Sometimes good series not only go bad, they do so at the worst of all possible times — as in, right when they’re coming to an end. As a result, instead of leaving us reflecting fondly on a show that we’ve loved and lost, we’re stuck with an unpleasant aftertaste and a nagging question: It wasn’t always this crummy, was it?
The answer, thank the TV gods, is generally no, our favorite programs didn’t always reek. But that doesn’t diminish the “Ugh!” of a debatably lousy series finale.
Below, we’ve ranked 25 of television’s worst series finales ever, a list now updated to account for recent underwhelming swan songs like NBC’s The Blacklist and Max’s Search Party. But our series finale dissatisfaction goes back as far as Little House on the Prairie, and includes memorably panned finales like those from Seinfeld, Weeds, How I Met Your Mother and more. (Oh, are you looking for Lost? You’ll find it on our ranking of Best Series Finales.)
But which series finale topped our list as the worst of the worst? Keep scrolling to find out, then drop a comment with your own thoughts!
While we were wowed by the final season’s guest stars (John Waters! Jeff Goldblum!), we were perplexed by its last installment, which wrapped with Dory turning into a quasi-cult leader, and a time jump that delivered a decimated New York and… zombies?! Season 5 — including its series finale — frequently went off the rails and lacked its typical hipster charm. — Nick Caruso
We’ll always be grateful for the NBC comedy’s eventual revival if for no other reason than it completely threw out Season 8’s depressing “The Finale,” in which the besties that give the show its name became estranged for so many years, their kids were in college by the time they reconnected! — C.M.
NBC’s crime drama was often at its best when it leaned into its offbeat, unusual side. But with its series finale, The Blacklist leaned a little too far into the eccentric, killing off James Spader’s Raymond Reddington with a bull goring (?!) that felt both utterly random and completely anticlimactic for a character as towering and impenetrable as Red. Plus, even though the series ostensibly revealed Red’s true identity back in the Season 8 finale — we stand by the theory that he was really Liz’s mother, Katarina Rostova — The Blacklist ultimately ended without ever truly answering that question for viewers, bringing this show’s central mystery to a half-baked conclusion. — Rebecca Iannucci
Working off a mere six-episode order, La Brea had a lot of loose ends to tie up with its farewell run. The result was a breakneck 42-minute finale where you could veritably feel shortcuts being taken and story beats skipped right past. Throw in an awaited family reunion that was more clunky than heartwarming, and you get a finale that was far from dino-mite. — Matt Webb Mitovich
Dan being revealed as the titular blogger in “New York, I Love You XOXO” was shocking, sure. But that was only the case because it was about as logical or likely as Nate becoming the mayor of Manhattan — which, thank you very much, a five-year time jump suggested might be in his future! — C.M.
By the end of Season 9 (aka “New Beginnings”), the iconic family drama had been diluted to a shell of its former self, since almost every original cast member/character had “moved away” from Walnut Grove. The Last Farewell — the last, chronologically, of three subsequent TV-movies — aimed to give proper closure by bringing back Charles and Caroline Ingalls (Michael Landon and Karen Grassle), for a slapdash storyline that resulted in the exploding of all Walnut Grove homes/businesses. ‘Twas a sad, almost morose finish to a favorite series. — M.W.M.
The last episode of BBC America’s bloodthirsty thriller did finally give fans what they wanted to see: Eve and Villanelle giving into their long-brewing romantic impulses during an impromptu road trip. But we’re here to talk about that gut-punch of an ending. In the final minutes, Eve and Villanelle were celebrating a victory over evil cabal The Twelve — when Villanelle was suddenly shot dead by a sniper. It was a brutal shock to fans who were finally getting to see these two enjoy a tiny glimmer of joy together, and a slap in the face to anyone hoping for anything resembling a happy ending. Fans revolted, and even the book’s author disavowed the ending. — Dave Nemetz
The legacy of the well-respected sci-fi reboot has been forever tarnished by “Daybreak,” the three-part finale that left enough dangling threads to sew a Colonial Fleet uniform and tossed in a “because God” explanation for which somebody really shoulda coined the term “unoriginal sin.” — C.M.
“I think I heard a scream” went the last line of “Till Death Do Us Part.” And oh yeah, there was screaming, all right — lots of it, from viewers! — when it was revealed that the Liars’ malevolent tormentor A.D. was Spencer’s heretofore-unheard-of evil twin, Alex. Sorry — make that her British evil twin! — C.M.
Don’t blame Donald Bellisario for his series’ unsatisfying ending; he wasn’t sure if “Mirror Image” was going to be the ending. Nonetheless, after five seasons of joining time traveler Sam in “hoping each time that his next leap… will be the leap home,” it was crushing to learn from a title card that he never got there. — C.M.
