‘Arrested Development’s Ending Will Make You Rethink This Show’s Entire Legacy

There are a lot of great moments in the second half of Arrested Development‘s Season 5. There’s an unexpected Fünke ode to Golden Girls that’s as heart-warming as it is aggressively stupid. Lucille (Jessica Walter) gets even more time to shine as the manipulative mastermind we all know her to be. Michael (Jason Bateman) finally unleashes his own chicken dance. Yet among Season 5’s many, many laugh out loud moments, there’s an underlying sadness. This is the end of an era, and this final batch of episodes seem to know it.

Netflix has yet to confirm that this really is the end of Arrested Development. It’s still possible that the beloved cult comedy can return for a sixth season. But if a fifth season seemed extraneous, a sixth one would be unnecessary. Season 5 Part 2 ties up every one of its major plot points. Sure, those bows are often hurried, messy, and smeared with blue paint and vodka; but really what else can you expect from this series? Arrested Development was always a show about a toxic family slowly destroying itself from the inside, albeit one told through some of the greatest one-liners and callbacks to ever grace television. Its characters never deserved a happy ending.

And for the most part it doesn’t get one. Every character gets an ending that initially seems cheery until you realize that none of these characters have changed. At all. Michael (Jason Bateman) and George Michael (Michael Cera) finally flee their crazy family to live their own lives, but they depart still dwelling in their resentment toward each other. Maeby (Alia Shawkat) abandons her life of scamming to finally stand up for something, but her protest is really more about rebelling against a new mother figure than accomplishing anything of merit. Lindsay (Portia de Rossi) returns to the family after some soul-searching, only to immediately embrace her toxic marriage and complicated relationships with her new mother/sister Lucille (Jessica Walter). And G.O.B. (Will Arnett), George Sr. (Jeffrey Tambor), and Tobias (David Cross) stand in the middle of all of these “changes,” watching but mostly accepting that their lives will always be the same. It’s almost as if this entire family is trapped in a state of — oh wait. Hey, that’s the name of the show!

However it’s Byron Buster Bluth’s (Tony Hale) final moment that leads to an irredeemably bleak note that will change this show’s legacy forever. After two seasons spent fretting, lying, and manipulating various lawyers about Lucille Austero’s (Liza Minnelli) murder, it’s finally revealed that the sweetest, most innocent Bluth was actually responsible for this horrendous crime. Buster is a murderer. And if his constant lying about his crimes and his choice to stuff Lucille 2’s body in a cement wall is any indication, he’s a disturbingly cold-blooded one.

Some have already written that the show’s dark final moments undercut the levity it’s brought over the years. But this story about a rag-tag group of super rich monsters getting away with absolutely everything was always bleak. The Bluths were never our heroes. They were a gaggle of ever-engaging villains with some epic jokes. The revelation of Buster’s crime and his confidence he would get away with everything forces you to realize this show’s dark truth just as it once asked you to accept the reality of the world being filled with dozens of never nudes.

It feels fitting that such a sharp change would happen during Netflix’s installments of the series. More than most shows, Arrested Development has always been linked to Netflix’s evolution as a company. It was the second original program released by the streaming platform — third if you count Lilyhammer — and it was the first series revival that turned Netflix’s original programming into a must-watch event. When Season 4 premiered in 2013, Netflix was an underdog in an industry that snidely saw them as a tech company.

Now one season, six years, hundreds of Emmy nominations, multiple Oscar wins, and an almost countless number of original episodes later, Netflix looks a lot different than it did when it first added the Bluth family to its library. Much like Arrested Development itself, Netflix was a television-changing giant ahead of its time. If Mitchell Hurwitz is in fact ending his story about a wealthy family who lost everything and the one son who had no choice but to keep them all together, it feels fitting that he would end it here.

For a show about a family destined to never change, Arrested Development has had one of the most tumultuous histories on television — a revival after seven years off the air, balancing the massive success of its large cast, navigating the allegations and backlash against Jeffery Tambor, moving forward from that terrible interview last year. Arrested Development would end this way: not with a bang, but a shockingly dark yet insightful whisper, one that illuminates what the series was all along… We were just too busy laughing to notice the point.

Watch Arrested Development on Netflix