It’s been over a week since TLMOE was cancelled and I think I’ve made peace with it ending where it did. Mike’s return means that hope did win out after all, and there’s a great rhyming feel to the show’s penultimate scene being Tandy doing something to help Mike through his trauma, having overcome his own and now understanding the nature of it. And I don’t mind the cliffhanger, because I do actually really like open-ended “it’s up to you if things turned out good or bad” endings. (I feel like the “it all depends where the story ends” speech from 3×05 was setting up for it, too, in some way.)
Ultimately the show ends much how it started, with “hope is good”. I still wish the writers had gotten to finish it on their own terms, but…