It’s the end of an era. Felicia Day recently announced in Reddit  that season six of The Guild is the end…at least for now.  After the jump, my thoughts about it….

When I saw the final episode of season six, it just as it began five years ago:  Codex’s face, talking to her webcam:

So, it’s Friday night, no longer jobless, yay!
Wow. I was such a mess when I started doing these, but now, not so much.
It’s because I have the Guild. I guess healing them kind of helped healing me, too.
We’re a team. We’re friends. And yeah. I guess that’s all I needed

She made it official during her Reddit Q and A on March 26:

The Guild is still owned by me, so no one told me to stop, but I felt in THIS incarnation, doing more wouldn’t really work beyond this season. The budget has gotten too big to keep everyone together, and people were interested in moving on. I felt wrapping up Codex’s story by finding a job and getting her friends was a great arc and came full circle, she was healed a lot in a way by healing others. I still love the characters and can do whatever I want with the world, but if I do something else it would be in a different format in a different way. And after I do something new, because I want to invent a new world I just don’t know what that is yet.

I knew Felicia Day from her days as Vi, one of the Potentials, on the final season of Buffy. I also remembered her from the HBO movie Warm Springs, where she sang “I Won’t Dance” in a unique way (check out the movie, because Kenneth Branaugh is also great as FDR). When I found out about The Guild, her web series about gamers, I decided to watch it, and I liked what I saw. Naturally, I had to meet her at Comic-Con in 2008, and I did.

Like so many others, the show was my “gateway” to other web-series, whether it was Dr. Horrible, redubbed anime, reality shows or news.

I noticed that, just like Buffy, each season had a certain theme. The first season introduced the group, who, for some reason, have never met each other before. They gathered to help support Zaboo from his controlling mom.

Season two showed the Knights of Good getting used to actually interacting when they’re not playing The Game. We saw Bladezz try to hook up with Tink, Codex trying to get close to a new neighbor, and Zaboo and Vork as roommates.

Season three may have been the most dramatic: the Knights of Good disband when they face their evil arch-rivals, the Axis of Anarchy led by Wil Wheaton. Codex gets appointed the new leader after Vork resigns to go on some quest in a van. It ends with the KoG on top..and Codex in bed with Fawkes

Season four dealt with that aftermath, and Codex actually thinking about hooking up with Zaboo. We also saw Vork almost marry Zaboo’s mom, while Tink and Clara start a t-shirt business. Through it all, the gang learned to step away from their game consoles, and try to deal with the real world.

Season five saw the gang at a major convention which featured love, cabin fever, Tink’s true back story finally revealed, an effort to save The Game, and an impressive amount of cameos.

Then season six:  Codex actually has a job at the company that makes her favorite game, but learns it’s not the dream job she had hoped thanks to office politics and her friends dropping by.

Add to that an impressive comic-book series, showing the back stories of the KoG, and three impressive videos, and you have a series that will go down in media history.

The Guild showed that good sitcoms aren’t only on regular TV, but also online. In a way, you can thank the KoG for Space Janitors, the return of Arrested Development on Netflix, Husbands (soon to be on cwtv.com), Lizzie Bennett Diaries, and many other shows that are getting an audience who can watch on  computers and smartphones.

We thank you, Felicia Day, for six years of The Guild. We’ll miss them, and hope we’ll see them again soon.  At least have them on her Geek and Sundry channel. Amy Okuda and Robin Thorson would make pretty good hosts.