Reminder of the details for those of you who have a hazy memory of the finale. ICE looked at Vic Mackey's resume including many charges, complaints and allegations of excessive force, and that he was a prime suspect in multiple murder investigations, and said "Yes please! Have full immunity!"
Good thing nothing like that would ever happen in real life.
Vic's ending never really sat well with me. He didn't face a reckoning for his actions. He just got benched. Then he hears sirens, gets up, goes to the window, and wishes he was back on the streets. Everyone else got a more satisfying ending.
I'm not sure if Vic should have went out in a blaze of glory, but he should have been taken down by a gang or cartel or something. Or the bikers. I felt like he got an easy way out and it shouldn't have been that way.
Shane's ending was just wild.
Such a great show otherwise. And semi-spawned Sons of Anarchy (SoA creator Kurt Sutter was a staff writer on The Shield; the two shows are not formally connected. However, Mayans MC is connected to Sons and the Mayans featured in The Shield.
Vic wanted a blaze of glory. What he got was purgatory. Which for him, was hell.
Haven't watched it in a while but I seem to remember I liked the ending. He thinks he's outmanoeuvred everyone avoiding jail and a reckoning for his crimes.
However my take on it ending is that he's now stuck in a dead end desk job with no action and he's completely cut out of everything else. So a slow death of a thousand cuts thing that he would hate more than a final reckoning.
Yeah, it was exactly this. He wanted to be the big action hero, so to him, rotting behind a desk on a short leash would be the worst possible ending. Even in prison he could play out his power fantasy, even on a small scale. Here, he's finished.