Popular Television Shows with Hated Finales

Popular TV Shows with controversial final episodes

Before the final season of the science fiction show The Expanse dropped, many fans wondered if it would stick the landing or disappoint. Concerns grew among fans when it was announced that the last season would have only six episodes versus 10 to 13 for prior seasons. That seemed way too reminiscent of Game of Thrones, which makes it onto nearly every list of lousy series finales. Fans were relieved when The Expanse had a satisfying conclusion that left the door open for more since the final three books in the series haven't been adapted yet. The series finale has a 9.3 rating compared to an average of 8.7 for overall episodes on IMDB. (Source) 

Fans who follow shows for years expect closure, to have their questions answered, and to say farewell to the characters they love with a sense that everything has been wrapped up. Unfortunately, many beloved shows fail to do that. These are some examples of shows with finales many fans hated.

WARNING: LOTS OF SPOILERS AHEAD

Game of Thrones
I'll begin with Game of Thrones (GoT), the king of disappointing series endings. So what exactly went wrong? The television show is based on a series of novels by George R. R. Martin. When the show started filming, the book series was still being written. When new books weren't released quickly enough, the show's creators ran out of source material. Fans complained that the writing on the show had gone downhill and that characters didn't behave the way they had in earlier seasons. Things soon went from bad to worse. Season 7 had only seven episodes compared to 10 for previous seasons, and the writers expedited the timelines. Season 8 had only six episodes to wrap everything up, making the season feel rushed.   

Battlestar Galactica
During the opening sequence of each episode of Battlestar Galactica, we are told that the Cylons have a plan. It turns out that wasn't true. Ronald Moore, creator of the 2003 Battlestar Galactica remake said they added that line because co-executive producer David Eick thought it sounded cool. The first two seasons were well received. Then fans began to grumble about the show starting threads and not finishing them. An example of this happening is Kara Thrace almost becoming part of a plan to create human-Cylon hybrids. In season 3, the show began to neglect the socially relevant and character-driven storytelling that had made the first couple of seasons so compelling to focus more on mysticism and prophecy. The series concludes with the surviving characters landing on Earth and becoming the ancestors of modern humans. This ending felt cliche to many, but not everyone was disappointed. USA Today ranked it one of the best TV series finales of all time while acknowledging that "some are still angered by the deus ex machina convenience of the messy, benevolent god guiding the humans and Cylons alike."

Apollo and Starbuck

How I Met Your Mother
In How I Met Your Mother, Ted, the main protagonist, tells his son and daughter about the events that led to him and their mother meeting. Since the show ran for nine seasons with 208 episodes, that's a lot of events. And that is probably a big part of what made the series finale so disappointing. A lot of things have to happen to fill 208 episodes. Throughout the series, viewers were dying to find out the identity of the wife/mother. They wondered which of the women who came into Ted's life would be the one. When "the one" is revealed, she is Tracy McConnell, a woman who died in 2024, six years before Ted tells the story to their kids. When he finishes the story, they convince him to ask Robin out. She is one of the show's main characters. The series ends with Robin looking out her apartment window and seeing Ted holding a French horn. Many fans of the show were irked that they didn't meet the mother they had wondered about for years. Ted getting back with Robin seemed to undermine his character development because he finally got over her. Following backlash from fans, an alternative ending appeared on the Season 9 DVD. In this ending, Ted and Tracy meet at the train station, and that "kids is how I met your mother."

The How I Met Your Mother cast

Lost
Some fans loved the ending of Lost, some hated it, and some thought it was just ok. Lost had a series finale rating of 8.2 versus an average of 8.6 for episodes overall on IMDB. (Source) Even though the finale was well-received by most fans, Lost still has a reputation as a show "that ended badly." The main reason is that too many mysteries were left unsolved. The writers sometimes began new plotlines they didn't know how to finish. These mysteries kept viewers tuning in to find out what happens next and kept them coming back for six seasons and 121 episodes. Unfortunately, so many of these mysteries piled up there was no way to resolve all of them.

Merlin (BBC)
Merlin is loosely based on Arthurian legend, mainly dealing with the friendship between Merlin and King Arthur. When Merlin first arrives at Camelot, magic is banned, forcing him to hide his identity as a wizard. The series continually hints at a new dawn in Camelot with the return of magic as an accepted practice and Arthur taking over and ending the brutal reign of his father. Instead, the writers chose to have Merlin hide his magical abilities until almost the very end. The magic reveal has barely happened when Arthur dies. Fans who hoped for an earlier magic reveal and a possible future series were crushed. The writers took a family-friendly show in a dark direction and then ended it with the tragic death of King Arthur, who was still a young man. 

King Arthur and Merlin

Seinfeld
Sometimes less is more. Seinfeld may have benefited from a simpler send-off. The two-part finale begins with Jerry getting the exciting news that NBC has hired him to create a show called Jerry. The main characters decide to head to Paris to celebrate. That's when everything goes downhill. The plane has to make an emergency landing in a small Massachusetts town. While waiting for the plane to be repaired, they witness an armed carjacking. Instead of helping, they laugh at the plight of the victim. They are arrested under the town's "Good Samaritan" law which requires bystanders to help when they witness a crime. The four are found guilty and sentenced to a year in prison. Some fans thought the foursome finally getting their comeuppance was a betrayal of what the show had done for years. Many thought the ending wasn't funny enough and was bloated by too many cameos. Other fans appreciated that all the bad things the characters had done throughout the show caught up with them in the end.

The Seinfeld finale

Quantum Leap
Quantum Leap ended on a cliffhanger because the creators thought the show was going to be renewed for a sixth season. Dr. Sam Beckett spent five seasons trying to return to his own time. When the show was canceled after season 5 was already filmed, the creators had to resort to using a title card at the end to reveal that it didn't happen. The show appeared to promise repeatedly that Dr. Beckett would eventually return home. Instead, he will forever leap through time, never getting where he truly wants to go. Of course, it is possible that if the show got renewed for one more season, they may have chosen to end it the same way (minus the title card).