Raise your hand if you sobbed through the “Parks and Recreation” series finale. Great, so we’re all in this together.
NBC aired the final installment of “Parks” on Tuesday night, and through a series of flash forwards we found out exactly what happened to the former employees of Pawnee’s Parks and Recreation Department. Each story was a sweet, simple send-off and wrapped these characters up in neat bows fitting to their personas: April and Andy grow up a little, Ron finds his professional happy place and Ben and Leslie play charades with the Bidens. Here are the fates of Pawnee’s greatest:
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In 2025, Leslie and Ben are at the Bidens’ home for a dinner party — they play charades; it’s super casual — and a rep from the DNC asks Leslie to consider running for governor of Indiana. That same night, Jen Barkley (Kathryn Hahn) tells Ben that he should run. Leslie and Ben have a mature, loving conversation about which one of them will campaign. They make a pros and cons list and decide to flip a coin. But back in Pawnee, among all their old friends, Ben makes the final decision: Leslie will run. She wins, obviously.
We see Governor Knope honored at Indiana University in 2035. Though what happens between then and Garry’s funeral is left up to the viewer, Leslie’s final chapter is a perfect, progressive ending for America’s greatest fictional former Parks Department employee. She has the final line of the show and stares straight into the camera smiling. “I’m ready.”
