A decade of South Side chaos comes to a close in the Shameless season 11 finale, which bids farewell to Frank Gallagher and his boisterous progeny. Created by John Wells, the Showtime series debuted in 2011, following the Gallagher clan growing up (more or less) into responsible adults with jobs, families, and extensive criminal records of their own. By the end, the series had a tough task in tying up various subplots for the extensive ensemble cast.
That said, the Shameless series 11 finale avoids definitively wrapping up the fates of the Gallaghers, aside from Frank, by instead choosing to offer up open-ended suggestions about what could be next in their future. For example, Lip may or may not have a second child, Ian and Mickey are considering adopting a baby, Debbie plans to leave Chicago, and Carl might buy The Alibi from Kevin and Veronica. The episode opens with the family finding Frank hovering near death on the couch after his attempted suicide by a heroin overdose, but aside from Liam, no one particularly seems to care if he lives or dies.
Though many Shameless fans hoped Fiona would return for the series finale, she only appears in flashbacks as Frank looks back on his life. Despite her absence, the ending of Shameless neatly bookends the series while paying homage to the very first episode. Here’s how Shameless ends for each of the Gallaghers and what it could mean for their futures.
Of all the many, many ways one might expect Frank Gallagher to die, few could have predicted at the start of the series that he’d fall victim to a pandemic. In Shameless season 11, Frank is diagnosed with alcoholic dementia, and his mental faculties quickly begin to deteriorate, leading to forgetfulness and confusion. Resigned to death and wanting to go out on his own terms, the ridiculous Frank Gallagher injects himself with a massive overdose of heroin in the penultimate episode of the series, leaving a letter for his family that goes unnoticed by everyone except Franny, who simply draws all over it with her crayons. The patriarch of the Gallagher clan even goes as far as to get “DO NOT RESUSCITATE” tattooed in bold letters on his chest, leading to confusion among the hospital staff about whether or not the instructions are legally binding.
Despite surviving this overdose, Frank is shown to be clearly living on borrowed time, with his COVID-19 infection merely tipping the scales. In a sense, falling victim to the coronavirus is appropriate for a man who considered himself as much a part of Chicago city’s high fidelity as its streets and buildings. The pandemic will be remembered as a pivotal moment in Chicago’s history, and now Frank Gallagher is a part of that history – albeit in a rather grim way.
Before being taken to the hospital, Frank goes to the church where he was once an altar boy and looked up at the statue of Jesus. The moment echoes a similar scene from the Shameless season 6 premiere, in which Frank goes to the same church to look for answers after the death of Monica, the mother of his children and the love of his life. Although Fiona may not have returned for the finale, Frank’s final stumbling journey through Chicago was nevertheless a tribute to her memory. The first place Frank visits is Patsy’s Pies, the diner where Emmy Rossum’s Fiona used to work, and, with his memory failing, his first instinct is to seek out Fiona. In his final hours, he believes the nurse at his bedside is Fiona, and the last words he speaks before falling into unconsciousness are addressed to his eldest daughter: “You cried a lot as a baby. You’re mad all the time… But so beautiful.”
Lip’s story has been compelling, heartbreaking, and wholly frustrating. As Frank puts it in his final farewell speech: “Lip, you’re smart as a whip. You just can’t seem to get out of your own way.” From the start of the show, Lip Gallagher’s story sets him up as the Gallagher child with the best shot at lifting himself out of poverty and finding a better life. He presents as exceptionally intelligent with a gift for math, engineering, and science, was accepted into MIT, and ended up going to Chicago Polytechnic with a full-ride scholarship. As the second-oldest Gallagher child, Lip is not as burdened with parenting his siblings as Fiona was, and as such, has more of a chance to pursue his own dreams.
Shameless was never intended as an instruction manual on how to escape poverty, however. To show Lip living the meritocratic American dream of being lifted out of the South Side by the strength of his intelligence would arguably have been a betrayal of a show that’s more about struggling and hustling to survive within the trappings of poverty than about escaping it. At the end of Shameless, Lip has decided to sell the Gallagher house for a mere $75,000 – a far cry from the $250,000 he was offered by a developer before he pushed too hard and lost that deal. He is still stuck on the poverty line, working a food delivery job to support his girlfriend Tami and their son Freddie. What’s more, Tami reveals that she may be pregnant again, and she and Lip discuss the necessity of getting an abortion since they can barely support the child they already have.
From the outside, the ending of Lip’s story in Shameless might not look like a success, but his final conversation with Ian pushes aside his relentless string of bad luck and bad decisions to assuredly point out everything good that Lip has done. Unlike Frank, he’s been a devoted father to his son and worked hard to put food on the table and a roof over Freddie’s head. Ian also tells Lip that the rest of the Gallaghers see him as the closest thing they have to a dad and offers to let Lip take his cut of the house sale in order to get set up in his new life with Tami. Lip may have lost the dream of wealth and job security, but he’s kept hold of what’s most important to him throughout the series: his family, whether by blood or otherwise.
