Fully-Absorbed Finale

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

When a show ends without a Grand Finale—likely if it was cancelled without enough warning to the producers to film a proper ending—the producers may instead wrap up any loose ends in an episode of another show set in the same Verse.

Conceptually, this is the Opposite Trope of a Poorly-Disguised Pilot. The Poorly-Disguised Pilot is effectively the first episode of a show on a different show; the Fully-Absorbed Finale is effectively the last episode of a show on a different show. Like the Poorly-Disguised Pilot, the main characters from the "absorbing" show may take a back seat in the episode, with the focus on the characters from the "absorbed" finale.

If the ended show was launched with a Poorly-Disguised Pilot on one show, the Fully-Absorbed Finale will usually be an episode of the same show (assuming, of course, that the parent show is still in production).

Alternatively, things might get wrapped up in The Movie.

As an Ending Trope, Spoilers ahead may be unmarked. Beware.

Examples of Fully-Absorbed Finale include:

Anime and Manga

  • X 1999 shows what happened to Subaru and Seishiro after the events of Tokyo Babylon.
  • Hiroya Oku created two mangas, both called Hen ("strange"). The original one ran from 1988 to 1992, and the second one ran from 1992 to 1997. The books had completely different casts, and the second book was much more popular than the first one. The last three volumes of the second book are widely despised because they brought back the cast of the first book, and more than half of the stories revolved around characters that many readers didn't know or care about.

Comic Books

  • Comic Book example: When the series Aztek: The Ultimate Man started publishing, co-writer Grant Morrison was also writing the series Justice League of America and had Aztek join the team. When his solo series was cancelled, Morrison wrapped up his storyline in the pages of JLA.
    • Averted with Geoff Johns transferring Star-Spangled kid from the canceled Stars and STRIPE to the successful Justice Society of America title. Far from being a finale, SSK went on to become a major character in JSA and eventually took on the name Stargirl.
  • The cancellation of the Spider-Man 2099 comic left the identity of villain Thanatos unresolved until writer Peter David did The Reveal in the pages of Captain Marvel (Vol. 4) David stated that Thanatos' true identity had several possibilities, but he decided that the alternate reality Rick Jones concept fit best with the resolution in Captain Marvel (where the main Rick Jones is a major character.)
    • Given Rick and Mar-Vell's part in the original defeat of Thanos and the HUGE production made of The Death Of Captain Marvel, the irony or blatant gotcha applied by having Rick's alternate be Thanatos—a death god whose name was referenced in naming Thanos on the first place—is downright epic.
  • The Transformers Cybertron comic by Fun Publications concludes the plot of Transformers Universe.
  • A storyline in Teen Titans ended on a cliffhanger with Kid Eternity being kidnapped by the Calculator. This was resolved sometime later in an issue of Batgirl, where the title character discovered that Eternity had been beaten to death by Calculator.
  • The original Omega: The Unknown series ended on a cliffhanger with the fates of most of the cast left unrevealed. The storyline was concluded in The Defenders.
  • The current 'Mighty Crusaders' mini-series serves this for the DCU versions of the Red Circle heroes.
  • This also happened with the Adam Warlock series from the 1970s—after Marvel cancelled it in the middle of an epic story arc involving Warlock killing himself so that he would not become the Magus, his future/past evil self, Jim Starlin finished up in whatever books he could get his hands on, including a few issues of Strange Tales, the Marvel Team-Up Annual, Marvel Two-in-One Annual, and the Avengers Annual.
  • Dwayne McDuffie's final comic book, Milestone Forever, tied up most of the hanging plot threads from Static, Hardware, Icon and Blood Syndicate, each of which had been cancelled mid-storyline over fifteen years earlier. It also provided an explanation for the characters' sudden appearances in the DC Universe.
  • The 90's revival of Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt was cancelled after only 12 issues, leaving some hanging plot threads. This lead to Thunderbolt's final battle with his nemesis Andreas being depicted in an issue Justice League Quarterly.
  • The Michael Lane Azrael series was cancelled before the story could be resolved. Writer David Hine was allowed to finish out Azrael's story via a Bat Family Crossover that ran through Batman, Red Robin and Gotham City Sirens.
  • After the 2010 Young Allies revival was cancelled, the team's story was finished up in the Onslaught Unleashed mini-series. A few of the surviving characters have since been brought over into other books such as Avengers Academy.
  • The first Nova series ended with a group of the series regulars heading off into outer space; the story continued in Fantastic Four (then written by Marv Wolfman, creator and writer of Nova), and finally wrapped up in an issue of ROM Spaceknight.
  • Silver Surfer Volume 1 #18 (1970) ends with an angered Surfer swearing revenge on mankind. Future guest appearances and his later comics wouldn't touch upon the change of attitude. In 1999, a follow up occurs in #4-6 of Webspinners: Tales of Spider-Man.

