“Mad Men” creator Matthew Weiner isn’t revealing much about Sunday’s “Mad Men” finale, but there is one thing he would like to make clear: Don Draper is not mysterious hijacker D.B. Cooper.
Asked by Canada’s Maclean’s magazine whether he was “saying no to the D.B. Cooper theory,” Weiner was blunt.
“Yeah, I’m afraid I am,” he replied.
As the show’s conclusion approaches, there are any number of theories about what will happen to Draper, the show’s suave but troubled adman protagonist who reinvented himself with a new name after the Korean War.
Some folks believe he’ll go falling out of a window, as the Draper silhouette does in the opening credits. Others think he’ll move to Los Angeles, reinventing himself again.
But the most intriguing — and perhaps far-fetched — theory is that he’s going to become Cooper, the man who hijacked a plane in the Pacific Northwest on November 24, 1971, received $200,000 in ransom and parachuted away. The crime remains unsolved.
“I’ve studied both Don Draper and Dan Cooper closely over the years and have found many clues throughout the series that point to their potential connection,” wrote Lindsey M. Green, who came up with the Cooper theory several years ago. “They both appear to live on a wavelength of ‘no particular reason.’ “
But Weiner dismisses the idea.
“I’m never trolling the audience; I’m never baiting them to create a theory,” he said.
Yeah, but what about when Don’s (now ex-) wife Megan wore a T-shirt made famous by Sharon Tate, who was murdered by the Manson family?
Weiner says he can’t win.
“Sometimes when I do make it clear, like after that T-shirt controversy, then I get accused of more trolling,” he said. “I don’t even know what to say.”
“Mad Men’s” final episode airs Sunday on AMC.