So, that was not what we were expecting, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Girls' series finale took place entirely in the country, at Hannah's (Lena Dunham) cute little country house, just before she was supposed to begin her new job as a college professor. It started with Marnie (Allison Williams) begging to stay and help Hannah raise her baby (a la USA's Playing House, which is a reference we wish she had actually made), then cut to five months later, when the baby (named Grover—the name Paul-Louis thought would be good for a boy) was a few months old and Hannah was losing her mind.
Marnie was basically the perfect mix between a dad and a nanny. She read all the books and coached Hannah through her struggles with breastfeeding and took care of the baby when he cried at night, allowing Hannah to sleep for hours, all while carrying on a secret phone sex relationship with a personal trainer named Delvin P.
Meanwhile, Hannah wasn't handling her new life as a mother very well, probably suffering from undiagnosed postpartum depression. She felt like Grover hated her and her body hated her and she took it all out on Marnie, even though Marnie seemed to be doing a lot of things right for someone other than herself.
It took a visit and some harsh but necessary words from Loreen (Becky Ann Baker), as well as a weird encounter with a teen who ran away pantsless and shoeless just because her mom told her to do her homework, to get Hannah to snap out of her "woe is me" attitude and really accept that she's an adult now, and this is the life she made for herself.
As Marnie and Loreen talked about what Marnie could possibly do next (law school?), Hannah finally got Grover to breastfeed, and the series ended with her quietly singing "Fast Car" as a lullaby over the credits.
It wasn't a fun way to end Girls, but it felt real, and it might have been a necessary way to end it for Hannah and Marnie. Hannah's cool mom vision of herself clearly wasn't playing out just yet, and Marnie had basically given up on her own life to take care of Hannah and the baby, but by the end it seemed like maybe it could all work out for both of them in some way, even if it's never going to work out the way they ever imagined it should.
Plus, regardless of how we're all feeling right now, if Girls hadn't ended with a divisive, unexpected, painfully raw, open invitation for arguments and think pieces, would it have been a Girls finale at all?
Girls Series Finale
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Girls airs on HBO.