Last Friday night Fox aired the second to last ep, titled The Hollow Man, of the latest Joss Whedon TV series Dollhouse with the finale ep originally scheduled to air this coming Friday but has been postponed to the following Friday (January 29) due to the Hope for Haiti telethon which will air this Friday night instead. But, for all intents and purposes, Dollhouse is already finished … Joss Whedon has finally come to terms with the end of the series and is ready to say goodbye. Here are a few promo photos from the upcoming Dollhouse finale ep titled Epitaph Two: The Return:

Looking back on it, that Joss Whedon and Eliza Dushku’s Fox drama “Dollhouse” made it to two full seasons seems a minor miracle. From its earliest development days, the science fiction series about a woman whose personality can be rewritten to fit any situation and the conspiracy behind the creation of such “dolls” had a tough road ahead of it. Beyond general fan worry that Fox wouldn’t support the show and would treat in the same way it had Whedon’s scuttled “Firefly” series (Whedon only returned to the network because of Dushku’s own development deal), an early cut of the pilot was rejected before the show debuted in 2008 to on-the-bubble ratings. Still, “Dollhouse” persevered. Due to fan response to the first season (even though the planned season finale “Epitaph One” was only released on DVD rather than over the air), the network renewed the series for a second year, keeping it in the Friday night “death slot” where it failed to gain enough viewers to continue past this year (although unlike the case with “Firefly” and even “Dollhouse” season one, this season will see its full run aired in order). All things considered, Whedon told CBR, “The only regrets I have about it are the things I didn’t do right. 26 hours of television is a lot of time to tell story, and everybody involved was great. I just look back and go, ‘I wish I had figured some things out a little earlier.’ But that’s all the time I have for regret. It is what it is.” [T]he second to last episode of “Dollhouse,” titled “The Hollow Men,” air[ed Friday night] on Fox at 9:00 Eastern and Pacific before the series finale – “Epitaph Two: Return” – hits on January 29. “We are wrapped, and I have finalized the cut of the last episode. I just have to mix it,” Whedon said. “I’ve already packed up my office. It’s terribly sad, but I do like the last episode. So there’s that.” While the final run the show’s of episodes have thrown plot twists, from unmasked villains to best friend back stabs to supporting character deaths in a ramp up to a definitive “Dollhouse” ending, the two “Epitaph” episodes which jumped into the bleak future of the series’ timeline revealed that Whedon and the writing staff’s plans for the show could have gone much longer. With his canonical “Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season 8″ a solid comic shop hit, and other similar projects making money for a variety of publishers, the immediate question for “Dollhouse” viewers is whether or not this show could also be shifted to the printed page. However, as he said when the first season was in peril, Whedon explained that a comic continuation seems highly unlikely. “The only time it crosses my mind is when [Dark Horse Comics editor] Scott Allie pesters me as he did the other day, saying, ‘”Epitaph One” sounds like a comic! It’s post-apocalyptic!’ But my answer is ‘No.’ It’s pretty unequivocal. It could change, but I need to do the next thing, and I do spend an enormous amount of my career replatforming things I already did. After a while, it starts to just seem a little morbid.” Beyond the fact that “Dollhouse” as a series is not solely under his own control legally, the writer felt that even with its sci-fi bent the premise of the series wouldn’t translate well to comics. “I don’t think it’s a comic. It’s a TV show…apparently not a Fox show, but it is a TV show. There are themes in it and ideas that could work in a comic, but for me to spend the amount of time it would take keeping the comic true to what’s already out there when I’m already doing that with ‘Buffy’ would be a ridiculous waste of my time. And ultimately that would net me a piece of something that belongs to Fox. It just makes no sense to do a comic with ‘Dollhouse.’

As bummed as I am at the early cancellation of Dollhouse, I agree with Joss that the show is not comic book material. I’m happy to know that Whedon gets that and is, instead, staying focused on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8 comic rather than working towards adapting another of his TV series into a comic book series. As sad as it seems, I think it’s time to just let Dollhouse go. It wasn’t the perfect show but it was wonderful while it lasted. Not all things are meant to go on forever, Dollhouse is one of those things. I understand that Joss Whedon is meeting with FX network this week to see if he might make a TV series for them … that would be amazingly cool. I’ve always felt that Joss‘s genius belongs on cable TV. A deal with FX might be just the thing that Whedonites have been long waiting for. In the meantime, I think we should enjoy the last ep of Dollhouse when it airs in 2 weeks and move on. The show died way too soon but … well, sometimes dead means dead.

[Source, Source]