Some TV shows amassed such a huge fan base throughout their run that it became impossible to come up with an ending that would satisfy them all. There have been massively popular shows that actually managed to please fans with their final episodes, fromMAS*HtoBreaking Bad, but they’re few and far between. That’s a near-impossible feat.
If a show is built around a question, likeGame of Thrones’ question about who would seize the Iron ThroneorHow I Met Your Mother’s question about who would be the mother of Ted Mosby’s children, then it can be hard to come up with a satisfying answer that will live up to the hype.
Shows likeThe SopranosandLostgot so big that their endings were always bound to divide fans, no matter what happened, because you can’t please everyone.
WhenSquid Gamefirst dropped on Netflix, it became a global cultural phenomenon. It struck a chord with audiences, because its premise of financially disadvantaged people getting so desperate that they degrade themselves with deadly children’s games was a perfect allegory for wealth inequality and the crooked class system.
But eventually, the show would have to explain those metaphors and provide some kind of resolution.Squid Gamebecame such a massive success, with so many fans around the globe and so much riding on it, thatno amount of Cate Blanchettcould satisfy fans who were waiting for those answers.
When a show likeGossip Girlstarts airing with a premise built around a question, it’s bound to disappoint a lot of viewers when it finally answers that question.Gossip Girlasked audiences to guess the true identity of the titular gossip, soeveryone had their own headcanon about who it might be.
Gossip Girlwas rebooted in 2021 for HBO Max.
The revelation thatDan Humphrey was Gossip Girlwas certainly unexpected, but only because it didn’t make a lot of sense. It seemed like the kind of twist that wasn’t planned from the beginning. Everything else about the finale is mired in clichés; we get not one, but two weddings between main cast members.
It made sense for Netflix toremove Kevin Spacey fromHouse of Cardsafter he got embroiled in the #MeToo movement. When Spacey was met with disturbing allegations, his public image was irreparably tarnished. But the show couldn’t survive without him.
Spacey’s unsettling, yet oddly charismatic turn as Frank Underwood is what madeHouse of Cardsthe hit show it was. The series didn’t stand a chance of continuing with the same quality after he was fired.House of Cardsshould’ve just ended when it lost its star, maybe with a Claire-centric epilogue special to wrap things up.
In its first few seasons,The Walking Deadbecame one of the highest-rated shows on television. Its blend of soapy melodrama and gruesome zombie-slaying gore captivated audiences around the world. Viewers waited on the edge of their seats to see which of Rick Grimes’ fellow survivors would make it through each episode.
There was no way for The Walking Dead to have a good ending without Rick.
But as the series went on and AMC milked it for every last cent of profit, the cast members started to drop off. Beloved characters like Glenn and Hershel were killed off, andactors like Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira simply quit the show. There was no way forThe Walking Deadto have a good ending without Rick.
The Sopranos’ cut-to-blackis one of the most infamous endings in TV history, but it was par for the course if you’d been paying attention to the show. David Chase always avoided giving the audience closure, becauseclosure is an invention of drama; it doesn’t reflect real life.
As grimly satisfying as it would’ve been to see Tony beat Dr. Melfi’s attacker to death, it wouldn’t undo Dr. Melfi’s trauma, so Chase refused to give the audience that satisfaction. A lot ofSopranosfans expected to see Tony get whacked in the finale, or for the missing Russian from “Pine Barrens” to reappear, but it’s much more ambiguous.
Since it was revived after its original run had ended,The X-Fileshas had two different series finales — and they’ve both been disappointing. In most of its episodes,The X-Fileswas a monster-of-the-week procedural telling standalone stories. But it also built an overarching mythology that had a lot to answer for in the finale.
A reboot ofThe X-Filesis being developed by Ryan Coogler.
The criticisms of both finales have been more or less the same. Both finales disappointed audiences because they left a ton of questions unanswered, and they failed to provide any closure on the mythology that the show had spent so long building.The X-Fileswas better at building mysteries than solving them.
The final episode ofSeinfeldwas one of the most-watched series finales in television history. ButSeinfeldalways flew in the face of sitcom conventions, so it was going to be impossible to pull off the grandest convention in the genre: a big, momentous, feel-good finale.Seinfeldwas a show about nothing; it couldn’t have an extravagant ending.
A satisfying finale would’ve had Jerry and Elaine get married, but that kind of sentimental ending would’ve felt disingenuous for Seinfeld.
Most sitcom finales have something wonderful happen to their characters, like a wedding or a newborn baby or an exciting job opportunity. ButSeinfeldwas a show that always made its characters the butt of the joke. A satisfying finale would’ve had Jerry and Elaine get married, but that kind of sentimental ending would’ve felt disingenuous forSeinfeld.
From the very beginning,Game of Thronesset out to tell the story of the power struggle for the Iron Throne. The final episode was going to put one character in particular on that throne, andit needed to both surprise the audience and make sense from a narrative standpoint.
The show ultimately focused too much on the former and neglected the latter, and put Bran Stark of all people on the Iron Throne. It was an ending that no one could predict, but not in a good way. It didn’t help that the writers ran out of source material to adapt.
How I Met Your Motherspent nine seasonsbuilding to the mother’s fate. The show got audiences invested in Ted Mosby’s quest to find the love of his life and start a family, but it also got them invested in his on-and-off relationship with Robin Scherbatsky. There was no way to conclude both of those storylines in a satisfying way.
How I Met Your Motherhad to film parts of its series finale in season 2, due to child actors in the cast, which wrote the ending into a corner.
By some miracle, in its final season, the show managed to stick the landing with the reveal of the mother. It cast the perfect actor, Cristin Milioti, and got the audience suitably endeared to her. But the finale struggled to provide a conclusive ending, becausethe cat was already out of the bag and it couldn’t let go of Robin.
J.J. Abrams originated his mystery-box storytelling style onLost, and it worked a treat to get audiences invested in the series, coming back week after week to get new pieces of the puzzle. But the show posed so many questions about polar bears and smoke monsters and giant feet that it couldn’t possibly provide satisfying answers to all of them.
The show posed so many questions about polar bears and smoke monsters and giant feet that it couldn’t possibly provide satisfying answers to all of them.
The writers made the right call focusing the finale more on the emotional resolution of the characters’ arcs than the answers to all the lingering mysteries. But the viewers who wanted their questions answered were inevitably going to be disappointed.Lost’s ending was always going to be controversial, becausethe show was set up to underwhelm.
