Book Ends

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

-we came in?

Matching scenes at the beginning and end of a story, often to show how things have changed through the course of the episode, or to demonstrate that they haven't changed at all.

This is extensively used in kid's shows to illustrate the characters applying the lesson they learned today, which happens to apply to the issue presented in the beginning. Ya'know, just in case they didn't catch it. In any work, bookends are a way to show whether Character Development has occurred.

Compare and contrast, How We Got Here, Where It All Began. See also Call Back, Ironic Echo. Here We Go Again is a subtrope.

Bookends don't always spoil the ending, but usually they do. As an Ending Trope, Spoilers ahead may be unmarked. Beware.


Examples of Book Ends are listed on these subpages:

Isn't this where-