Live-Action TV

  • The X-Files episode "Millennium" serves as a finale to Millennium. To the credit of those who put together the DVD release of Millennium, that episode was included on the DVDs of the last season.
  • Not quite a Fully Absorbed Finale, but when ABC pulled Taxi off the air, Dick Ebersol gave the entire cast a send-off and curtain call on Saturday Night Live.
  • The Doctor Who story "School Reunion" picked up on the partnership between Sarah Jane and K-9 first introduced in the failed Pilot K-9 and Company. Quite simply, K-9 eventually broke down. (But the Doctor fixed him.)
  • Played with in 30 Rock, when Kenneth and Trey reassemble some of the cast of Night Court and attempt to film a proper finale for the show. Hilarity Ensues.
  • Curb Your Enthusiasm has one that's Meta. Seinfeld had a rather odd ending, but one Larry insists is fine. In order to win back his wife, however, Larry kicks off a season-long plot to do a Reunion Special to act as a proper finale. The whole cast from Seinfeld makes guest appearances throughout the season as they cast and rehearse the finale, though we only ever get to see excerpts of it.
  • Lopez Tonight played with this, presenting a "proper" finale for The George Lopez Show. It involved George waking up from a dream. It heavily implies that the entirety of The George Lopez Show was All Just a Dream in the mind of....Doug Heffernan from King of Queens!
  • The Parkers considered making one to resolve Moesha finding a pregnancy test in her home and her brother getting kidnapped, but let's just say the Parkers had their own problems.
  • The late 90s superhero series Nightman featured a sort-of epilogue to creator Glen A. Larson's short-lived 1983 series Manimal in Episode 206, where Johnny Domino/Night Man allies himself with Prof. Jonathan Chase. In the years since the events of Manimal, Chase married his former partner Brooke, who later died after giving birth to Chase's only daughter.
  • In Power Rangers Wild Force "Reinforcements From the Future" effectively served as a finale after the finale to Power Rangers Time Force acting as a Where Are They Now? Epilogue for the rangers and villains of Time Force as well as closing the last few loose ends of the plot.
    • This could be said about many of the "bring back last season's Rangers" episodes.
  • The mystery of the Cut Short series Vanished was intended to be solved in the third series of Bones, but the WGA strike put paid to that plan.
  • In the second episode of Raising Hope, a newscaster on a television playing in the background alludes to a man who has finally completed a list of tasks in order to set his life right. Although promised the details after the break, the plot moves on quickly past it.
  • In the Childrens Hospital episode Party Down, we get to see that for four of the main characters of Party Down it's still business as usual. Cast regulars Ken Marino and Megan Mullally briefly reprise their Party Down characters
  • Ted Buckland from Scrubs appeared in the Cougar Town episode "Something Good Coming", where he revealed that after the events of the final season of Scrubs, his wife had left him for Dr. Hooch.
  • Dharma and Greg appear on Two and A Half Men as buyers of the recently-deceased Charlie's house. Evidently, things aren't going very well for them.
  • Part 1 of the Grand Finale of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air also functioned as a Fully-Absorbed Finale for The Jeffersons and Diff'rent Strokes, in which Arnold and Willis consider buying the Banks' mansion, but it ends up being bought by the Jeffersons (George, Weezy, and Florence all appear). The Jeffersons had never gotten a proper finale from CBS so this in effect resolved the plot, with the Bankses and the Jeffersons essentially swapping locales: The Jeffersons moved west to Bel-Air and the Banks family moved east to New York.

