Cast your mind back a year to the end of Series 3 of Misfits and – amid the ghosts and Simony-timey-wimeyness – you’ll remember that there was a feeling that an era was coming to an end: that with plots sutured and so many of the main cast gone, the show could have feasibly finished after three solid series of community service superpowers. But while Series 3 seemed prepared for oblivion, Series 4’s last episode gives a middle-finger to closure.

In places it feels like Episode 8 is too preoccupied with gestating tantalising new plot threads for (the just commissioned) Series 5, than actually providing a satisfying conclusion to a bumpy run. The mystery of Abbey’s personality, Finn and Jess’s relationship, the heartbreak behind the Probation Worker’s unexploded bomb of a face…All three are difficult to engage with this late on when we’re annoyed at the thought of having to wait a year to find out how they’ll develop.

Most egregious of all is the idea that Geordie boreman Alex might return with a power that’s more interesting than talking about his cock, thanks to a handy transplantable lung lying around like an abandoned bagpipe. We hope it’s merely a joke, but from the prominence he was given on the operating table we suspect not. Maybe he’ll come back like Dr. Manhattan in Watchmen: big and blue and with his prized dick gently swaying in the chilly estate breeze like a broken wind-chime.

When not worrying about its own future this is actually a solid, but not spectacular, finale filled with more blasphemy than a Frankie Boyle gig at The Vatican. That’s because it’s smart enough to focus on its best asset, Joe Gilgun, and gives him opportunity to rise magnificently to the challenge of creating some depth to Rudy. It’s a performance that infuses his carefree cheek with real pathos and heartbreak and Nadine’s death would feel cheap were it not for the emotional side that the writers and Gilgun have carved from Rudy’s seemingly unalterable vulgarity.

It’s a shame Nadine has to die. If there’s one thing the show could have teased more it’s the idea of a deviant dating a former nun who can summon terror incarnate. Nadine’s Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are typically reflective of the show’s urban aesthetic, re-imagined as a gang of bike-riding, samurai sword swinging hoodies, but their brevity on screen and their one-dimensional purpose are disappointing. These are meant to be demons of vengeance, but they come across more like four youths holding up an off-licence, and vanish just as quickly.

So ends a series that has, on reflection, been a mixed bag. A collection of good story ideas undermined by a change in cast that the show always seemed uneasy about. Yet we have hope for the fifth series, because the finale does manage to capture the peppy group dynamics of the show’s early days. You wouldn’t call Series 4 a triumph for the show, but based on the gang we’re left with it might be that Misfits‘ fifth year will be something more special. We’re already praying hard for it.

Aired at 10pm on Sunday 16 December 2012 on E4.

> Buy the complete Series 1-3 boxset on Amazon.

> Order Series 4 on DVD on Amazon.

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