“Want Some Strange? Too Bad.”

Last night I watched the series finale for Lexx. The show wasn't cancelled. Rather, it was like Babylon 5 in that it had a "story arc" planned from the very beginning, and they simply finished telling the story. That doesn't happen very often!

I've been watching Lexx for its entire three-season run (though I did miss a couple months here and there). Lexx was weird. Very, very weird. It was also, in my opinion, the sixth best sci-fi show still in production, immediately behind Farscape which holds positions one through five (yes, it's that good). Okay, some would say that puts Lexx in second place. (They'd be wrong.)

As I said, Lexx was weird. I'm tempted to describe the story arc just to get across how weird it was, but anybody who hasn't seen the show will just think I'm making it up. "Surely nobody would produce something like that for three years!" Instead, I think it should be enough to read about the characters of Lexx. Unfortunately, that page doesn't include the Lexx itself, which was the living bug-ship that they flew around the "two universes" in for three years. Lexx was big (big like Japan, not big like "eek, honey, come kill this thing!"), and was the "most powerful destructive force in the two universes". He could shoot a burst of energy from his eyes that would shatter planets.

The final episode was the best of the series, and it was very final. They tied up all of the loose ends: Kai-the-immortal-but-dead assassin is brought back to life by Prince -- the personification of death -- immediately before setting off a device that created a "singularity." This time, he was dead and gone, kaput, finito. Buh-bye. The Lexx died of old age (5,000 years is a long time, even for a giant bug). Stan and Xev were flying back to the Lexx from Earth when Lexx -- old and very senile -- used his final blast to destroy the Earth at the command of 790, the evil robot head. After Lexx died there was a minute where it seemed like they were actually ending the series with everyone dead, but then out of Lexx's debris cloud flew a "baby Lexx" (probably only as big as Rhode Island). Stan and Xev got aboard, and Stan was again made the captain. The End.

I'm not making this up! I know it's incredibly weird, but you'd have to watch the the entire series to "get it." In the end, it's obvious that this was Lexx's biggest problem, and why it wasn't more popular: the story was written in such a way that the later you started watching the series, the less likely you were to understand what the heck was going on. The Sci-Fi channel knew this, and tried to make up for it with "Lexx Marathons" twice per year which showed the key episodes, but it didn't really work because the story was just too strange and complex.

(The show's motto/tag-line was, "Want some strange? Have some Lexx.")

The only good thing about this series ending is that Sci-Fi will (hopefully) have the resources to keep Farscape in production for a few more years.

Oh, I should note that there's been some talk about a spin-off series, but I don't think it'll happen because Lexx wasn't very popular.