Whatever Happened To . . . .

I once read an interview with Stephen King (I falsely remembered that it was in the introduction to the re-release of The Stand, but when I double-checked in preparation for the this blog entry, I found that I was wrong) in which King half chuckled and half griped that his fans often ask him whatever happened to his characters after the story ended.

I can understand both the gripe and the chuckle. On the one hand, getting only minor variations of the same question over and over again must surely get annoying. On the other hand, it's the highest compliment that King has managed to create characters so believable that even people who know better on one level, who know that the characters are fictional, can't help but think of the them as real people, still out there, somewhere, maybe living happily ever after, maybe struggling to survive.

The best fiction writing does that. The book or the movie or the TV series ends, and we're left wondering, "but then what . . . "

I'm not talking about confusing or unsatisfying endings. Nor am I talking about "open-ended" endings that really just present limited options. (The infamous ending of The Sopranos feels open-ended, but it's really presenting only two basic scenarios: Does Tony Soprano get murdered after the cut to black -- or not?) I'm not talking about endings at all. I'm talking about characters who are so entertaining and fully fleshed out, that they seem to defy the very concept of endings. And in light of my introductory paragraph, I'll start with the most obvious example. Beware: Spoilers abound.

1. The Stand: Stephen King is, for my money, the one author who manages to pull off this hat trick on a regular basis. Personally, I think a combination of his popularity and his subject matter makes King vastly under-rated as a serious author. One hundred years from now, he will be studied as a prolific author of "the classics," just like Faulkner and Twain are studied today. One of King's greatest strengths is his ability to present believable, three-dimensional characters, and you can take almost any of his better books (there are a lot of them) and imagine the characters living lives after the official story ends. But I understand why people ask him about The Stand most of all.

For those of you unfamiliar with the novel, it concerns the End of Civilization as We Know It, due to the accidental release of "the superflu," an artificially engineered disease that wipes out 99.4% of humanity. The survivors are instinctively drawn to two seemingly random locations: The "good guys" are drawn to Boulder, Colorado, where they form a new democracy, and the "bad guys" instinctively migrate to Las Vegas, Nevada, ruled by the ruthless, supernatural, and villainous Randall Flagg. While the novel does draw strong moral lines in the sand, its good guy/ bad guy dynamic often refuses to paint its characters in moral black and white. Some of the good guys are flawed, some of the bad guys struggle with conscience, and some characters are aware that they seem out of place in both locations.

If you haven't read the book, I highly suggest you set aside the time to do so. (The novel is indeed epic in length, so set aside a lot of time.) SPOILER: The book ends on several intriguing notes. After the destruction of Vegas, the sole remaining concentration of civilization is the new democratic republic, the Boulder Free Zone, and there is a strong implication that the once struggling new settlement will continue to thrive. Even as survivors of the superflu continue to trickle into Boulder, some of the  relatively longer-term residents consider the pros and cons of leaving again. Who leaves? Who stays? How does the Boulder Free Zone, and its ruling "Free Zone Committee" evolve over time? Those who decide to leave are surely committing themselves to lives of seclusion. How does that work out for them?

One implication of the ending that I'm surprised I've never heard about anywhere: Nearly the entire criminal element of humanity either died from the superflu or was killed in the explosion in Vegas. Does that mean that the Boulder Free Zone is essentially a utopia now? Or will the uglier side of humanity eventually rear its head once again?

2. Forever: Contrary to the ambitious title, this show lasted only one season, and told the story of Doctor Henry Morgan, an immortal born in the year 1779, who stopped aging in his late thirties and is still alive and well today, working as a medical examiner for the New York Police Department. Dr. Morgan is gifted not only with immortality -- a condition known only by his adopted son -- but also with a Sherlockian-level of observation and deduction, making him an invaluable assett to the various murder cases that come before his precinct. Dr. Morgan was played with Holmesian flair by Ioan Gruffud, and supporting actors/ characters included Joel David Moore as his assistant in the medical lab, Judd Hirsch as his mortal son, Alana de Garza as love interest and the police detective who keeps coming up with excuses to take him along on investigations, and Burn Gorman as the mysterious , villainous, fellow immortal "Adam."

Most episodes were standard, Law and Order style police procedurals. Although not officially a detective, Dr. Morgan often helped out on the cases much more than most ME's do, due to both his Holmesian powers of deduction and also his centuries of accumulated knowledge. Flashbacks to earlier periods of Dr. Morgan's life often either mirrored current events or illustrated how he came by whatever knowledge he finds useful in the latest case.

