Thursday marks the end of an era. Ellen DeGeneres will sign off on her daytime talk show Ellen, after nearly two decades of what has, for better or worse, largely become an institution of television. In her final episodes, Ellen has paraded a list of all-star celebrity guests — Michelle Obama, Jennifer Lopez, Oprah — to give her a glitzy send-off and also in a way symbolize the outsized influence that she and her show have amassed since it first premiered in 2003.
But, of course, the storybook ending is shadowed by the last couple of years, when Ellen’s reputation as a fun-loving, pure-hearted icon was obliterated: first the controversial George W. Bush buddy-dom and the endlessly satisfying Dakota Johnson shade, then the open secret of Ellen as a behind-the-scenes menace going viral on Twitter, then the exposés and investigations confirming a hellish environment that the host lorded over.
