
 * In the episode "Vengeance on Varos", the governor finally wins concessions and money from the company they sell their minerals to. He announces this to the Bread and Circuses-minded populace, and two of them hear it and are bewildered because they don't know what they will be doing with themselves.
 * Many of the comic sketches in Spike Milligan's Q series end without a Punch Line (he never was one for narrative convention). Instead the cast just stop what they're doing and shuffle offstage sideways, chanting "What are we going to do now? What are we going to do now?"
 * Sliders season 3 finale. Rembrandt and Wade have presumably slid back to original Earth. Maggie and Quinn attempt to follow them and wind up in a futuristic world. Maggie: "So how do we get home?" Quinn: "I don't know." Scene. Apparently, they thought that if they ended on a cliffhanger they couldn't get cancelled. Wrong.
 * Then the season 5 finale. Rembrandt has slid, possibly back home to his death, leaving Maggie, Mallory and Diana stranded along with Quinn's mom. And the person who can see the future just died. After standing there for five seconds, one of them asks "So... what do we do now?" "I don't know." Again, cliffhanger -> cancelled. There was talk of a Wrap It Up movie, and the ending was clearly written with such in mind, but sadly it never materialized, leaving the series Cut Short.

Newspaper Comics

 * The very first Baby Blues comic began right after Zoe was born, with Darryl, Wanda and Zoe all sitting there thinking, "Now what?"

Radio

 * After satellite radio was created, talk show hosts came flooding in. Suddenly, they were given freedom of speech. Now they could say anything they wanted to. So what do you say? Suddenly, there's no censorship, no FCC over their shoulders, no Moral Guardians "protecting" their children's virgin ears. But what do you talk about? You don't have to be creative anymore with your euphemisms, but then it's not funny anymore. Soon, the shows ended up just being the word "fuck" every other word, just because they could.

Real Life

 * Many veterans of the military found during their time of service that they felt they were truly living when danger was all around. Back in the civilian world, they often don't know what to do with the rest of their lives. This is why many go into mercenary work for private contractors. (A good dose of PTSD doesn't help, either.)
 * Some people who are revived after being technically dead recount having amazing experiences before returning to life. In some cases (especially for those who believe they experienced the afterlife), ordinary life just doesn't seem meaningful anymore.
 * After the Soviet Union fell, with glasnost, everyone suddenly had freedom of speech. What do you talk about? How the Soviet Union sucks? What do you do now that you have all this freedom? Do you go on with your daily lives and live the same as you always have? Do you go check out that new McDonald's in Red Square? Why Were Bummed Communism Fell is all about this. There are people nostalgic for the days of Communism in the Eastern Bloc because they had to be creative about everything they did. Now that they didn't have the excitement that little kids do when they do something naughty, it wasn't worth it anymore. It's hard to understand for Westerners (and those who were in the gulags).
 * There can be several moments in people's lives like this:
 * High school students after graduation. Do we continue our education in college? What will we major in? What kind of job will we get?
 * People getting ready to retire. Do I just enjoy life (whatever that means) or do I get another job? Do I take up some kind of hobby so I don't get bored? What about my family and their lively-hoods?
 * A lesser version of this might be had when you just finished a particularly lengthy video game, doubly so when it's an immersive RPG. Some people would rather not go into The Very Definitely Final Dungeon because the game will end after you finish it. Fortunately, most people have life outside video games.
 * This is the unfortunate consequence of many a revolution headed by the lower class. Without someone who has the slightest idea how to run a country, they have feuds whenever a stable government is trying to be established.

Video Games
"Now you're a hero / You managed to beat the whole damn game
 * Castlevania Symphony of the Night: Why did the titular castle reappear a mere 5 years after Richter Belmont banished Dracula? It seems like Richter couldn't go back to a normal life after saving the world from the Prince of Darkness and he wants Dracula back so he can be the hero again.
 * In the best ending of Cave Story, Barlog asks Curly and the protagonist what they're going to do now. Curly declares she'd like to live out the rest of her days somewhere with a beautiful view and they all go off to look for one.
 * Final Fantasy X's sequel did this twice:
 * After the ending of the first game, Spira enters the Eternal Calm. Final Fantasy X-2, posits that
 * The Updated Rerelease, Final Fantasy X-2: Last Mission explicitly states that, after its own ending, the Gullwings have gone their separate ways and settled down in ordinary, domestic lives. After they receive a letter of challenge, they join up again to tackle one last dungeon, which helps them realize that they'll always count on each other regardless.
 * About half to two-thirds of the way through Persona 3, SEES has a short battle with this after . Not long after, cue
 * Pokémon Mystery Dungeon manages to take this to downright Tear Jerker levels. Seriously, it has an honest-to-God Don Bluth ending.
 * The Metal Gear Solid games all end with Stingers which resolve plot points or serve as Sequel Hooks. Grand Finale Metal Gear Solid 4 instead has a "What do we do now?" between.
 * You Have to Burn The Rope features a little ditty at the end of the game that's mostly about this:

We're happy you made it / But how are you gonna spend the rest of this day?

