The Revised ‘Mythic Quest’ Finale Drastically Changes Rob McElhenney’s Most Complex On-Screen Relationship
As of this morning, Mythic Quest has officially concluded, as has the most complicated workplace relationship that Rob McElhenney’s had since he married Sweet Dee.
The season-finale-turned-series-closer of McElhenney’s abruptly canceled workplace comedy Mythic Quest just hit streaming, and AppleTV+’s plan to allow McElhenney, Megan Ganz, Charlie Day, David Hornsby and Ashly Burch to end their project on (sorta) their own terms culminated in an attempt to put the genie back in the bottle on the show’s most shocking plot twist. When the streamer announced that Mythic Quest wouldn’t continue late last week, Apple simultaneously revealed their unprecedented move to re-cut the Season Four finale, “Heaven and Hell,” in order to allow the show’s creators to try and turn the episode’s salacious cliffhanger into a narratively satisfying conclusion, a daunting task for any editor with a deadline of just one week.
Spoilers ahead for fans of canceled and awkwardly re-cut comedy shows — this morning, the revised and now definitive version of “Heaven and Hell” hit streaming, and the only change that Mythic Quest made to its now-final episode was the removal of the romantic moment shared between Rob McElhenney’s main character Ian and his once-and-future platonic work partner Poppy.
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“Will they or won't they?” just became “They won't, they never did, so just forget about it. Buh-bye!”
In the original cut of “Heaven and Hell,” Ian convinced a heavily pregnant Poppy to move to the Netherlands in order to be with her non-committal baby daddy Storm, only for Poppy to fake going into labor on her flight out of the country upon realizing that Ian has returned to Mythic Quest after quitting the company in the previous episode. Poppy confronted Ian in the Mythic Quest office, and he explained that he came back to the company because, “The thought of sitting at my desk, and looking to my left, and you not being there, is my actual version of Hell.” The old friends and coworkers then shared a tender embrace.
But in a shocking twist, Poppy grabbed Ian as he walked away and the two passionately kissed, only to jerk away from each other after a solid 10 seconds of smooching and stare at one another in stunned silence. After four seasons of ups and downs in their complicated but (mostly) platonic working and personal relationship, Ian and Poppy closed out Season Four with a romantic cliffhanger that left fans torn over the future of their relationship.
Well, in the now-official version of “Heaven and Hell” that dropped this morning, Poppy and Ian skip the longing look, the turn to leave, the passionate make-out and the moment of shock, and, instead they… go back to work. Four seasons of Mythic Quest now closes on the canonically and unquestionably platonic professional partners organizing their work stations and arguing over whether or not Poppy has lots of sex — but not with Ian, of course.
While the original ending of “Heaven and Hell” was controversial in its own right for how it contradicted prior statements made by the show's creators that promised that Ian and Poppy’s incredible chemistry would never turn romantic, at least it ended on a moment of change and development in Mythic Quest’s most important relationship. Although the series was, on its surface, about a game company and the personalities who work there, we don’t watch sitcoms to find out what happens to a fake video game — we watch them for the characters and what happens between them.
So instead of Mythic Quest closing on a cliffhanger that pushed the foundational friendship/professional partnership of the series into uncomfortable new territory, the story of Ian and Poppy, and, by extension, the tale of Mythic Quest as a whole, no longer ends with a statement on their complicated and evolving relationship. Thanks to the new ending of Mythic Quest, the entire series is really just about the fake video game from which it gets its title.
Show’s over — back to work.
