“It ends with Alf being captured by the government.”
A beloved TV show ending is nearly always a bummer, and it’s rarely easy to say goodbye to characters that you’ve spent years watching. But a show that ends on a strong note can mitigate that, while a show that ends on a weak one…well, fans find that hard to forgive.
Because of that, there was an abundance of passionate responses when Reddit user u/Get_Verminated asked, “What is the worst TV show finale?” Here are 23 of the top contenders for the (unenviable) crown.
Responses have been edited for length and/or clarity. Also, since this post is all about finales, there are spoilers ahead.
1.
“My Name is Earl. It had a planned ending. The show was still pretty popular. The season ended early due to a writers’ strike on expectations it would return, and it’s left at a cliffhanger.”
20th Century Fox / Courtesy Everett Collection
2.
“Spider-Man: The Animated Series. It ends after the revelation that Mary Jane had been replaced by a clone made of Hydro-Man’s water some time ago. Unfortunately, it’s unstable, and she dissolves in Peter’s arms as he screams out. Madame Web shows up and tells Peter that they’re going to explore the multiverse to save the real Mary Jane. And then the show got cancelled.”
3.
“Killing Eve. Having seen many of the shows being mentioned here, nothing can top how badly KE ruined things.”
BBC-America / Courtesy Everett Collection
“Came here to say this. They only chose to end it that way for crappy foreshadowing and shock value. I will never forgive them.”
4.
“The Man in the High Castle. I loved this show right up until the end of the last episode, where they ruined the whole damn thing.”
5.
“I feel so bad for the cast and people who put so much work into that final season of Game of Thrones. They got screwed by lazy writing, plain and simple. In earlier seasons, it didn’t always need to be epic because we enjoyed the dialogue and moving of the chess pieces, the literal game. Season 7 started turning into a blockbuster and then in Season 8, all plot coherence was thrown out the window.”
HBO / Via youtube.com
“I know GoT is the most common one, but it hits a lot harder when you think about the legacy it used to have. Game of Thrones was literally one of the most popular shows in the world; everyone I knew was talking about things that were happening in the show on a scale that I still haven’t seen replicated. Then a couple seasons of bad writing go by…and no one talks about the show anymore. A show that was as great as peak GoT just…forgotten.”
6.
“Alf. They thought they were getting another season, but they were canceled instead, so it ends with Alf being captured by the government.”
7.
“Scrubs Season 9 is like a fever dream. Real shame, because the real series finale (Season 8) was phenomenal.”
ABC
“Yeah, Season 8 was a masterclass on how a finale should be. Until the last minute of the episode you are wondering, ‘Is that really it?’ And then the finale sequence happens and it’s just a work of art. Then we get the abomination that was Season 9. All of a sudden, the hospital is now a university? And has like tripled in size for some inexplicable reason? J.D. makes those weird-ass cameos and then disappears. Stupid fucking studio greed ruins everything, man.
The single good thing about Season 9 though? The janitor’s exit after finding out J.D. doesn’t work there anymore, lol.”
8.
“Weeds. So fucking disappointing. Dexter, too. To be fair, they both went downhill probably mid-series, but damn it, I’m still upset I spent so much time invested to get a craptastic ending. Twice! Breaking Bad, on the other hand, is how ya end a fucking show.”
Showtime Networks Inc. / Courtesy Everett Collection
9.
“I can probably live with the ending of How I Met Your Mother, but I will forever hate how they wrote the progression leading towards it.”
CBS / Courtesy Everett Collection
“Super weird and underscores this Hollywood teaching that if you wait long enough, you’ll get the woman you wanted, even if she doesn’t want you or wasn’t good for you. I was really proud the show didn’t fall into the trope, and then it fell so hard it shattered all reason.”
10.
“The final season, but specifically the last episode, of the BBC Sherlock is so fucking terrible. It doesn’t even feel like the same show.”
BBC / Courtesy Everett Collection
“I’m honestly surprised this isn’t higher. The entire last season was so bad I still can’t believe they actually made it. Especially the disappearing glass, oh my god. There clearly was glass, you can see the reflection and then — boom — glass gone. Does the sister have magic powers? I fucking hate that episode so much. Such a good show and then that.”
