Matthew Weiner Talks About The Eventual End Of Mad Men

Warning: minor spoilers for who might survive to the end of the show.

AMC's Mad Men is a bona fide pop culture phenomenon, but all good things must eventually come to an end, hopefully before they falter and lose all the qualities that attracted us in the first place (*coughSimpsonscough*). For Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner, that culmination point will be -- barring unforeseen events -- at the end of the show's seventh season. Season five doesn't return until next year, so we've still got quite a while before they're shutting off the lights at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, but how clear a vision does Weiner have of the show's end point? In an interview with Grantland, Weiner dropped a few hints as to what we might see in the show's finale, and they include an 84-year-old Don Draper.

Weiner says he does know how Mad Men will end, and that the idea popped into his head last season. Weiner said, "I always felt like it would be the experience of human life. And human life has a destination." That's where the octogenarian Don Draper comes in. Weiner continued, "I want to leave the show in a place where you have an idea of what it meant and how it's related to you." By seeing a modern-day Don, Weiner and his writers would have a chance to put the events of the show in perspective, and likely also toss out some commentary about the modern state of advertising and consumer culture. It's just one small element of how the show might end, but it could definitely be interesting. Weiner even admits he doesn't know everything that will happen in the finale, but he's got a noble goal in mind: "I want people to remember it fondly and not think it ended in a fart."

The interview also includes a funny anecdote about the show's earlier days. According to Weiner, at the end of Mad Men's first season Lionsgate and AMC decided to do some focus-group testing of the series before they announced whether or not they would pick it up for a second year. On his way to the meeting, Weiner learned that Variety was reporting that Mad Men had officially been renewed. He was able to toss that news back at them when AMC began listing off a string of demands. We'll let Weiner himself finish up the story:

Finally the head of AMC said, 'Well, if we're going to renew this …' And my manager said, 'We just heard it's already been renewed!' And the chairman guy looks around and says, 'Thanks a lot, guys. Way to go with the leverage.'