10 TV Finales That Messed With Your Brain
3. The Prisoner - ‘Fall Out’
Just as Lost’s finale doubled down on the themes it had been pursuing all along, so January 1968’s finale to the groundbreaking psychological thriller The Prisoner also danced with the girl it brought to the party, dissecting ideas of collectivism versus individualism while delivering a tense study in surreal existential dread.
Unfortunately, the plot of ‘Fall Out’ - rebellious former spy Number Six has resisted all attempts by Number Two, head of sinister deprogramming camp The Village, to brainwash him and find out why he resigned his post, leading to a last ditch gambit to break our hero’s will - was layered with obscure symbolism and imagery, and no one understood it.
The weird mind games the series had devoted itself to took the next step to proper head*ck territory, and the result is still controversial to this day. Back in early 1968, public pressure to explain the events of the climactic episode was so strong that the series’ lead actor and driving creative Patrick McGoohan was forced to go into hiding.
Is the bizarre ritual Number Six is co-opted into really a ceremony to initiate him into The Village’s secrets, or just another way to mess with his head? Is Number Two really killed by his own superiors and revived, and is he really on Number Six’s side after this? Why is ‘Number One’s face identical to Number Six under that gorilla mask, and do they really escape to return home at the end?
To this day, very few people have managed to get their heads around it.