Courage the Cowardly Dog premiered in 1999 on Cartoon Network and had four seasons, with 52 episodes in total. The cartoon showed the adventures of Coragem, a friendly and scared dog who lives on a farm in Lugar Não with his owners, the retired couple Eustácio and Muriel.
Always alert, Courage needs to protect their owners — and, sometimes, the future of humanity — from supernatural creatures of the most varied origins, with terrifying visuals and even experiments with 3D animation.
The ending of Courage the Cowardly Dog
If today we are used to animations organized into seasons or sagas, the situation was different before: several cartoons from decades ago did not have a story followed throughout the episodes.
They were produced in batches, shown and replayed on television. If the show was canceled, it would stop running without a definitive ending, like an episode with a more challenging villain or an epilogue with the characters’ fates.
This was the case with Courage: aired on November 22, 2022its final chapter It’s just the last one that was produced, but that doesn’t mean it’s not special. As in Brazil the exhibition was always two segments at a time, they are what we consider below.
“Memories of Courage’s Past”
In the first segment of the episode, we have a rare flashback that shows the origin of the protagonist. When he sees a photo of missing dogs in a milk carton, Courage begins to remember his childhood: he had parents in the big citybut as a baby he faces his first enemy.
Courage’s parents.Source: HBO Max
Its about a fake veterinarian, who kidnaps the character’s parents during a consultation and meets Courage again in the present — now going after Muriel and Eustácio.
As the villain’s plan is to take dogs to space to raise them there, Courage needs to escape from a rocket and finds a way to put the veterinarian in the spaceship, which takes off into the sky. On the Moon, he is surrounded by all the animals he sent there, including the protagonist’s parents.
The vet.Source: HBO Max
It is at the end of this episode that we see how a younger Muriel found young Courage abandoned on the street and decided to take him homeincluding baptizing him with the new name.
“Perfect”
The last chapter of Courage has a story that is both disturbing and with a beautiful lesson. Courage is criticized a lot by Eustácio for not doing anything right in the household chores and realizes that he is disturbing Muriel in the kitchen.
Perfect.Source: HBO
He then begins to have visions of a strict teacher who beats him with a ruler and tries to make the character “become perfect” in posture and behavior.
Unable to complete the tasks, Courage has a nightmare in his sleep about bizarre creatures in different animation styles — from 3D graphics to stop-motion — that remind him that he is not “perfect.”
Courage’s nightmare.Source: HBO
When talking to a fish in the bathtub, Courage learns that “perfection doesn’t exist” it’s him “it’s beautiful the way it is”, being able to do everything even with imperfectionss.
He then realizes that you can enjoy the little joys of the house, even with flaws and problems, and manages to make the teacher melt with frustration. At the end of the episode, Courage is having dinner at the table with the owners, smiling and comfortable.