SPOILER: In the series finale, Dr. Morgan finally finds a way to eliminate Adam as a threat -- without killing him -- and decides to reveal his secret to his love interest and police partner, Detective Jo Martinez. BUT THEN WHAT?!??

Considering the nature of Dr. Morgan's condition (Adam's theory of the one thing that kill both immortals is disproven; it appears that both characters are truly immortal after all) this show could have gone on for years, but ratings decided differently.

3. Homicide: Life on the Street: Many of the characters of Homicide, especially those in the first few seasons, were closely (to varying degrees) based on real-life people. But that doesn't mean we know what eventually happened to the fictional equivalents.

If you haven't seen the show, it's an adaptation of David Simon's non-fiction book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. While many of the cases and storylines were invented by TV writers, many others were based very closely (as opposed to Law and Order's massively altered "ripped from the headlines" cases) on actual events in the lives and careers of the early 90s homicide division of the Baltimore Police Department.

Homicide: The Movie aired one year after the series proper had ended. Some of the characters were still working homicide. Some were still cops but had transferred to other departments. At least two -- Stanley "Stan the Big Man" Bolander (Ned Beatty) and breakout character Frank Pembleton (Andre Braugher) -- had retired. Stan Bolander had fully retired, while Pembleton was working as a college professor.

There is one character whose continuing fate we already know: That of Detective John Munch, who transferred to the New York City Special Victims Unit, and continued to be played by Richard Belzer for decades on Law and Order: S.V.U. In Belzer/ Munch's farewell Law & Order episode as a regular character, Munch has a retirement party, and we're treated with very brief cameos from three different characters from Homicide: Billie Lou Hatfield, Detective Meldrick Lewis, and Gwen Munch. Between the three of them, they have only one line (when Meldrick shouts out a good-natured joke at Munch's expense). I wanted to see more, but it was nice to see that 13 years after the end of Homicide, these characters hadn't been forgotten -- at least, not entirely.

SPOILER: Homicide was very much an ensemble show, but the two characters who formed the heart of the series were Pembleton and his partner, Tim Bayliss (Kyle Secor). In the series finale, Bayliss, while off screen, murders serial killer Luke Ryland, who had used legal technicalities to evade justice. At the end of the TV movie, Bayliss risks ruining his friendship with Pembleton by confessing this crime to him, despite Pembleton's statement that, psychologically, he just couldn't take even one more confession. Does the friendship survive?

Note to TV producers: Twenty years is a sort of standard prison sentence for murder, at least on TV. It's been almost exactly that long since Bayliss confessed to the murder of Luke Ryland. How cool would it be to use Bayliss's return to society as an excuse to catch up with these old characters -- and include a scene where Bayliss is released from prison and is picked up by none other than his old friend and partner, Frank Pembleton?

4. The West Wing: This TV series sort of takes place in an alternate reality -- not in any fantasy or science fiction manner, but in this alternate reality, we never had presidents George Bush, Bill Clinton, George Bush, Jr., or Barack Obama; we had presidents D. Wire Newman, Owen Lassiter, Jed Bartlet, and Matthew Santos. Further, President Bartlet makes two predictions about his own staff members eventually becoming president: Sam Seaborn and Charlie Young. Do his predictions ever come true? Barring a canonical return to these characters, we'll never know. But I'd sure like to find out!

All entries on this list gave us tantalizing glimpses into the future for their respective narratives. The characters from Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" cross over into the world of The Stand, but never encounters any of that novel's characters. Law & Order: S.V.U. gave us the one-line cameo of  Homicide's Meldrick Lewis. But The West Wing really gave us a true glimpse into the characters' futures, thanks to a one-scene flash-forward at the start of the final season. Thus, we find out that C.J. marries Danny Concannon, Kate becomes a published author, Will is a congressman on the Ways and Means Committee, and Toby Ziegler and Jed Bartlet have put aside their differences and renewed their friendship. But then what happened? And what of Josh, who appears in the flash forward but without any detail about his current status? What of Sam, who doesn't appear in the flash forward at all? What of Bartlet's predictions about Charlie and Sam eventually becoming Presidents of the United States?

What book, movie, or show has you wondering what happened to your favorite characters later on?