The sad horse show has ended, and it will likely go down as one of the greatest ever made. As a testament to its popularity, the internet was flooded with fan theories about what really happened in the finale, which confused some viewers by clearly spelling things out. And while we love a good fan theory as much as anyone, hence our masterful 4,500 word argument that BoJack is secretly set on an Earth that's actually slightly different from our own, we're a little worried about the apparent lesson some people are taking away from it.

As a quick refresher/massive spoiler, the third-last episode (or antepenultimate episode, if you're nasty) sees BoJack relapse and collapse into his pool. The second to last episode is a dream where the drowning BoJack grapples with his mortality, tackles philosophical issues with dead characters, and does other fun cartoon stuff. Then, in the finale, he's hauled out of the pool at the last moment, revived, and finally forced to face true legal and personal consequences. But what YouTubers and other fans rushed to posit was "What if he did die, and the finale was all still his final dream?!?!?!"

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If you're the sort of person who looks at a show's clever background details and sees a web of conspiratorial hints to map out with string, then you can ostensibly create evidence for that idea. Sure, BoJack explicitly says otherwise by showing him flatline and then recover, but no good "He was secretly dead/in purgatory/a zombie robot trapped in a time loop" theory lets the facts slow them down. Again, silly theories can be fun. But in BoJack's case, picking apart the evidence is irrelevant, because the message of "That fucked-up horse is dead" is such an insane takeaway that we have to wonder if proponents were secretly watching a different show.

Netflix

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If there was one overarching theme throughout six seasons of BoJack, it's that you have to keep trying to be better. You can't wallow in the false assumption that you're the only person with problems, you can't acknowledge bad habits but then keep asking to be forgiven for them instead of trying to address them. You can struggle with addiction and mental illness, but you can't use them an excuse for abusing personal relationships. It's okay to relapse, but there's nothing heroic about letting your trauma define all that you are. Maybe life doesn't have any inherent meaning, but that's not an excuse to hurt people who want to enjoy theirs anyway.

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All of this is pretty much said directly to the audience at various points in the series, so to theorise that the show was secretly saying "Oh, we were just kidding, some people are inherently broken and doomed to fail and die, and aren't you smart for picking up on it" is, shall we say... misguided. Hell, hordes of fans were predicting BoJack's death for years because any ending other than total oblivion would be a "Hollywood" cop-out that wasn't "satisfying." Just happily watching season after season while ignoring what it was trying to say, waiting for a nihilistic ending (and arguing that it should have had one after the fact) so they could declare themselves smart for "getting it."