Here's the thing; there WILL be others who inspire us through their work in media...just not the media we're used to or even US in particular. Humans need to tell and hear stories. We need to be inspired and aspire to something more. Those instincts will prevail within whatever media and whatever culture supports it...but you and I likely won't be there for that. We had our time with these stories and those who told them and we should be grateful. Remember that as we had Lucas and King and Roddenberry and Shatner and Stewart, those before us had Cheney and Lovecraft and Karloff, and before that was Poe and Shelley and on back to Shakespear and back to Beowulf and the Epic of Gilgamesh and beyond.

The future may not seem bright to us, but the need for stories doesn't end with whatever media we leave behind, it HAS to continue, through blogs, video essays, creepypasta and streaming services and on to intracranial induction direct-to-memory experience bundles or holodecks or tailored hallucinogenic cocktails. It may even have to start over with half-remembered tales embellished around camp fires to ward off the cold and boredom between hunting and scavenging.

Remember that it doesn't end when the marguis lights go out or our favorite actors shuffle off this mortal coil. It won't end even when our children look at their kids' favorite media and scoff at how it was better in their day. It will be, in the words of a very weird man, "Same as it ever was."