Haley (Sarah Hyland), Alex (Ariel Winter) and Luke Dunphy (Nolan Gould), however, are not the only members of the family who are moving onto new things, both temporarily and permanent, after Season 11, Episode 18. The Modern Family series finale sees:
Haley move in with Dylan (Reid Ewing) into a new house that is revealed to be the former home of Haley’s uncles Mitchell (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) and Cameron (Eric Stonestreet)Mitch and Cam’s moving as the former is offered his dream job as a college football coach in Missouri. Their family has also grown, with the addition of new adopted son Rexford. Alex moving to Switzerland for a job with her boss and new boyfriend Arvin (Chris Geere)Luke accepting a place at the University of OregonJay (Ed O’Neill), Gloria (Sofia Vergara) and Joe (Jeremy Maguire) heading to Colombia together for the summer after Jay has secretly been learning SpanishManny (Rico Rodriguez) heading to France for a yearClaire and Phil deciding to make the most of all their kids leaving by going on an RV road trip across the U. S. so they get their picture taken with every MLB mascot.
Before they all went their separate ways, the final two episodes of Modern Family had plenty of comedy for the clan. The first of the two episodes saw the Dunphy-Pritchetts assemble at Cam and Mitch’s house to celebrate the arrival of their new child. This deliberately mirrors the first ever episode of the show which saw the family come together to welcome Lily to the family.
The second episode saw the family at Claire and Phil’s to say goodbye to the kids. Cam and Mitch’s flights kept being delayed by various natural disasters, which gave the Claire and Mitch time to recreate their surprisingly sexual childhood ice skating routine. Alex and Haley also got to pull one last prank on Luke by having him dress as a dog to recreate a lost piece of family home video.
Speaking to Hollywood Reporter, show co-creator Christopher Lloyd said of why they chose to end the show by splitting everyone up: “The series is going to live on, the characters are going to live on in the audience’s mind, so it may be best to set people off on new paths and then let the audience imagine them on those paths and almost let the series live on in each individual viewer’s mind.”
Fellow co-creator Steven Levitan told Deadline that he had originally envisioned Haley giving birth in the previous season as the ending of the show, but had to change his plan when the show got one more season. He said: “Another potential event for the ending would have been the birth of the next generation as Haley and Dylan had their baby. I honestly thought that season 10 would be it, and then we got Haley pregnant so we couldn’t stop that train once it was going when we decided to do one more season.
“So we needed another version of an ending and, I’m just speaking for myself, I really like show finales where there’s some sense of goodbye, where the characters are experiencing what the audience is experiencing in saying goodbye to some people or characters that they love.”
Modern Family Season 11 is streaming now on the ABC app and website.
