Throughout its ups and downs, Mythic Quest always brought a lighthearted spin to a traditionally-heavily-stressful work environment. In spite of crunch, coding sprints, personnel turnover, and HR conflicts, they always managed to eek out the next big thing, from the original MQ launch to the later success of their game-building software, PlayPen, a clear reference to the modern Roblox, to Ian and Poppy's innovative expansion "Elysium" to cap off season 4.
We have watched this ragtag team struggle with age, identity, community, and work-life balance, exploring these concepts as they arise within a fast-paced technical industry which is often as white as it is male. While the finale left a handful of dangling threads, the show would feel long and drawn out if it were to be renewed, storylines that have been in the works for years are pretty much all tied up.
There is no word about the showrunners seeking renewal, but the new series Side Quest premiered the same day as the season 4 finale, so we don't have to say goodbye to this geeky world just yet. As this review will discuss some key parts of finale, consider this your SPOILER WARNING.
Why Mythic Quest season 5 doesn't need to happen
Even some of the conflict in this past season felt manufactured, as though they were running low on material for their existing cast and needed to bring in fresh characters or bring back old ones. Lots of the writing decisions were extremely clever and earned, such as Jo's obsession with being an "assistant" taken to the extreme. I found this choice really comical, and I think Jessie Ennis did more than her fair share of work to elevate the script. But with her storyline in particular, I don't feel like there's a whole lot of material to work with going forward. She's sort of done everything she can do, especially after being thwarted by the Executive Assistant in the final meeting after a failed coup attempt on his job. But I do think this incident is earned; she finally sees some kind of consequence for her scheming.
I also loved Dana and Rachel's relationship, and their proposal scene did make me cry, but they felt incredibly flat after the first couple of seasons. Rather than letting either of them maintain those dynamic, misguided personas that made them endearing at the start, they both grow into people they wouldn't recognize. By the end of the show, they're conniving and selfish, their goals revolve solely around money.
The show has already turned them into capitalists, and I'm frankly just not interested in seeing Rachel try to rehabilitate her image after running her mouth about the moon landing in front of Congress. The use of her politics as the butt of a joke has gotten stale as those politics are indivisibly entwined with her sexuality and work life, but the joke of her being incapable of learning from her mistakes is not in line with the character portrait painted in earlier seasons.
But of course, the big kicker at the end of the season 4 finale leaves our biggest question only half-answered: Poppy doesn't get on the plane to the Netherlands. She and Ian kiss. They seem like they want to make it work. And then they pull away, looking slightly disgusted. Will they? Won't they? We still don't know, but I'm so far past caring! They keep complaining about situations that they put themselves into and could navigate out of at any time. At every turn they both choose the most destabilizing path forward, to the point that it's not a path forward at all — they're standing still! They are both tar pits who just make each other worse. Frankly, they belong together.
But at the same time, their kiss still didn't feel earned. It felt like it adhered to convention. I think that if they've known each other for 15 years, the idea of dating one another would have come long before Poppy's first kid. Ian says he loves her brain, but doesn't see her romantically, which led to Poppy linking up with Storm initially. Poppy said only one episode ago that she wanted to put as much distance between herself and Ian as possible, because she thought he was incapable of change. An episode later, and we see her reenact the same tired trope of abandoning her flight out to run home and kiss the guy that's been in front of her the whole time.
If the finale had been better, or if I had confidence in the writers to draw these conflicts out longer than they already have, maybe I would feel differently about Mythic Quest returning for season 5. As it stands, I think we can leave this one here, and hopefully pick up an equally-smart but hopefully-more-substantial work by Rob McElhenney and crew down the line.