From 1994 to 2004, “Friends” made a lasting impression on the world of television. But how does it actually end? If you didn’t follow everything well or if your memory suddenly challenges you, we tell you the end of the series.
Warning, spoilers. The following article reveals key plot points of Friends as well as its ending.
10 years, 10 seasons, 236 episodes, countless quotes and cult situations, Friends is THE series of all generations, the one that has never really left our screens. Reruns and constant streaming for several years: the sitcom is still relevant. It was on May 6, 2004 that it stopped in front of 52.5 million viewers glued behind their small screen.
A number that made “The Last One” the most-watched entertainment telecast in 6 years, the 5th most-watched series finale in US history as well as the most-watched episode of any series. 2000s of American television. The finale, which served as the 17th and 18th episodes of season 10 of the show, was split into two parts, categorized as two separate chapters.
JOEY AND PHOEBE
And no Joey and Phoebe did not end up together unlike the other protagonists of the series! In the final season, Phoebe found happiness in the arms of the endearing Mike Hannigan (Paul Rudd) to whom she became engaged and later married. In Mike’s final scene, he and Phoebe talk about starting a family. “Wouldn’t you want one like that?” ; “Not one, I want a whole package!” exclaims Phoebe. “We will teach them to sing and we could make a kind of Von Trapp family!” she continues.
This is just a glimpse of what could well await the Buffay-Hannigans, probably a future made up of babies and surreal and (in)singing adventures. Phoebe then spends the rest of the episode helping Ross make his big statement…
While the rest of his friends go through major life changes, Joey ends the series in the same apartment… but with a chick and a duckling as new companions! While he was planning to give them to Chandler and Monica as parting gifts, the two little beasts find themselves stuck in Chandler and Joey’s legendary foosball table, which must now be destroyed to save them.
The end of a whole era… But a new era is beginning for Joey who, as we know, will end up moving to Los Angeles for his short-lived spin-off.
CHANDLER AND MONICA
After a few years of marriage and a sad struggle with infertility, Monica and Chandler finally decided to adopt. During season 10, the couple prepares to adopt Erica’s baby (Anna Faris), a pregnant teenager from Ohio, and to move to the suburbs. In the series finale, the latter’s labor begins prematurely: head to the hospital immediately!
And there surprise: while they thought they would inherit only one baby, they inherited two! After the birth of the first, the doctor indeed announces that the second is about to arrive: the shock! Nobody explicitly explained to the very young Erica that she was going to have twins. “They must have alluded to the fact that there were two heartbeats. I thought it was mine and the baby’s. Often they repeated that the beats were very strong and I said to myself: “Better because I am expecting a baby!‘”
Monica and Chandler then make their way back to the apartment where they surprise their friends with two newborn babies in their arms: Jack (after Monica and Ross’ father) and Erica (named after her biological mother).
ROSS AND RACHEL
After years of interspersed romances, but we broke up, love and friendship, co-parenting, and I love you neither, Ross and Rachel spend their last night in New York. together. Indeed, the young woman is about to move to Paris for a job at Louis Vuitton. But while Ross thinks they’re back together, and this time for good, Rachel talks about their night as “the best way to say goodbye.”
Ross finally realizes it’s time to tell her how he really feels. But time is running out: Rachel has already left for the airport after briefly meeting Monica and Chandler’s babies.
Ross then embarks on a journey to catch up with Rachel and can count on the precious help of Phoebe and her crazy schemes. She calls Rachel, who has by then already boarded, and manages to scare off some of the other passengers with her advice. : “You have to get off the plane, I have the feeling that there is something suspicious at the level of the left phalanx!”.
Typical Phoebe delirium which delays the departure of the plane and gives Ross time to run to a first airport then to cross the city again to the right airport this time and to confess his love. And when he does, Rachel… gets on the plane.
Discouraged, Ross returns home and finds a message on his machine: it is a message from Rachel in which she begins by apologizing before she also realizes that she loves him. We hear him asking to get out of the plane… and the message cuts off. Did she stay? Is she gone?
Ross yells at his machine: “Was she able to get out of the device?”. And there, we hear Rachel’s voice pronounce, offscreen, the cult line: “I got out of the device”. It is there: the couple kisses and is finally reunited… for good this time. A moving scene that we will certainly not forget.
THOSE WHO WERE GOING AWAY
But it is not finished ! In the final scene, the six friends are reunited at Monica and Chandler’s apartment as the movers pack up their last belongings. They cry, kiss, leave their keys on the counter, saying goodbye to this mythical place that has hosted most of their crazy adventures.
Rachel offers to go have a last coffee before Monica and Chandler hit the road. “Where ?” asks Chandler innocently: the very last line of the series and may well be the best, both hilarious and heartbreaking, full of meaning and vivid memories.
We all know where they’re going, on the sofas of their beloved Central Perk. The audience laughs one last time. Before leaving definitively, the series offers us a last plan of the apartment – sadly empty – which ends on the purple door adorned with the sacred yellow frame. End of Friends.