Cast and crew of Mad Men and creator Matthew Weiner, center, accept the award for outstanding drama series at the 63rd Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, Sept. 18, 2011 in Los Angeles. - AP Photo

WASHINGTON: Don Draper, the dashing but troubled hero of the cult television drama “Mad Men,” will be a withered octogenarian when the series eventually comes to an end, its creator said Wednesday.

The highly-stylized show, set in the Camelot years of the early 1960s, is wildly popular for its portrayal of American life in the days of three-martini lunches, guilt-free smoking and ever-shifting social values.

In a public talk in Los Angeles, summarized on men's website Grantland.com, Matthew Weiner said its central character, New York advertising executive Draper, will be transported into the present when the series wraps up.

That means that Draper, who is in his 40s after four seasons on the AMC cable channel, will end up end a wizened gent in his mid-80s. Jon Hamm, the actor who plays him, now is 40 himself.

“What I'm looking for, and how I hope to end the show, is like – it's 2011,” said Weiner, noting that “Mad Men” is appreciated not only as entertainment, but also as social commentary.

“Don Draper would be 84 right now,” said Weiner, who is also the show's head writer and an executive producer of the now-completed HBO mob-family drama “The Sopranos”.

“I want to leave the show in a place where you have an idea of what it meant and how it's related to you.”

Weiner said the multiple Emmy-winning series – which begins its fifth season in March next year – will aspire at its end to depict the arc of Draper's complex life.

“It came to me in the middle of last season,” he said. “I always felt like it would be the experience of human life, and human life has a destination.”

Weiner also said he looks forward to closing out “Mad Men” while the show is still riding high with viewers. “All I want to do is not wear out the welcome,” he said.

While he anticipates the end of “Mad Men” will come in season seven, Weiner said the details remain to be sorted out.

“Do I know everything that's going to happen? No, I don't,” he said. “But I just want it to be entertaining, and I want people to remember it fondly and not think it ended in a fart.”