Ian’s rocky road to married life in Shameless has featured multiple felonies, significant prison time, an escape across the Mexican border, and countless punches thrown. Yet, at the end of the series, Ian and Mickey seem to be closest to a secure and settled life. Shameless season 11 saw proud South Side “barbarian” Mickey confronting the realities of married life as he and Ian move to a luxury West Side condo, start running their own legitimate security business, and even consider the possibility of children.
In the Shameless series finale, Ian and Mickey go to Kev and V’s apartment to pick out some furniture for their apartment, and Ian suggests that they take a crib, sparking a conversation about the possibility of having kids. Mickey is averse to the idea, admitting that he’s afraid he’ll be a bad father. His fears are understandable, given what a horribly abusive father Terry Milkovich is shown to be. Terry’s death-via-nun earlier in Shameless season 11 was part of the journey towards Mickey breaking free psychologically from the worst parts of his Milkovich heritage. Despite being treated terribly by Terry, Mickey went out of his way to make sure his father was cared for after being paralyzed and mourned him after he was dead.
In the penultimate episode of Shameless, Ian and Mickey agree to a compromise between trying to have a better life and staying true to their South Side heritage, with a prime example being that Mickey is allowed to pee in the pool but isn’t allowed to steal from their neighbors. The question of fatherhood is a lot more difficult in the context of their continuing story, though. Ian and Mickey both admittedly had terrible fathers, and their last attempt at parenting – when they were living with Svetlana and Mickey’s son, Yevgeny – ended poorly. Mickey is still reluctant at the end of the series, but a couple of possibilities are floated: adopting one of the many neglected Milkovich babies or adopting Tami and Lip’s second child.
In the opening of the Shameless pilot, Frank describes Debbie as being “sent by God” and a “total angel.” By the end of the show, his estimation of her has changed. “You remind me of your mother, and not in a good way,” he says ominously. Like Ian, Monica had bipolar depression. Unlike Ian, she was unable to get on a consistent medication schedule, and as such, ended up being largely absent from her children’s lives as she flitted from one adventure to the next. In Shameless season 11, Debbie shows warning signs of being a similarly poor mother to Franny – leaving her alone without any confirmed childcare to go off on a drink and drugs binge, and starting a relationship with Heidi, a violent ex-con who greeted Debbie by pointing a gun and threatening to shoot her daughter if she didn’t cooperate.
Debbie’s future seems most at risk of imminent disaster in the Shameless series finale out of all the Gallagher children. She drives around with Heidi to help her find a car to steal and ends up having to make a quick getaway from a man wielding a shotgun with Franny in the car. Later Heidi announces that she’s leaving to go and do some more crime down in Texas and invites Debbie and Franny to come along. The show ends with Debbie Gallagher questioning her decision, but with the sale of the Gallagher house and her track record of impulsive decisions, she’ll likely go looking for trouble. As Frank puts it in his farewell letter: “Good luck in life. You’re going to need it.“
In the most surprising turnaround from Shameless season 1, Carl ended up becoming a police officer and working the parking enforcement beat after getting tossed out of several different departments. This is likely a good thing; if Carl Gallagher is going to be armed with a weapon, then handing out parking tickets is probably the safest place for the young Gallagher. In Shameless season 11, Carl was repeatedly frustrated by his job as a cop, which wasn’t the action-packed justice-dealing role he’d hoped for. First, he was paired with Officer Tipping, who refused to take any call that sounded remotely risky. Then he was partnered with Officer Janes, who seemed like the tough mentor figure Carl was looking for until it became clear that she used her power for acts of pointless cruelty. A stint with a pair of Vice detectives also ended badly when Carl realized they were corrupt to the bone and running a racket wherein they shut down legal cannabis dealers to prop up the black market.
Carl’s cop (and ironically best) storyline has been a continual journey of disillusionment. He realizes that the reality of being a police officer isn’t anywhere near as cool as TV shows and movies made it out to be. Then he pledges to use his position to help the poorest in his neighborhood and hold the wealthy to account but is quickly slapped down for trying to rock the boat. As a commentary on real-life police corruption and brutality, Carl’s story highlights the difficulty of trying to be a “good cop” in a system that’s broken from the top down. In his bottom-rung role handing out parking tickets, he is able to enact some small protest against the gentrification of the South Side by handing out parking tickets to the wealthy, but Officer Tipping warns him that soon even that will be taken away from him.
Of all the Shameless Gallagher siblings, Carl’s is the story that feels most unfinished – even in a finale designed to leave an open-ended story. This is largely due to a subplot in which he was raped by a girl called Tish, who had sex with him without a condom despite his protests. An unclear amount of time later, he met Tish again and discovered that she was pregnant, but the question of whether or not Carl is the father is left unanswered by the series. Carl is actually already a father several times over, via an artificial insemination scheme from a couple of seasons ago, so there are now quite a few illegitimate children who could potentially pop up again in his future.
