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Distant Finale: Difference between revisions
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If the series [[Un Canceled|gets a sequel that picks up after the finale]], it becomes a [[Time Skip]].
Differs from [[Where Are They Now? Epilogue]] in that it's a full scene that shows interaction between characters and most likely dialogue. If the Distant Finale shows how the entire cast dies, it's a [[Deadly Distant Finale]]. Might suffer from [[Modern Stasis]].
'''This is an [[Ending Tropes|Ending Trope]]. As such, it contains massive spoilers.'''
{{examples
== Anime & Manga ==
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* ''[[Fruits Basket]]'' {{spoiler|'''way''' overshoots the mark. The last few scenes completely skip past Kyo and Tohru's (and everyone else's!) marriage and life together and shows them as elderly grandparents (although indicating they've been happy.)}}
* ''[[Sonic X]]'' originally skipped 6 years into the future for its finale, though the series was then resurrected for a further 26 episodes. These episodes took place 6 years after the original series in the Human World, but only 6 months in Sonic's universe.
* ''[[Digimon Adventure 02]]'' pulled one of these off. It's both this and a [[Where Are They Now? Epilogue]], as it shows us the digidestined's reunion after 25 years, with Takeru also narrating on voiceover with interspersed little clips of the kids' careers and families now that they're all grown up.
** ''[[Digimon Savers]]'' also has a distant finale, five years after the final battle.
* ''[[Turn a Gundam (Anime)|Turn a Gundam]]'' serves as something of a Distant Finale for the entire ''Gundam'' franchise: it manages to do a surprisingly good job in tieing what would otherwise be completely separate [[Alternate Universe|timelines]]. Also referenced in SD Gundam: G Generation Spirits where {{spoiler|an omnicidal autonimous Turn-A Gundam appears to bring about the apocalypse, effectively ending the entire Universal Century and leading to the events of Turn-A the series. Probably not the canon version of events,though.}}
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* ''[[Hellsing]]'' (30 years later)
* ''[[Ai Yori Aoshi (Manga)|Ai Yori Aoshi]]'''s manga epilogue takes place 4 years later, when {{spoiler|Tina finally returns to Japan}}.
* ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist (Manga)|Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood's]]'' final episode takes place two months after the final battle, showing how various characters are dealing with normalcy, then it shows Ed and Al after two years, as they depart on their own journeys. The episode ends with [[Where Are They Now? Epilogue|a collage of photographs showing the characters]] several years later.
** The Kids OVA for [[Fullmetal Alchemist (Anime)|the 2003 anime series]] is also this to {{spoiler|Ed, set in ''our'' world's 2005}}.
* In ''[[Kurogane Communication (Manga)|Kurogane Communication]]'' there is a scene set several years after the [[Grand Finale]], in which {{spoiler|Haruka and Katano return from Mars to have a joyous reunion with the robots that stayed behind on earth. They also bring their daughter with them}}.
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* The [[OVA]] of ''[[A Little Snow Fairy Sugar]]'' functions as a [[Distant Finale]] of sorts, with the main story sandwiched as a flashback between scenes which take place some 4 years after the end of the TV series, showing {{spoiler|a grown-up Saga and Greta, who apparently have become the best of friends}}.
* One of these was planned for the ''[[Pokémon (Anime)|Pokémon]]'' anime at one point, as noted in [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b70GRNYnacI a Japanese trailer for the first movie]; aside from footage that doesn't actually appear in the movie proper, the crux of the trailer involves {{spoiler|an older Misty talking to a mysterious young girl with pinkish hair. No explanation as to who she is or who the other blue-haired lady with them is, and we'll never know}}. [[Long Runners|We know how well that one turned out, don't we]]?
* Apparently subverted in ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'': {{spoiler|Asuna wakes up 130 years in the future in 2135 instead of the intended 100 years , and finds out [[
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* ''[[Raising Arizona]]'' ends with H.I. dreaming about his distant future and {{spoiler|the children he will eventually have with Ed.}}
* The ''[[Dead Like Me]]'' direct-to-DVD movie ''Dead Like Me: Life After Death'' takes place 5 years after the series.
