Spoiler alert: this article discusses the final episode of Mad Men in detail.
Jon Hamm, the actor who played disenchanted advertising executive Don Draper on AMC’s Mad Men, has offered his thoughts on the meaning behind the ambiguous ending to the series finale.
In the final minutes of the show, a peaceful Draper sits on the beach in California humming “om”. He gives an enlightened smile, then a final ding is heard before the famous 1971 Coca-Cola ad, I’d Like to Buy The World a Coke, also known as Hilltop, plays. The concluding scene left much open to to interpretation: is Draper responsible for the famous Coke commercial? Does that mean Draper leaves the retreat and returns to Manhattan? Has Draper finally escaped his past – or just the opposite? What does it all mean?
In an interview with the New York Times on Monday night, Hamm discussed the series ending.
“My take is that, the next day, he wakes up in this beautiful place, and has this serene moment of understanding, and realizes who he is,” Hamm said. “And who he is, is an advertising man. And so, this thing comes to him.
“There’s a way to see it in a completely cynical way, and say, ‘Wow, that’s awful.’ But I think that for Don, it represents some kind of understanding and comfort in this incredibly unquiet, uncomfortable life that he has led.”
Hamm said he believes there probably is a “correct” answer to what it all means but said he thought, like most (good) stories, it was always meant to be “a little bit ambiguous”.
Hamm also spoke about the effect of filming some of the final scenes away from the castmates he had worked so closely with over the past several years.
“To be set adrift for the last few weeks, really experiencing that aloneness, that self-exile that Don was experiencing, it was very disorienting, which hopefully played,” Hamm said. “It was thematically kind of perfect. The world carries on, and that’s a big question about Don. Did the place fall apart without me? Well, no. That’s not how it works. Everybody picks up and thinks, oh, that’s too bad – that guy had a nervous breakdown.”
Even though the series has ended, Hamm reminded fans that it was not the end for its characters. The ending provides a glimpse into their futures; it doesn’t show the last day of their lives.
“None of it is done,” Hamm said. “Matt [Weiner, who created the show] had said at one point: ‘I just want my characters to be a little more happy than they were in the beginning,’ and I think that’s pretty much true. But these aren’t the last moments of any of these characters’ lives, including Betty. She doesn’t have much time left, but damn if she’s not going to spend it the way she wants to spend it.”
