Serial’s Ending Was Perfect: Here’s Why

Major spoiler alert: this post is all about the Serial podcast finale. If you have not yet listened to Serial, go download it now, find a nice quiet place, and come back in approximately 12 hours.

All good to go?

Alright, so now that you’ve caught up on Serial, you know what happened in the finale that aired yesterday. It was pretty apparent that some people were upset with the way that the national phenomenon ended. I understand why–there wasn’t really an ending. Not in a classic sense, at least. Not in a way that we’ve been conditioned to believe there needs to be. We still don’t know who killed Hae Min Lee. We still don’t know whether or not Adnan Syed is guilty. We still don’t know that much at all.

America’s love affair with crime procedurals has a long history. Turn on the TV right now and you have a veritable slew from which to choose. Want to see a case go through the justice system from beginning to end? Check out “Law and Order.” Want to see unique cases regarding the Navy and the Marine Corps? Well, there’s “NCIS.” Are a genius forensic anthropologist and her hunky FBI partner more up your ally? I’d recommend “Bones.”

What do all of these shows have in common? At the end, with very exceptions, the bad guy gets caught. There may be conflicting evidence or different theories along the journey, but at the end of the episode the person who committed the crime ends up paying the price.

That’s fun when it comes to TV shows, but it is directly contrary to how things work in real life. Serial proves that.

Sarah Koenig went through the entire case of Adnan Syed piece by meticulous piece, and she still doesn’t have the answer. She put in way more time than the detectives on the case–not that I’m blaming them for that, it’s just the nature of two different professions. She put in way more time than the scientists and cops on my favorite procedurals who find one fingerprint and have their “Aha” moments. She literally took this thing apart with a fine-toothed comb, and she still wasn’t completely certain about what had happened to Hae on that fateful day in 1999.

Some people in the Twitterverse were upset not that there was no answer to who murdered Hae, but rather that the podcast was ending when it did. They were upset that Koenig didn’t continue digging. Again, I’m not, because that’s life. Answers are not guaranteed, and not everyone has the luxury of taking forever to find them. There are plenty of people who will never get their answers–parents who have lost their children, people who have lost their significant others, and innocent prisoners who were convicted for reasons they may never understand.

Those people may never get their answers. So why should we, fans of this podcast, get ours?

I would love to know who killed Hae Min Lee. I, like everyone else who got a little obsessed with this podcast, have my theories. But I think at the end of the day, what Koenig and her team accomplished wasn’t just a masterfully told story, but a living embodiment of the questions that our justice system has to deal with every single day. It’s easy to forget that, when you can just turn on the TV and see Agent Gibbs or Sergeant Benson or Agent Booth get the bad guy. Let Serial serve as a reminder that it’s almost never that simple.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.