* The "Double Secret Probation Edition" of the ''[[Animal House]]'' DVD takes the well-known [[Where Are They Now? Epilogue]] to the movie even further, with a fake documentary, actually titled "Where Are They Now", taking the text blurbs from the movie and running with them. Director John Landis is the documentarian, who revisits his earlier "documentary", interviewing the characters. Save for Bluto; the hard-partying, mischief-making, unlikely-to-graduate fratboy is now "President Blutarsky". Unfortunately, he could not be interviewed on account of John Belushi being inconveniently dead.
* ''[[Legally Blonde]]'' had an epilogue that is both this and a [[Where Are They Now? Epilogue]], due to the request of the test audiences. It's a full scene of {{spoiler|Elle giving the valedictorian speech at her Law School graduation ceremony}}, with interspersed text blurbs detailing what happened to the supporting characters.
* In ''[[AI Artificial Intelligence]]'', David and Teddy remain frozen in the ice for over 2,000 years before they're thawed out by the Future Mechas, when humanity has long since died out.
* In the last scenes of ''[[Atonement]]'' the main character tells what happened to the others, more than sixty years after the story took place. It [[The Ending Changes Everything|changes]] [[Tear Jerker|quite a few things.]]
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* In [[Alastair Reynolds]]' Revelation Space trilogy, the last chapter in ''Absolution Gap'' ends with the [[Hordesof Alien Locusts]] (Called Greenfly) eating up worlds, spreading through the universe. If you read the Shadow's dialogue, you'll realize {{spoiler|that the ''entire'' universe is doomed}}
* Happens in [[The Bible (Literature)|The Bible]], with Revelation skipping from the 1st few centuries A.D. to the end of the world. Obviously that makes this trope [[Older Than Feudalism]].
* ''[[Narnia|The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe]]'' almost ends like this. After the defeat of the White Witch it jumps to the children having grown up in Narnia. Then they wander back into the real world (having nearly forgotten it) and discover not only has no time passed since they arrived (because of [[Year Inside, Hour Outside]]) but they're children again.
* The main events of the epilogue of ''[[War and Peace]]'' take place 8 years after the events of the novel conclude. Tolstoy, per his genius, covers 8 years in thirty pages, compared with the first 7 years of the novel which took [[Doorstopper|a thousand pages]] to describe.
* The last chapter of ''[[Harry Potter (Literature)|Harry Potter]]'' takes place 19 years after the end of the story. It shows all the main characters taking their children to the Hogwarts train, where we briefly catch up with what they've been doing for the last few years. Naturally, most of them have married each other.
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** Deny none of it.
* ''[[Nation]]'', set around the turn of the 19th century, finishes in the present day with an old man wrapping up the story to his grandkids, {{spoiler|who are [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog|not remotely impressed]] by the [[Bittersweet Ending]].}}
* Arguably, [[Nineteen Eighty
* Subverted in ''And Another Thing'', 6th ''[[The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy]]'' book, in which the Distant Finale was, in fact, {{spoiler|a construct that took place in the minds of the characters while on an exploding planet. This was, oddly enough, at the BEGINNING of the novel. The story continues uninterrupted from there.}}
* ''[[The Pendragon Adventure]]'' ends several decades in the future, where Bobby has been able to live out his life as if he had never been a traveler. Given how much the world has irrevocably changed by this point, it's not clear how this is possible.
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** They didn't ask. "Are we being punished for something?"
* ''[[Battlestar Galactica Reimagined (TV)|Battlestar Galactica]]'' {{spoiler|[[Oh Crap|150,000 years later...]]}}
* Inverted on ''[[Newhart]]'': In the final scene of the last episode, Dick Loudon wakes up to discover that {{spoiler|his entire life from 1982 to 1990 as depicted in ''Newhart'' was actually a dream of Bob Hartley, the protagonist of ''The Bob Newhart Show'', which had last aired in 1978}}. That comes after a false [[Where Are They Now? Epilogue]] in the same episode.