11.
“Surprised no one’s brought up The Mick. On account of being cancelled, it ends after a child main character gets struck by lightning and the other characters are left wondering if she’ll die.”
Fox / courtesy Everett Collection
12.
“Younger. The entire last season changed it from a show about strong bonds between women to one where that got shifted to the back burner so she could be with a guy. Few laughs and some mystifying character changes.”
13.
“Of the shows I’ve watched (which admittedly isn’t many), I resent the way they ended 2 Broke Girls the most, mostly because they didn’t. They just cancelled it after setting up this whole tension between Max and Caroline’s love interests in the last episode of Season 6, and that’s all she wrote. I’m still a little pissed, because even though the show felt like it got a bit too big for its britches in the last few seasons, it was still a fun and charming show with some great characters. And they cancelled it just like that.”
14.
“American Horror Story: Apocalypse. It was like a cartoon of unbelievability with no stakes at all, only to then kill the literal Anti-Christ by running him over with a car.”
15.
“For me, it would have to be Supernatural. I loved the show and, for the most part, the last season was going great. The second-to-last episode felt right, and I think maybe they should have found a way to wrap it up there. But that finale? OOF, it was so bad.”
CW
“Spoilers ahead, but the way they killed Dean? What was that?! They’ve done so much and battled so many hardships, and just when things get good, they kill him with a big ass screw thing sticking out of the wall? And old Sam, oh my god, the hair was SO bad. I was like, ‘What is happening?’ I don’t know if Covid messed up their original plans, but it was a hot mess and it did not wrap up the show nicely. I wish it was better to end the 15-year run, but oh well. I think most of us just pretend it didn’t happen, lol.”
16.
“The 100. I was yelling at the TV the last few episodes and would rather the series never even ended, because the finale they gave us was terrible. Madi was the last straw for me.”
17.
“GLOW. It was supposed to have at least one more season. The last couple of episodes set up some interesting storylines.”
Netflix / courtesy Everett Collection
18.
“Seinfeld. They all end up in jail and the camera pulls away from the cell as they argue. So disappointing.”
Castle Rock Entertainment / Courtesy Everett Collection
19.
“Lost. Dunno how it’s not one of the top answers. It was a cultural phenomenon for years, with everyone guessing and analyzing stuff week to week. All that mystery led to the most disappointing ending ever, to the point that it ruined the series. One cliché bad ending made all those Lost DVDs utterly worthless and unwatched, evermore.”
ABC / Courtesy Everett Collection
20.
“The entire last season of House didn’t need to happen, and the ending was borne of the horrible mistake to keep going with a bad tangent to its extreme, ruining the main character and kind of just turning the final round of antics into a petulant essay on misery.”
20th Century Fox / Courtesy Everett Collection
21.
“Ozark is by far the absolute worst ending I’ve ever seen. It took a really great show and killed the replay ability. Can’t rewatch it, ever.”
Netflix / Courtesy Everett Collection
22.
“I haven’t seen anyone say this yet, but for me, it’s Castle. It’s a (very well done even as someone who doesn’t like murder mysteries) buddy cop show between Castle and Beckett which turns romantic. But there was lots of offstage drama and the actress for Beckett (Stana Katic) was fired for Season 9. So they filmed the ending of Season 8 as a cliffhanger where Beckett was supposed to die. Fans hated it so badly, they changed it at the last minute. When Castle and Beckett were shot, they put a random montage of them living happily ever after for the last 2 minutes over the top of them laying on the floor. Not only was the last season bad in general, but whose idea was it to kill off half of a buddy cop show? If there’s ever a sign that it’s time to end a show, that’s a pretty good one. There’s no way that would’ve worked and the writers were delusional to think they would’ve been successful. And that delusion robbed viewers of a decent conclusion.”
ABC / Courtesy Everett Collection
23.
And finally: “Firefly. Only because of the injustice of only getting one season.”
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