Liam Gallagher is very jaded for his young age, which is understandable given that he hasn’t really had anything resembling a parent since Fiona left the Gallagher household. When he heard about Lip’s plans to sell the Gallagher house, Liam’s first assumption was that he would be made homeless and would get no help from his siblings, so he began proactively preparing himself for life on the streets. Though darkly comedic, the episode is also a sad sign of how the youngest Gallagher has been left behind by the rest, however unintentionally, as they focus on their own lives. When asked by a social worker who his legal parent or guardian was, Liam seems to have no idea.
This vacuum may have been why Liam ended up getting closer to Frank in the final season of Shameless. Frank is (despite appearances) Liam’s biological father, and Liam defaulted to him in his search for a parent figure since Frank is technically his father even if he has no other qualifications. Of course, Frank being Frank, what actually happened is that Liam ended up acting more like the parent in their relationship. After finding out about Frank’s dementia diagnosis, Liam took him out for a day trip to relive Frank’s glory days and try to bring him back to himself. And when Frank wakes up from his overdose and wanders out of the house, Liam is the only Gallagher who goes looking for him.
There is hope for Liam, though. When Lip finds out that his little brother is afraid of being made homeless, he reassures Liam that he can come and live with him, Tami and Fred. Of course, this offer is somewhat complicated by the fact that Lip doesn’t yet have a new place to move into by the end of the Shameless series finale and is worried that he can’t afford to support another baby on his and Tami’s income. But while Liam’s situation is worrying, it’s also realistic. Household insecurity and instability is a key problem for children living on the poverty line; a 2014 report (via The Washington Post) found that 2.5 million children experienced homelessness annually in the US.
The characters of Shameless have been fighting a losing battle against the South Side’s gentrification for years, and Kevin and Veronica are two such personas that hold out until the end. The coronavirus pandemic caused a year of uncertainty as The Alibi Room was subjected to a cycle of lockdowns and reopenings until its proprietors lost track of whether they were supposed to be closed or open. To make up for slower foot traffic, Kev and V pivoted the business to become a legitimate cannabis vendor, which was enough to keep the South Side’s favorite dive bar above water. Outside of work, V entered the world of politics with hopes of motivating Black voters to fight against gentrification and rising rents at the polls – only to discover that many of the neighborhood’s Black residents had already moved away.
When Veronica’s mother, Carol, announced that she was going to join the exodus and relocate to Louisville, Kentucky, V at first vehemently opposed the plan. But a trip to Louisville made it clear that a better life was possible there: a political landscape where Veronica could really make a difference; a bartending job where Kev could make more a lot more money than The Alibi had been pulling in; and a growing Black community that includes Carol and many of the Fisher family’s friends. Moreover, with Fiona gone and the rest of the Gallaghers planning to move away, the ties that once anchored Kev and V to the South Side are proved to be increasingly weakened across Shameless‘ final two seasons.
In the Shameless series finale, Kevin and Veronica are trying to find a buyer for The Alibi Room with contrasting attitudes. V is entirely unsentimental about what’s done with the bar, while Kev tries in vain to keep it intact. An offer comes in that, between the remaining mortgage and taxes, will leave them with a modest sum of around $30,000. Veronica struggles with the decision of whether to take the deal or hold out for a better offer that might never come. Officer Tipping, in attendance at Ian and Mickey’s anniversary party, suggests to Carl that they could pool their money, buy The Alibi, and turn it into a cop bar to save it from its fate as a yoga studio or tanning salon. The series ends with the hope that The Alibi will survive this way but does not guarantee it.
The final scene of Shameless‘ series finale brings the show full circle. The very first scene of the pilot episode had the Gallaghers, Kev and V, and their South Side neighbors throwing an impromptu gathering around a burning car, while Frank Gallagher introduced the members of his family in voiceover. As the finale winds down, the patrons of The Alibi troop outside to enjoy the sight of a Tesla on fire, in a final defiant middle finger to the gentrification of the neighborhood. They round out the celebrations by singing Spoon’s “The Way We Get By,” which played at the end of the pilot episode. The song’s lyrics – which refer to getting high in the back seats of cars, committing petty crime, partying, dancing, and having sex – describe a way of survival for a generation lacking hope or direction.
It wouldn’t be an in-character Shameless finale without the traditional mid-credits stinger. Though Frank Gallagher imagines himself rising up over Chicago as he says farewell to his family, his actions over the past 11 seasons don’t bode well for his chances of getting into Heaven. Frank gets a suitably undignified end as a pair of morgue attendants push his body into the cremation chamber while complaining about the smell. A moment after they close the doors on Frank Gallagher, an explosion blasts them across the room, and they look into the chamber to find it empty except for the flames. The incinerator then belches out an urn with Frank’s name and date of birth and death on it – the implication being that he’s gone straight to Hell to close out Shameless‘ season 11 finale.