24: Legacy ordered to series by FOX

I don’t think the end of Live Another Day left Jack in limbo, I used to think that but not any longer and I’ll tell you why (and it’s just my own subjective opinion, of course);

Jack handing himself over to the Russians was him finally accepting responsibility for what he did in NYC four years previously, he’s finally stopped running from the inevitable and faced it head on, plus by doing so, he’s freeing Chloe to go back to some kind of life. Jack has always been about fighting for the greater good and natural justice, and his atoning for the actions he committed in New York – and for which he admitted to Kate that they were wrong and a terrible mistake – restores that natural justice.

The little smile Jack gives at the end is (in my opinion) because he knows he’s achieved everything he set out to do, except save Audrey; his family are safe, Chloe is free, the world has been saved once again, and maybe best of all, he knows he can finally, finally rest (albeit in a Russian prison, but he won’t be tortured, it’s not at all like his Chinese imprisonment), and where he will no longer be sucked back into ‘the game’, no more visits to the door leading to 24 subsequent hours of him having to save the country again, he’s truly at peace and able to rest.

If it is the last note of the Jack Bauer story, it’s a fair and appropriate one, he was never going to get a happy ending after everything he’s been through, I think the ending of Live Another Day is the best possible outcome short of killing him… and there was no reason for that.

We don’t have to see every last action of a character’s life onscreen, had The Bourne Ultimatum been the last Bourne film, no-one would be wondering where Jason Bourne is after he survived his plunge into the Hudson river, we just accept he’s alive and well and living under the radar somewhere.

Ditto with Jack, he’s in a Russian prison, probably getting mail from Kim, and taking it easy, who can ask for more than that?