‘Chad Powers’ Ending Explained – A Surprisingly Emotional, Subversive Finale

I’ve been a fan of Chad Powers since the beginning, but I’m quite happy to admit that the one thing it hasn’t been is unconventional. A hodgepodge of dual identity comedy tropes stuck in a from-the-ashes sports drama playbook, little about the show — except how good it is — has been surprising. As a result, everyone, including me, expected it to have a similarly conventional, happy ending. Chad would end up with Ricky, his identity exposed but ultimately reconciled with. The Catfish would emerge victorious. Russ would be redeemed. What’s notable about Episode 6 is that none of these things happen. The finale turns the whole show on its head.

And it knows what it’s doing. For 80% of its forty-minute runtime, it plays out exactly according to expectations. It teases you with all those satisfying payoffs and then strips them from you in the final moments, leaving the whole thing on an unexpectedly ambiguous, deeply sour note. It’s an incredibly brave climax for a show so determinedly risk-averse. I reckon a lot of people will really hate it.

Me? I can’t help but respect it. “6th Quarter” is the exact opposite of what I wanted to see happen, and yet I’m weirdly glad it happened all the same. Weird, that. Let’s break it down.

Chad Saves Coach Hudson’s Life — At A Cost

The penultimate episode, you’ll recall, ended on an unexpected cliffhanger. And that’s where the finale picks up. Coach Hudson really is having a heart attack, and for various reasons, Chad and Ricky have no way of getting him to the hospital. There’s only one solution, which Chad arrives at reluctantly — taking the Cybertruck.

This is a problem since Ricky knows that Russ drives a Cybertruck; Wendy just confessed to sleeping with him in the back of it. To save Coach Hudson, Chad has to take the gamble of potentially revealing his true identity. And he does. It’s obvious immediately that Ricky has figured him out. It’s obvious in the truck when she asks him to turn the music off, and outside the hospital when she asks him to leave. She knows.

Russ fills Danny in on all this, and while he tries to offer some positive words of affirmation, his idea of just playing along and hoping that Ricky didn’t realise falls through in the final training session before the big game against Georgia. Ricky walks over to Chad and exposes his tattoo, confirming she knows who he is. The jig is up.

Russ’s Reconciliation

Knowing he has been found out, “Chad” flees. The ruse is over. He’s adamant about abandoning the whole thing and returning to obscurity, but Danny persuades him to go and visit his father, who’s working on a Michael Bay movie in Georgia. At the very least, he can return the makeup and have the conversation he has been putting off all season.

Russ and Danny’s relationship is one of the best things about this series, odd though it might be, and I felt it really paid off in the surprisingly tender scene Russ shares with his father in his trailer, after revealing what he has been up to with the Chad Powers identity. And when I say surprisingly emotional, I really mean it, since Russ primarily speaks in Chad’s voice, despite not wearing the makeup, and Mike is wearing a ridiculous fat suit.

But improbably, it works. Russ unburdens himself, and his dad not only forgives him for his many misdemeanours but is also proud of what he accomplished as Chad Powers, all the work he put in to make that identity stick. Mike pushes Chad to put the makeup back on and rejoin the team. If he can forgive him, then so can Ricky. The stage is set for a quintessentially happy ending, the one we all expected Chad Powers to have.

Forgiveness Isn’t Easy

We don’t get that ending. It looks like we’re about to, when Russ, now in full Chad Powers regalia, speaks with Ricky on the empty team bus. He’s finally frank with her about his feelings, and about why he became Chad Powers. She responds by slapping him and telling him that she wishes he had killed himself at the height of his career disgrace.

Blimey! That’s totally unexpected, and what’s worse is that the finale sticks to it. There’s no reconciliation at all. Ricky tells “Chad” that if he doesn’t stay away from the team, she’ll expose who he really is, but Russ counters that he knows she won’t because doing so would sink her father’s career. So, she’s stuck. She has to let Russ play. She hates him, and he knows it, but that’s how they’re going to have to carry on.

The finale even torments Gerry, who truly believed he was getting his moment as the starting quarterback. When Chad walks into the locker room to the enthusiastic cheers of his teammates, Gerry has a minor meltdown, but nobody cares. Chad is back, and the Catfish are in with a chance of winning. He leads the team out onto the field and shares one final look of shared disgust with Ricky. He’s back on the field, back on the cusp of glory. But how much has it cost?