Maybe watch a video / Maybe press refresh and start again."


 * Ratchet and Clank 2 starts by showing that the heroes haven't actually done very much since the last game ended.
 * In the War Craft series, Maiev Shadowsong, a night elf warden personally responsible for the imprisonment of Illidan Stormrage, devotes her entire life to chasing him when he escapes prison. Eventually she ends up killing him, only to realise her life has no meaning anymore.
 * Happens in the time between Star Fox 64 and Star Fox Adventures. After saving the Lylat System in the previous game the Star Fox team finds themselves out of work and with nothing to do. This causes Falco to leave the team and for all their fancy equipment to fall into disrepair. Same thing happens in the prologue of Star Fox Command, only this time the entire team breaks up.
 * Shaundi asks this after the main story ending of Saint's Row 2.
 * Final Fantasy VIII Fanon embraces this trope for continuations, usually featuring Squall trying to come to terms with life after the war and a job that, now Ultimecia is no more, is mostly paperwork.
 * Lance Boyle brings this up in the intro to Megarace 2: "[The winner] is crowned King Megaracer 2, he experiences a sense of achievement, and returns in regal triumph to reality, where he will probably never readapt."
 * Disgaea 3 reveals that, after saving Veldime in Disgaea 2, Adell has pretty much jack-all to do. Turns out the Demon Hunter skill set doesn't transfer to other jobs very well.
 * One of the earliest versions of this in videogames is Ultima IV, and it's entirely based around it. Basically, in the past three games, all of the big evils have been destroyed (there are still dungeons full of monsters to fight, but nothing controlling them or threatening the world). So what do you do? Go on a quest to become the most shining example of pure good in the world as an example to everyone else!
 * Said example then immediately departs the world, giving rise to a new great evil that kidnaps the king and corrupts the Avatar's philosophy, turning moral fortitude into utter totalitarianism. So, back to form. Of course, the kidnapping was partly a result of this trope, too (albeit offscreen) as Lord British decided that, having nothing better to do, he needed to wander down into the underworld and see what was up with that freaky place, only to have his party eaten alive by Demonic Spiders. This is why kings have champions in the first place.

Web Comics

 * In Wapsi Square, Monica seems to have this problem. Tepoz lampshades it. And, it turns out that she's not the only one.

Western Animation

 * Season 2 of WITCH starts with Taranee trying to get into trouble out of fear of becoming anonymous; subverted by her teachers going easy on her since she had always been such a good student. The episode ends with a heartwarming aesop about how she will never be anonymous as long as she has friends.
 * At the end of season 2 the heroes are relieved to have finally put that behind them and are eager to resume their normal lives, clearly excited at the prospect of So What Do We Do Now... and then The Stinger shows one of the antagonists from the comics taking a position at their school, setting up the conflict for season three that will never happen.
 * In the episode "Make Love, Not Warcraft" of South Park, a griefer was killing each player discouraging them from playing, so in order to play again, the protagonists play for months, 21 hours a day, killing boars to gain experience points to achieve a level that allows them to beat him, and when they finally do with the help of the Infinity Plus One Sword, the question is dropped and the answer is: "Now we can play the game, I guess."
 * Chuck Jones' latter-day Road Runner short Soup or Sonic ends with Wile E. Coyote finally catching his prey -- but unable to do anything with him due to . He holds up a pair of signs for the audience reading, Okay, wise guys, you always wanted me to catch him - Now what do I do?
 * Averted at the end of Avatar: The Last Airbender; even with the defeat of Ozai, Aang and Zuko are clear on the fact that there is a lot of rebuilding to do, both in terms of damage caused by the war and in relations between the nations. It was long theorized that if there had been a fourth season, it would have focused upon rebuilding the lost Air Tribe.
 * The Interquel graphic novels Avatar: The Last Airbender The Promise and the Sequel Series The Legend of Korra suggest that time was spent cooling what hostilities and power squabbles were left in the Fire Nation (you can't expect everyone to be happy about the war's end, after all), finding more air-bison, restoring some of Aang's culture, and building Republic City, a melting-pot for all nations.
 * Happens twice in The Real Ghostbusters episode "Crimebusters" - there's a dry spell of supernatural activity, so the guys modify their equipment to trap living beings and go into the crime-fighting business. Unfortunately they're too good at this, wiping out all crime...right before another surge of ghosts. Egon even literally says "So what do we do now?" before the hauntings start getting called in.
 * Happens twice in The Real Ghostbusters episode "Crimebusters" - there's a dry spell of supernatural activity, so the guys modify their equipment to trap living beings and go into the crime-fighting business. Unfortunately they're too good at this, wiping out all crime...right before another surge of ghosts. Egon even literally says "So what do we do now?" before the hauntings start getting called in.