How Fans Cope When Their Fan Favorites Come to an End

Source: Kipras Streimikis/Unsplash

Being a fan can be a rewarding, fulfilling, and healthy experience. When fans are passionate about fictional characters and worlds, they can find role models and sources of inspiration, explore their own identities, and become part of a community of other enthusiasts that can be supportive and affirming. Especially over long periods of time, fans’ attachment to the things they love can be a powerful source of joy and motivation and a significant part of their everyday lives.

From favorite leisure time activities to primary friend groups, fandoms provide important benefits. But what happens when the television show goes off the air or the book series ends or the band breaks up? In the past week, devotees of several popular TV shows have taken to social media to plead for their continuation. For fans, the loss of a fan favorite is a painful experience.

When we develop an attachment to something, whether it’s a parental figure or a romantic partner, or a favorite TV show, a break in that attachment can be painful. We’re wired to maintain our attachments and the security they provide, which anyone who has endured an unwanted breakup knows. Admirers experience similar feelings of loss when something ends.

However, because being a fan is often not well understood and even stigmatized, the pain that fans feel when something important to them ends is often dismissed with comments such as “get over it, it’s just a television show” or “you didn’t even know that singer, why are you crying?” The lack of empathy makes the loss even more difficult, turning it into a stigmatized loss and cutting the grieving follower off from potential sources of support.

When one of the members of the popular band One Direction left the group in 2015, for example, fans posted about their grief online, which was depicted in the media as irrational hysteria instead of an understandable response to loss. When Michael Jackson passed away, his supporters grieved his death as though they had lost a member of their family, arranging communal celebrations of his life that served as informal funerals and saying it felt just as painful, which was covered similarly in the media.

Nevertheless, there is a long history of fans trying to forestall the loss of their favorites. Admirers went on a letter-writing campaign in the 1960s to save the original Star Trek series. This month, fans of the show ‘Prodigal Son’ responded to its threatened cancellation in a similar way, expressing their sentiments with pleas on social media. These campaigns sometimes succeed in temporarily preventing the loss, but no television show lasts forever and no popular singers are immortal.

When a fan favorite ends, some aficionados will walk away and invest in a new fandom, perhaps retaining a lingering fondness for the thing they once loved and reworking their identity as fans. Other devotees may feel abandoned and re-evaluate their opinion of the lost show or band or celebrity, questioning their emotional investment and perhaps creating their own more palatable endings by writing their own fan fiction. Followers may also choose to maintain their connection to something they have loved through its inevitable transitions—cancellations, fictional or real-life deaths, break-ups, narrative redirections—by renegotiating their relationship with what they fan and the meaning it holds in their lives, staying connected with their communities.

What can help fans get through these transitions?

People who are grieving a loss often benefit from “objects of connection” that allow them to continue their attachment to who or what they lost—a framed photo, a dog’s collar, a child’s favorite toy—and tangible things like DVDs or books or memorabilia serve the same function for admirers. This week the full series DVD set for the recently ended fan-favorite television show Supernatural was released, which reignited an emotional reaction in its enthusiasts. The show ended six months ago after a 15-year run, which meant that some of its followers quite literally grew up with the show. People experience genuine attachment to familiar faces they see every week; after 15 years, the fictional characters felt like part of the family to many fans. The loss of the show impacted the sense of self and identity of individuals who defined themselves as Supernatural fans, taking away many followers' "comfort characters" and disrupting the fandom community. Having all 15 seasons to hang onto and revisit was a comfort to many.

As with any loss, validation also helps. The release of the full series DVD set was accompanied by media coverage from journalists who had covered the show for its long run and identified as fans themselves, including Fangoria's heartfelt tribute. Reading about others who share "the hole the show’s ending left behind" is validating for followers and can help with healing. The relationship between Supernatural’s actors and admirers is more reciprocal than many shows after years of regular interaction online and at numerous conventions; the actors have also validated fans’ feelings of loss by sharing their own feelings.

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Supernatural actors Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki say a tearful goodbye to fans at their last Comic-Con panel

Source: Lynn Zubernis

In the book There’ll Be Peace When You Are Done (edited by me), actor Jensen Ackles reminds fans to take Supernatural’s message of persistence with them, writing that the show “carries the message to keep fighting for each other, and that has inspired the fandom to keep fighting too, whatever fight they are facing.” Jared Padalecki writes that the fandom has taught him to Always Keep Fighting too, the unofficial mantra of the show and its characters. The actors’ reminders and sharing their own feelings of loss offer inspiration to Supernatural’s followers as they cope with the show ending, as well as validation of their feelings. Enthusiasts of that show and other fan favorites that have ended or disbanded, however, will likely also continue to hope for a reboot!