* ''[[Dollhouse]]: Epitaph One'', included with the first season DVDs, is set 10 years in the future, {{spoiler|showing what the consequences of the Dollhouse's technology will be on civilization.}} It's not pretty. Nor entirely accurate, since it ended up getting renewed.
** But it was! The second season involved the run-up to Epitaph One, ending in a series finale that takes place years afterwards, called Epitaph Two, which is a direct follow-up to Epitaph One.
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== Theater ==
* At least a decade passes between the 3rd act and the 4rth (only in the musical update) of ''Vanities''. In the original, the Manhattan tea party was the finale. The off-Broadway version also had a [[How We Got Here]] format. In the Theatreworks version, it was more of a [[Where Are They Now? Epilogue]].
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*** {{spoiler|[[Downer Ending|The Normal End]] ends decades in the future, Shirou having disappeared and Sakura having taken over his residence. [[Tear Jerker|Its implied that she dies as a lonely spinster, faithfully awaiting Shirou's return]].}}
*** {{spoiler|[[Golden Ending|The True End]] takes place a few years after the events of the route, and depict Sakura and Shirou settling down and living peaceful lives together. Rin and Rider survive and everybody gets to view [[Cherry Blossoms]] together.}}
* Asellus' "Human" and "Half-Mystic" endings in ''[[Saga Frontier (Video Game)|Saga Frontier]]'' take place decades after killing the [[Big Bad]], {{spoiler|Orlouge. The Human ending shows a slideshow of her living out the rest of her life, while the Half-Mystic ending shows her having retained eternal youth, visiting her old [[Mayfly
* ''[[Megaman Battle Network]] 6'' does this in pure text, presumably to eliminate the need for new sprites.
* ''[[Final Fantasy VII (Video Game)|Final Fantasy VII]]'''s last scene is after the credits, showing Red XIII and his children, 500 years after the game, coming upon the ruins of Midgar. It is an edge case of the trope, since it's a short scene, but it only covers one character and there's no voiceover narration or text explanation.
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== Web Comics ==
* ''[[Unicorn Jelly]]'' ends with jumps of 350, 116666, and finally 150000 years. Then the semi-sequel ''[[Pastel Defender Heliotrope]]'' jumps ''700000'' years after the original. And then ''that'' sequel has a 100000 years later Distant Finale.
* In ''[[
* ''[[Penny and Aggie]]'', a high school dramedy, skips ahead 6 years, in its final chapter (the previous arc having ended just before the main cast's senior year), to the characters' [[Class Reunion]].
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== Western Animation ==
* ''[[Rocko's Modern Life]]'': The last episode took place about 20 years in the future, complete with all of the generic Sci-Fi cliches about the future. It stars Filbert's kids, who ask Filbert, who suddenly is a VERY old man [[Lampshade Hanging|(This is lampshaded)]] about a banana they found in an abandoned house, which happened to be Rocko's. He tells them that a mix-up with a monkey that was intended to be launched into space eventually ended with Rocko, Heffer, Spunky, and the monkey travelling aimlessly through the stars. Because Nickelodeon could never let a show truly end, the ship they were stuck on crash lands next to Filbert's house, and the main cast suddenly meets up again, probably meant to be the start of a [[Spin
* The 2nd-season finale of ''[[Justice League Unlimited]]'', "Epilogue" (often mistaken for the first-season finale because the DVDs inexplicably package the first two 13-episode seasons as a single 26-episode season), was originally meant to be the series finale. It takes places some number of years after ''[[Batman Beyond]]'', the [[DCAU]] series set the farthest into the future, making it both a [[Fully
* The ''[[Codename Kids Next Door]]'' series finale takes place when the kids of Sector V have grown up into rather old adults (who, in an artistic twist, are portrayed by real life actors rather than animated characters). Most of the episode is told via interviews and flashbacks, and attentive viewers can infer what the kids of Sector V grew up to be.
** It's flat out stated that Numbuh 3 and Numbuh 4 got married, as did Numbuhs 2 and 5. Numbuh 3 is also president of the Rainbow Monkey Corporation.
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