'Parks and Recreation': Here's what happened on the series finale

The series finale of “Parks and Recreation” showed some of the citizens of Pawnee, Ind., on one last mission and included flash-forwards to show where each of the characters ended up, though part of the future of Leslie (Amy Poehler) and her husband Ben (Adam Scott) remained a mystery.

“Parks” aired on NBC for seven seasons. The seventh and final season took place a couple of years into the future after the season six finale jumped forward to 2017.

At the beginning of the episode, Leslie Knope was heading off to Washington, D.C. with Ben after Leslie got a job at the Department of the Interior. Married couple April (Aubrey Plaza) and Andy (Chris Pratt) are also going to Washington after April secured a job at the American Service Foundation, while Donna (Retta) and her husband Joe (Keegan-Michael Key) were moving to Seattle.

Before Leslie takes her departure, a man tells them that a swing near his house has been broken. Leslie rallies the others all to take care of the problem.

In various flash-forwards, we discovered what happened to the various characters. Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman), who previously worked as the parks and recreation director, had created a construction company. However, once the company gets off the ground, Ron is looking for something else to do and goes to Leslie. She suggests he become the superintendent of the Pawnee National Park and he does so. 

Garry (Jim O’Heir) served as Pawnee mayor for multiple terms and died at the age of 100. 

When they are living in Seattle, the school at which Joe works gets rid of its math program and Donna creates a foundation that would help teachers create after-school activities. 

Tom (Aziz Ansari), who had created the restaurant Tom’s Bistro, got the opportunity to open more locations but it didn’t work out. However, the failure had a silver lining: Tom wrote a book about what happened titled “Failure: An American Success Story” and the book sold extremely well.

After discussing whether or not to have children, April and Andy eventually have a baby boy.

Ben eventually becomes a Congressman and Leslie decides to run for governor of Indiana, winning the election and going on to serve two terms. Does one of them achieve a higher office? We see the two attend Garry’s funeral with what look like bodyguards. Is one of them president?

“Parks” showrunner Michael Schur wasn’t telling in an interview with Variety. “My strong feeling was there should be one thing we were intentionally ambiguous about,” he said. “We shot that and conceived it exactly as ambiguous as we wanted it to be… I wanted people to be able to fill in their own blanks and make up their own minds about what they think happened in the intervening years.”