Disenchantment has always been a bit of a divisive show. While I generally count myself as a fan, I do sympathize with a lot of its critics. It is a very strange, inconsistent series.
It’s definitely not what you’d expect in the context of Matt Groening’s other shows. I’m not even sure I’d call it a comedy. It’s more of a dramedy. It’s got a lot of jokes, but the humour is ultimately secondary to its intricate plot.
And that plot has not always been a strength. Its pacing has been glacial, and it rambled hither and yon throughout its five seasons with only the barest suggestion of a cohesive direction. A lot was riding on the fifth and final season to finally pay off all of the mysteries, and while it was an enjoyable season in many ways, it largely failed in that goal.
For much of the last ten episodes, I was ready to declare the fifth season the best, and by far. It manages to be both the funniest and the most serious season to date, finally nailing Disenchantment’s often inconsistent mix of drama and comedy. Up until the final episode, it’s a fantastically enjoyable season.
But I kept waiting for them to finally begin resolving the overwhelming pile of questions and mysteries the show has wracked up over its run. And waiting. And waiting. And waiting. And then the credits rolled.
Many of the mysteries received resolutions that were glib and unsatisfying. Even more got no answers at all. They even introduced a few new big mysteries this season and then promptly refused to resolve them, too.
Perhaps part of the blame is on me for over-hyping myself, but they really did sell the idea there was some grand plan and that everything would be revealed in the end. I’m having flashbacks to the ending of the Ron Moore Battlestar Galactica — although however flawed it may have been, Disenchantment’s ending is still much more satisfying than BSG’s disastrous conclusion.
We had long heard that Disenchantment was planned to run for six seasons. No explanation has been given for why it ended with season five that I’m aware of, but it’s likely Netflix pulled the plug on them prematurely. I’ve seen a lot of people blame the ending’s messiness on this, and I’m sure it didn’t help, but so little is answered that I’m leaning towards the impression the writers just didn’t have a plan and didn’t know how to wrap things up.
However, Disenchantment’s saving grace has always been its characters, and that remains true here. Again echoing BSG, even as the meta-plot collapsed, the character arcs remained strong.
Bean and her companions have always been fiercely lovable, and that never stopped being true. In preparing for this post, I went back and reread my previous posts on Disenchantment, and even way back in season one I was heaping praise on Abbi Jacobson as Bean, and if anything my opinion of her performance has only increased since then. As the child of a narcissistic parent myself, her fury at Dagmar felt very cathartic.
Also, this was truly Mop Girl’s finest hour. Not the hero we deserve, but the hero we need.
The conclusion of Disenchantment’s many character arcs is as satisfying as the conclusion of its meta-plot is disappointing. There’s a lot of happy endings, and some bittersweet endings, but it feels like everyone wound up exactly where they belong one way or another. For a show that was always about finding your place in the world when you don’t quite fit in, it’s a great place to leave it.
In the end, Disenchantment died as it lived: Frustratingly uneven, but with enough heart to make the journey worthwhile.
Superior Realities 
I posted about this today, too. I think we’re somewhat in agreement, especially about the positives. The characters are the real strength of the whole show and their depth and charisma carry almost any other weakness you care to name.
Where I’d disagree is with your assessment of the relative strengths of the five seasons and the relative strength of the episodes in the final season itself. I think the first three seasons are much stronger than either season four or five. I’d need to re-watch the lot to give a more analytical reading but from memory, I recall the first couple of seasons as being significantly funnier and more anarchic, with a lot less reliance on plot and a lot more good jokes.
That said, I also recall the plots themselves being clearer and more focused right through season three. Season four is where it started to fall apart, plotwise. It reminds me a bit in that respect of the second season of Twin Peaks, before David Lynch returned to re-focus the show. There seem to be a lot of writers all pursuing their own ideas and characters with not too much co-ordination between them.
Season Five, I thought, was better structured than Season Four but only because it’s quite linear with not all that much in the way of sub-plots. There are an awful lot of of fight and/or flight scenes that mostly seem there to fill out the running time, although to be fair they do also make space for a lot of good visual gags. As for the finale itself, I thought that was by some margin the best episode of the last season. As I said in my post, I found it very satisfying.
I liked the way most characters ended up with some sort of happy ever after, something that seemed very appropriate for a fairy tale, which, despite Bean’s assertion, it categorically was (As I’m sure she’d now admit, given Maura’s return.) I also very much liked the unusual emphasis on redemption, learning from experience and forgiveness. In that resepct it ended up feeling like a surprisingly mature show. As for the plot holes, I pretty much gave up any expectation of either internal consistency or narrative resolution back in Season Four. I don’t think it’s the kind of show where you’re expected to take that kind of thing seriously, soemthing that’s made overtly apparent by the repeated attempts of the guy leaning out of his attic window to criticize the failings of the narrative, all of which end in him being shot with an arrow.
I look forward to watching the whole thing again some day not too long from now to see if it hangs differently when you know where it’s going. Always assuming I remember any of the plot twists, which is not as likely as all that. Overall, I’d say it started out as a great show and worked it’s way down to very good, which isn’t too shabby.