Video Games

  • The Japanese video game Moonlight Syndrome, part of the Twilight Syndrome series, which was written by Suda 51, ends with a cliffhanger. The resolution is found in the first case of the first game series Suda 51 wrote after he formed his own company, The Silver Case, in which two of the three survivors from Moonlight Syndrome are unceremoniously shot and killed.
  • Even though no true Darkstalkers sequel has been made since the release of Vampire Savior in 1997, the original Marvel vs. Capcom follows up on Morrigan's ending in Vampire Savior, by revealing that she and her "sister" Lilith have merged into one.
    • Other games, such as Cross Edge and Marvel vs. Capcom 3, seem to affirm other plot points from Vampire Savior. Two of the more notable ones are Felicia becoming a nun like her foster mother and starting an orphanage (although Cross Edge notes that she still operates as a singer to help support said orphanage and her ending in MvC3 has singing together with Dazzler in a concert) and Morrigan finally accepting her responsibilities and becoming the Queen of Makai.

Western Animation

  • Justice League Unlimited "Epilogue" functions as a finale for Batman Beyond.
    • It was also essentially the finale for the entire DC animated universe, so the Batman Beyond setting might have doubled as a convenient setting for a Distant Finale.
  • Though done as a semi-parody, The Venture Brothers would seem to offer an answer to what happened to Race from Jonny Quest... he dies in his over-the-top successor Brock's arms after a rather humiliating sequence of injurious events. Unlike most parodies of this type, the character's name is left intact and he even makes a reference to another name-intact character, Jonny. In the next season, we actually see Jonny, who has become a pill-popping psycho living in a marine exploration pod (and who has since recovered from his addiction—but not his messed up childhood). These characters appeared because they were originally going to be Lawyer-Friendly Cameos, but the production found out that they could use the actual characters. Could be seen as a Fully Absorbed Finale just depending on how serious you can take anything in The Venture Brothers.
    • Not any more. As of season three, "Jonny Quest" is now "Action Johnny", whose childhood sidekick (and now manager of a IT tech support company) is named Rajni not Hadji. And Doctor Zin is now "Doctor Z". Apparently, with Jonny Quest being shopped around to be made into a live action movie, TPTB at Cartoon Network basically told the Venture Brothers writers that they had to stop using the Quest characters.
    • Except that Race was shown alive on a Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law episode broadcast not long after the Venture Bros. episode. It appears that the Hanna-Barbera characters are the stylistic equivalents of Public Domain Characters in the world of Adult Swim (extending in part to Cartoon Network as a whole).
      • This is because the Hanna-Barbera studio and properties ended up part of Turner Broadcasting, meaning that there are no legal issues for shows on Adult Swim (part of Cartoon Network, owned by Turner) to use those characters, more or less the entire reason for the existence of Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law. The exception is that some properties are considered important, and while Space Ghost and Birdman can be made to do terrible, terrible things, certain others are left unmolested. This lead to a last second plot twist in an episode of Harvey Birdman involving Fred Flinstone where Fred is shown to be innocent and only thinks that he is a mob boss, while Barney is the real don after the powers that be got wind of it.
  • Link and Zelda guest-starred in several episodes of Captain N after the cancellation of their own series. One of these episodes, "Potion of Power", involved them trying to prevent the resurrection of Ganon.
  • A few years after its cancellation, Evil Con Carne got a finale on its sister show, The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy.
  • Hercules and the Arabian Night could be this to Aladdin, hinting that the episode took place after the events of King of Thieves since Aladdin and Princess Jasmine are both revealed to be married, and Iago is nowhere to be seen since he chose to stay with Aladdin's long-lost father, Cassim.
  • Challenge of the Gobots is getting an indirect version through a crossover with Transformers in the Fun Publications comics. The story starts up some time after the end of the show. The war between the Guardians and Renegades is still going on and humanity is starting to colonize in space. Suddenly a large instability in the fabric of reality causes the universe to start slowly fading away. The Gobots discover that this is happening because an unexpected splinter Transformers timeline has been created, offsetting the balance of the multiverse. The story then involves the Gobots traveling to that splinter timeline (the Transformers: Classics universe) to find a way to stop this Cataclysm before it destroys their universe or any others.
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