The Ending Explained
As one might guess based on the title, this document contains major spoilers. Please do not continue reading if you have not yet watched series or film in its entirety, and are genuinely interested in the thinking behind the story.
Final Warning
After
launching into the series back in September 2025, the very first hurdle I faced was its ending.
Felini was fundamentally a different kind of program. Up to now, everything had roots in
comedy, whereas Felini would be cut from dramatic cloth. That is not to say it would be
devoid of humor; it simply meant the laughs had more serious origins. This choice informed everything
about the show, from character design to music, from story to language. Right away this created a
fresh and interesting "workspace," one not burdened by a need for humor. There would be
laughs in Felini, but they'd be organic, emerging from the character and story as a natural
part, rather than contrived and bolted on. Beneath it all I wanted a slightly noire-ish vibe; it
wouldn't be a classics noire story, but it would be informed by the style in subtle ways.
At the outset I foresaw a slow, talky series with much navel-gazing. But I had doubts about being able to sustain this for very long, so into Felini's pot I threw hints of action, bits of coincidence, a smattering of strangeness, and as many plot twists as I could conjure.
About halfway through production I switched Felini from an open-ended series to a "miniseries." I did this mostly for practical reasons: I didn't want to die in the middle of production and leave Felini hanging in limbo. So I gave the series a single big, beautiful story arc. This also allowed me to easily convert the series into a film, something I'd been threatening to do since forever and at last fulfill that goal. It was simple enough to strip off the recaps and opening credits and seamlessly string the episodes together. I soon learned that, if a next time is in my stars, then I'd do things differently: I'd start by writing and developing a whole film, then break it up into pieces. Hopefully this would improve the film's flow... not that it's bad, just rather uneven.
Over the whole of production, however, hung a large, dark cloud that presented a single question: will she die at the end, and if so, how and why?
I am not at all into video games. I do not own any; I do not play any. But I am deeply into video game music, at least the more serious kind. Think Jeremy Soule's Skyrim or Geoff Knorr's Civilization. In particular, Richard Vreeland's Hyper Light Drifter captured my attention. As I read about its story development, I learned that the main character dies at the end. Toss into this pot Aeon Flux, the original animated series by Peter Chung, where Aeon dies at the end of every episode. These things all reinforced my decision to kill Felini. Why? Mostly because I could.
Felini's death for me was an excuse to push the "cry" button. Yes, I'm a manipulative son of a bitch, and I wanted to yank the viewers' heartstrings as hard as I could. I only had to figure out how to kill her, and I chose childbirth. Why? I'll let you in on a evil little secret: I really hate kids, and wanted to create a 90-minute PSA called "Kids can kill you."
But seriously, the means of her death remained unknown to me until I gave her permission to fall in love with our resident thief. She would of course need to "fix" him first by brainwashing him into a good guy. I know, it's cheating, but it presented an opportunity to create an intense mind merge scene. I also wanted the ending to be as much of a surprise sucker punch possible without going to absurd lengths. Keep it short and simple.
As an aside, what really helped sell the death scene was an option with Voicemaker to "read" text with any of over two dozen styles, one of which was "cry."
In all honesty, I'm not 100% sold on the final chapter of Felini, but my life is driven these days by the threat of sudden death: I've got a madman holding a gun to my head, and his trigger finger is kind of twitchy. So I try to avoid spending enormous amounts of time pondering the nuances of how to kill off a cartoon character. To quote, "Life's too short." Way, waaay too damned short, if you ask me.