Person Of Interest -- The End

It's finally here. The end of Person of Interest. But how will it end? Will anyone be left standing? Will Samaritan just die or will he manage to take everyone down with him?

Global outages. Yep, Y2K has been realized as Ice-9 spreads.

The Machine keeps asking, “Can you hear me?” She's giving the speech she did at the beginning of the season.

Finch on a rooftop. He asks if The Machine is there? She says her mind is beginning to slip. She says they have eight and a half minutes give or take. He says he knows what happened to Reese, but what about the others? Did they make it? She says she's not sure.

The Machine says everyone dies alone. She has trouble remembering what someone said. They have the same conversation they had earlier about death.

Shaw at the cemetery. Reese looking like he's about to be shot. Fusco on the subway shot. Finch believes it's the end for him as he's also been shot.

Shaw at Root's grave. She says she came to say goodbye. She says she's sorry and this just isn't her thing. She hears a phone rings. She hears Root's voice coming from the grave. She warns Shaw that Samaritan has sent his goons after her. So Samaritan isn't dead, yet.

Reese and Fusco at the police station. Reese says they need help finding Finch. The captain wants to talk to Reese and Fusco in his office. Fusco is asks where Laroux is. The captain says Reese reminds him of the Man in the Suit. The captain is going to arrest him. Samaritan gave him a tip. Reese takes the captain out. As they try to leave Fusco and Reese are held at gunpoint.

They're transported in a van. Some crooked Samaritan cops are planning to kill them. Fusco says because of Reese he's a better man. They make Reese and Fusco get to their knees as they're about to shoot them in the head. But they're the ones who get shot. Finch comes out. Then Finch asks if they're ready to end this.

So we're apparently in flashback mode before Finch is on the roof shot, Fusco is shot and The Machine says she only has eight and a half minutes left.

Finch looking at a building as Grace comes up to him. He talks about his father and how they'd watch birds. Hence all the bird names he takes on. He tells her his father died of dementia in a care facility. Grace tells him she loves him no matter what, when he says he didn't visit his father because he thought he might be ashamed of some decisions he made. Finch says he was a fussy baby and only the sound of birds could calm him so his father learned all the names of the birds.

The Machine wakes Finch up and he sees Root standing there. She says he built her to watch people die. He said he thought he built her to prevent that. She said to do that she had to watch people die to learn about them. How they got where they were and if she could have stopped them in some way. There were so many people she couldn't help. So much death bothered her, so much of it was senseless. She says she heard something but she can't remember what comforted her.

Back to what lead up to this moment. Reese and Finch take Fusco to the subway and introduce him to The Machine. Shaw is there. Finch realizes Samaritan has made a copy of itself. He tells Fusco and Shaw to stay in the subway to protect themselves from Samaritan's people, as Harold and Reese go to destroy the back-up copy of Samaritan.

Samaritan hid himself in the federal reserve. Finch goes up saying he's got a thermal nuclear weapon with him and tells the security guard to evacuate the building. They walk into the federal reserve. Reese says he likes this new side of him but it's terrifying. Reese puts knock-out gas in the vents. They don gas masks.

Shaw and Fusco arm themselves. The Machine directs Shaw to blow up the subway so they can escape before Samaritan's men can get to them. The men start firing on Shaw and Fusco as they escape in the subway car and the bomb goes off. Blackwell comes out of the subway car and shoots Shaw in the arm. Fusco beats him unconscious.

Reese and Finch break into the vault. The Machine opens the vault for them. They enter the vault where Samaritan is and it's surrounded by gold. A man comes in and shoots at them. Reese tries to hold them off as Finch infects the copy of Samaritan with the Ice-9 virus. Reese engages in hand to hand combat before knocking the man out with a gold bar. I believe Finch has been shot but he's not letting on. Samaritan keeps spawning itself and one version manages to escape the virus. It plans to upload itself into a satellite and then come back to earth when it's safe. Finch has to upload a copy of The Machine to stop it. She tells Finch whomever uploads her won't make it out alive. Finch locks Reese into the vault to keep him safe. He says Reese has been his best friend and he doesn't intend to make it off the rooftop alive. He says an emotional goodbye to John before locking him inside the vault so he'll be safe.

So, the leaked spoilers on the final episode were wrong. Reese doesn't die. He's safe. Or at least he is for now.

The Machine tells Finch he's not doing well. He says he started this and he'll finish this alone, when she offers to get him some help. The lights suddenly go out and Samaritan sends a message to Finch over one of the large screens on one of the buildings. The Machine warns that Samaritan is trying to stall Harold until his men find him.

Shaw realizes Blackwell is the one who killed Root. The Machine tells her that doesn't matter because she and Fusco need to get off the subway car at the next stop to escape certain death.

