Ray Donovan season 5 finale: What happened to Ray?

Ray dead

The Ray Donovan season 5 finale aired on Showtime Sunday night and it’s fair to say that we are left with many questions … including whether or not Ray Donovan is dead.

Is he? If we were to go based on pure science, it would seem as though the answer to that question is “yes.” After all, the end of the episode featuring the character jumping off of a building into the East River. This is the sort of thing that would doom many a character, and we have no reason to think that something different would happen in this instance.

Yet, this is Ray Donovan … and unless this show is going to become a ghost story where Ray hangs out with ghost Abby all of the time, something will have to be done to save him.

For the time being showrunner David Hollander is being by and large quiet on the subject of Ray’s future, save for saying the following to TVLine:

“We’re talking about that now. For us it becomes about what the damage is psychologically, emotionally, environmentally. The big questions I’m grappling with are not just the physical elements of it.”

Here’s another question that seems rather silly to ask — but given the end of the story, CarterMatt is going to ask it: Is Liev Schreiber leaving? To us, the answer to that question feels obvious: Nope. How do you have Ray Donovan without him?

The truth here is that the writers have put themselves into what must be a creative, exciting hole. One of the most enjoyable challenges for any writer is figuring out how to back out of a corner that they’ve driven a character into. On the surface it seems as though Ray is done and there’s nothing left to say. Yet somehow, the show will go on and Ray will persevere in one form or another. Maybe he survives in some miracle and someone works to bring him back to life? We’d like to see Ray in a position where he is mentored by someone and works on being a better, more functional human being who battles some of his demons instead of giving into them. There is a part of him that has this instinct to be so raw and violent, and without much of an anchor in his life anymore we have to assume that this is only going to continue unless someone steps in.

As reported over earlier today at CarterMatt, Ray Donovan will shift its setting in season 6 over to New York City; while you wait for more premiere-date news, you can receive some more insight over at the link here on other important information on the show’s future.

What did you think about the Ray Donovan finale, and how do you think Ray survived — provided that you do? Share below in the comments section!

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