Sneak peek: Final boarding call for 'Mad Men'

Mad Men ended last season with the lives of so many characters up in the air - at least figuratively - that it seems appropriate that an travel motif is featured in the marketing campaign for the new season, due April 13 (AMC, 10 p.m. ET/PT).

New, just-released photos feature leading man Don Draper (Jon Hamm) on the go with three of the most important people in his life: at the airport baggage dropoff with wife Megan (Jessica Paré); waiting in the terminal with former protégé Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss); and seated on a plane with ad-agency partner Roger Sterling (John Slattery).

Neither the photos, which aren't from specific episodes, nor a recent video that showed Don descending from a TWA airliner is meant to imply anything about Men's upcoming seventh and final season, says creator Matt Weiner. To prolong the ending, Men's final run is being divided into two seven-episode segments, one airing this spring and the other in 2015, a pattern AMC also used to extend Breaking Bad.

'I hope (viewers) find them stylish and intriguing and (that they) whet their appetite to watch the show,' Weiner says of the photos, shot by Frank Ockenfels. 'It's an airport, it's travel, it's period. That was something we hadn't done and very much of-the-time. There's not much glamour out there right now, and boy, do these people look glamorous. Just imagine the idea of getting dressed up to go on a plane flight.'

At the end of Season 6, Don's erratic behavior had prompted the other partners to put him on leave and his protege, Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss), had taken over his office.(Photo: Frank Ockenfels, AMC)

Weiner directed this spring's finale, and after a month-long break, production will begin soon on the final batch of seven. Since Mad Men seasons are typically 13 episodes, he's approaching it as one season, although it will require two premieres, two finales and a lot of story.

He says he asked his writers, ' 'Is there anything you always wanted to do on the show that we haven't done?' So all these stories started bubbling up, (and) it became this extremely dense exercise. In a way, it feels like three seasons.'

Weiner, known for keeping an extremely tight lid on story lines, wouldn't reveal what happens to Don and company, or how much time has passed since the Season 6 finale, set in late 1968.

But he did discuss a larger theme, of the material world vs. the immaterial world. There are 'the things that we can touch, our desires (that can be) met by the physical world, whether it's the seven deadly sins or, in a more positive way, ambition, money, our need for love. And when those are met, or even if they're not, I would like to deal with whatever else there is in life, the immaterial, the things we cannot see, the spiritual.'

Love can cut both ways: 'Don Draper has a very immediate need for love that is not defined the same as it is for a lot of us. So is there something more there?'

At the end of last season, a reeling Don began to look in the mirror, and the consequences left him anything but grounded. The adman, who has been living a double life, was suspended from his job after revealing the true details of his harrowing upbringing in a client meeting. And he faced an uncertain marital future with Megan after reversing a plan to move to California. However, he seemed to make an important connection with estranged daughter Sally (Kiernan Shipka) when he showed her the brothel where he was raised.

Roger's (John Slattery, left, with Jon Hamm) life is as together as we've seen it in recent years, with him enjoying good relationships with both ex-wives and Joan (Christina Hendricks).(Photo: Frank Ockenfels 3, AMC)

'We left Don in a pretty bad spot in the material aspects of his life, but in a pretty positive spot as he opened up to his daughter,' Weiner says. 'Whatever that moment was, we hope it was the beginning of something. But even if that's all it was, it was a big moment for him and the show.'

And he says Mad Men's seven-season run allows viewers to take the long view of these characters.

'One of my intentions from the beginning of the show was ... that you would look back at these people at the beginning and feel nostalgia,' Weiner says. 'The pilot was all about deflating your perceptions of who they were and how idyllic the late '50s were. It was meant to say, without abstraction, that these people's lives are not that different from yours. Now, looking back at earlier episodes, you have a sense of a rosier past.'

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