Back to when Harold first gets on the rooftop.

The Machine says Root wanted Shaw to know that because she can't feel things like other people that makes her beautiful. That she's a straight line; an arrow. Blackwell manages to stab Fusco and escapes. Shaw helps Fusco out of the car.

The Machine tells Finch the satellite will soon be in view. Finch asks if this is the right place; this is where he's supposed to be. Reese is on the right building. He's the one whose going to sacrifice himself. Reese says he and The Machine had a deal. Finch says it's supposed to be him. The Machine says Reese wouldn't have let him die.

Finch begs Reese to escape as men come to surround him. Finch says this wasn't supposed to be the way it ended. Reese says Finch came to him and gave him a purpose. He says sometimes saving one life is the right life. He says goodbye to Finch. The Machine tells Finch she's sorry. She says she'll stay with Reese for as long as she can to help him. The Machine tells him he has to go to not ruin Reese's plan to save him.

The Machine remembers a cop saying everyone dies alone, but if you mean something to someone, if you help someone or love someone. If even a single person remembers you then maybe you never really die, at all.

She says they made mistakes but they helped some people, too. Finch walks away as Reese watches him leave. She says goodbye to him.

The phone rings in the subway. The Machine made a recording of her voice with her message on it. The Machine puts her hand on Reese's shoulder as he's gunned down. But did Reese nail Samaritan's hide before he died? Yes, he did. On the satellite Samaritan is under attack, as Shaw and Fusco come outside from the subway and see a missile flying through the air heading straight for the building that Reese is on top of.

I had a feeling that bastard of a machine wouldn't go down easy. Who'd have thought he'd have spawned copies of himself and even transport his miserable self into outer space.

The government is blaming the missile on the Chinese. A woman knows the senator's project Northern Lights was to blame.

Blackwell in his apartment where Shaw corners him. He says it was nothing personal, it was just as job. She says she met someone people, good people, and that's why she won't just out-and-out kill him. He says they wouldn't want her to kill him, but she says all those people are dead.

Fusco in a bar with Bear as Shaw comes to join him. Fusco believes Reese and Finch are dead. Fusco asks if she's sticking around and she says she's collecting her dog and leaves with Bear.

The satellite in other space floating as The Machine is talking. Something is downloading itself on The Machine's equipment. Is it Samaritan or The Machine? Finch watching Grace paint a picture. She's happy to see him.

The phone rings as Shaw is walking down the street. She answers it, as she's being watched on camera and The Machine says that maybe this isn't the end, at all. Shaw walks away smiling.

And I kind of hated this finale. I hated the season. I felt like a lot of the characters were hacked up to service the great lesbian love affair that never was. This entire season was the Shaw and Root season, with the two main characters: Reese and Finch kind of shunted aside. In the end Shaw gets Finch's dog, she gets his machine and she gets Reese's job. If there is a revival of the show I doubt Finch or Reese will be in it, it'll be built around Shaw and the voice of Root as The Machine.

As I've said before, Reese, Finch and Fusco all had deeper relationships with Root, but the showrunners decided to sell this show out to the Root fans who wanted a big lesbian love affair between her and Shaw, even though there was never any evidence Shaw wasn't a heterosexual. Their answer to that was sexuality is fluid. What happened to you can make yourself not gay because you were born that way?

The show obviously bought the Root fans BS that Root was the only reason anyone watched and decided to pander to them in the hopes they would bring in enough ratings to get a renewal, but CBS cancelled the show before it ever aired it's last season. And I think that was for the best. When a show starts pandering to shippers and warping stories and characters to give them the couple they want it's the time to pull the plug on the show.

I think I would have preferred if the show ended with Reese and Finch going out together taking down Samaritan. It was kind of crummy that Reese is the only one who dies and he died alone with a machine simulation watching. I also don't think surviving the show did Finch any favors. He just abandoned the dog he was devoted to and he didn't even contact Shaw or Fusco to tell them what really happened. New Finch wasn't very likable in the end.

Worst, I wanted The Machine to die. I thought the whole point of the paranoia of having a machine watching everyone all the time was that it would lead to a time when humanity was free of Big Brother watching, but the show ended with humanity being watched again. Of course, the question is by what.

I think if the show had been renewed The Machine that downloaded itself from the satellite would have proven to be Samaritan with the team unaware they were now working with their enemy.

Anyway, few shows deliver satisfying endings, especially when they're trying to leave it open-ended in hopes some other network or outlet will pick them up. Me, I'm done with the show. The only reason I continued watched after the hideous episode that episode 4 was because I knew it was coming to an end and I would hang in to see how it ended.

I will give them credit for two things. They're one of the few shows to pull off a true game-changing episode and the 100th may have been the best episode of the entire series.