In doing so it plays it safer than you might expect, but it’s tough to complain when it’s giving us the stuff that made us fall in love with the show five years ago. Well, except old faces. What were you expecting, Nathan to turn up, Tom Baker style, to wink and mime a blowjob? Misfits isn’t a show that stirs the bones of its past. It pats down the soil on the grave, gives a profane eulogy, then fucks off to find the next party. It’s never looked back; it was too busy looking for the next high.

Quite rightly it ends in that same spirit. As the gang find purpose in their post-community service careers and resolve to be ‘proper’ superheroes, so they no longer belong in the show. Misfits has always lived up to its title and been about the outcasts. Young people killing time (and the occasional probation worker) while they figured out what to do with their lives. And there’s nothing like seeing your potential future to make you really think about your purpose in life.

Angry at Rudy, Jess allows herself to be picked up by time-travelling creep Luke, who warps her one year into the future, where he and Jess have a superhumanly cute baby. You know that Time will at some point twang back to normal, and so in essence the show gives itself a giant sandbox of inconsequence in which to play, and play it does. Outrageous to the end, the finest superhero show of the 21st century gives us deaths by piano, piss and mid-air sexual assault as the misfits take down the power-corrupted Jumper Posse.

For our heroes there are more noble, more moving temporary demises. Rudy’s death is so triumphant and emotional that you almost wish it would stick, simply because defeating Electric Helen by pissing himself and then winning a quid on a scratchcard would be a fitting end to his cartoon life. Equally emotional, but even more meaningful, Jess saving the day by committing suicide is an act filled as much with desperation as love.

Death happens, but unlike what we said usually occurs, Misfits moves back instead of forwards. Time snaps back to the bar and everybody lives. And lives with purpose. An unusually upbeat end for the show. But definitely an end.

From script to screen, this was/is/will ever be (thanks, 4OD!), a fitting send-off, full of raw humour and sharp performances from an ensemble cast who we’ll miss terribly.

There’s never been a show like Misfits. Chances are there never will be again. Our advice? Don’t do a Misfits and try to find the next super-powered high. Go back to the very beginning and start watching again. You know you want to. You can feel it in your nutsack.

Aired at 10pm on Wednesday 11 December 2013 on E4.

> Buy the complete Series 1-4 boxset on Amazon.

> Order Series 5 on DVD on Amazon.

Watch the Series 5 teaser trailer…

What did you think of the last ever episode? Let us know below…