‘Mythic Quest’ Fans Hate the New Ending Even More Than the Old One
Mythic Quest fans had mixed feelings about the original final episode of the show, but even the anti-GrimPops prefer an emotionally confusing cliffhanger to an awkward retcon.
When AppleTV+ announced the abrupt cancelation of their critically acclaimed series Mythic Quest from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia creator Rob McElhenney and his collaborators Charlie Day, Megan Ganz, David Hornsby and Ashly Burch late last week, the surprise plug-pull came with an extremely unusual caveat. In order to give the fans some semblance of a satisfying conclusion to the story following the dramatic twist at the end of the Season Four finale, “Heaven and Hell,” Apple gave Mythic Quest one week to re-edit what is now the final episode of the series and send the show into the “game over” screen on sort of its own terms.
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Today, the reworked cut of “Heaven and Hell” dropped on AppleTV+, and — spoilers ahead for any Mythic Quest fans who missed either version of the finale — fans were disappointed to find that the only change made to the final episode was that the editors cut out the controversial kiss between Ian Grimm and his creative partner Poppy Li, leaving the show with an aggressively platonic ending that neither shippers of the two main characters nor haters of the romantic twist found particularly conclusive.
In the original cut of “Heaven and Hell,” Ian and Poppy shared a tender embrace after they both decided to return to Mythic Quest to be with each other. Then, when Ian begins to turn away, Poppy grabbed him and the two passionately lock lips for a solid 10 seconds before breaking off and staring at each in abject shock. Roll credits.
When “Heaven and Hell” first hit streaming back in late March, the kiss between Ian and Poppy was a controversial moment because, for the four seasons of Mythic Quest leading up to that moment, their relationship had been refreshingly platonic, but just as complicated and electric as any on-screen romance we’ve seen from similar sitcoms. Back in a 2022 interview with SlashFilm, Ganz explained why she and her co-creators wanted to tell the story of Ian and Poppy’s relationship sans romance, saying, “I don’t see a lot of representation of men and women working together in a non-romantic capacity and having meaningful relationships that aren’t romantic.”
Ganz added, “I think, with every passing generation, men and women are finding that they have long-term important friends in their lives from the opposite sex that can be just as meaningful as romantic connections.”
Many Mythic Quest fans found that the original ending of “Heaven and Hell” was a betrayal of these platonic principles and that it weakened the unique and complex arc of Poppy and Ian’s relationship, but even those GrimPop detractors aren’t just going to pretend that the kiss never happened.
In a thread about the updated Mythic Quest ending in the show’s subreddit, the top commenter wrote, “I didn’t even enjoy the kiss. And I still hate this more. I would have preferred something tacked on after the kiss, like them acknowledging their attraction and moving forward or agreeing it was a mistake and moving forward.”
“This is just lame,” they concluded.
“What a wet fart of an ending,” another added succinctly.
Other fans argued that the new ending indicates that the now-canned Mythic Quest Season Five would have shown Ian and Poppy eventually coming to the conclusion that their relationship doesn’t work as a romance before going back to being platonic life partners. From that perspective, cutting the kiss was the only way for Mythic Quest to write itself out of the hole that Apple placed them in following the mid-cliffhanger cancelation.
But whatever the reasoning behind the cut may have been, the result is the same — Mythic Quest fans can’t forget what they saw.