Younger’s frustrating and long-awaited final season was built around Liza and Charles’ painfully drawn-out journey back to one another, so their extremely abrupt split in the last episode felt like a slap in the face. And while we’re all for big swings, did anyone think it was a good idea to end the series’ final hour with an ambiguous moment of flirtation between Liza and Josh? It was a clumsy — and woefully Diana Trout-less! — end to an otherwise wonderful comedy gem. — Andy Swift
While we’re all for series finales with some ambiguity, the Showtime dramedy left nearly every single one of its storylines unresolved, leaving frustrated fans with little closure after 11 seasons. And even though we understand that unprecedented pandemic circumstances prevented Emmy Rossum from returning to the series, Fiona’s absence still hurt. (Couldn’t we at least have gotten a mention of her?) — Vlada Gelman
How bad was the ABC comedy’s original final season, in which the Conners won the lottery? It was so bad that the even-worse last episode told us that the title character had made up the windfall (and a whole lot more) for her autobiography. Also, Dan was dead. Seriously? (Fortunately, he’s since been revived by way of Roseanne‘s ill-fated revival and several seasons of The Conners.) — C.M.
They wiped Sarah Walker of her memories — and thus, her personhood — and for what? For some vague ending where it’s up to us to decide if one magical kiss restored all her memories (and five years’ worth of character development)? Chuck’s extremely dedicated fandom deserved better after all those $5 footlongs they consumed to help keep the lights on. Would we be clamoring for a movie if they stuck the landing? — Ryan Schwartz
In the end, HBO’s bro-tastic L.A. fantasy became just another Hollywood sellout. The finale turned its back on its hedonistic past and indulged in every sappy TV cliché you can imagine: Vince got married! (To a girl he met three episodes earlier!) E found out he’s having a baby with Sloan! Ari ditched his agency to (barf) spend more time with his wife and kids! It was such a stunning betrayal of the Entourage brand, they had to undo most of it for the movie four years later. — D.N.
By the time the first Walking Dead spinoff finally ended, it had become must-flee TV. But its two-part conclusion still managed to hit a new low by changing Tracy’s parentage twice (!), then having her ride off into the sunset with Madison, whom she’d just watched murder her father. Sorry, but some things, not even an Alycia Debnam-Carey cameo can redeem. (TVLine readers seemed to agree, giving the finale a rare average grade of “D.”) — C.M.
Despite being titled “The Last War,” the series finale of this CW sci-fi drama contained a whole lot of standing around and talking. And if you were hoping for a happy ending, you were out of luck. While many characters were allowed to “transcend” to a higher plane of existence, quite a few others — aka the people with names that we cared about — were left to live out the rest of their days as the final members of humanity. No, really, they weren’t even able to procreate because… reasons. — A.S.
The second, more outlandish series finale had us believe that Eric had been dead for half the final season, and Keith David was his guardian angel. Or at least some of the Internet bought into that fan theory. (At least if Eric had died, his family wouldn’t have had to endure a cross-country road trip in a cramped RV named — wait for it — the 7th Heaven!) — R.S.
After nine seasons, the CBS comedy’s “Last Forever” told viewers, in essence, “Joke’s on you for ever caring how Ted met his kids’ mother, because in the end, she was gonna die, and he was gonna wind up with Robin after a full season dedicated to her wedding to Barney suddenly ended in divorce!” Not funny. — C.M.
Though “The Finale” trotted out classic characters like the Soup Nazi and Bubble Boy, it was still a criminally bad ending to a historically terrific comedy. By the time Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer were sent up the river for violating a Good Samaritan law, fans felt like they’d already done hard time! At least Curb Your Enthusiasm‘s own series finale eventually righted this wrong a bit. — C.M.
Lisa Edelstein was smart to sit out the subpar ending to the Fox drama she’d departed a season earlier. After the titular doc bickered with hallucinations of everyone from Thirteen to Kutner, he faked his own death so that he could avoid prison and ride off into the sunset with doomed bestie Wilson. — C.M.
Somebody had to have been high as a kite to have said, “Yeah, a huge time jump that lets us tie up every loose end and stick a bow on it — that’s how we should end this show that people used to love!” So bad, we didn’t even get the munchies when it was over! — C.M.
The HBO drama’s sendoff sucked so much that fans would have been well-advised to say “No, thank you” to “Thank You.” Most grievous among its sins was the fact that it ultimately answered the question of Bill or Eric with a toothless “neither” by pairing Sookie in a flash-forward with a guy we’d never even seen before! — C.M.
In retrospect, maybe Netflix should’ve folded rather than reshuffled Cards after dealing out Kevin Spacey. Because not only was the final season of the once-great series a total slog, it ended in the silliest of all possible ways: with President Claire stabbing henchman Doug to death — in the Oval Office! — C.M.
We were hoping that the end of Showtime’s serial-killer drama would be, pun intended, to die for. Instead, it slayed us in the absolute worst way imaginable, by having Michael C. Hall’s homicidal character fake his death and assume a new identity as… a lumberjack? What the… ?! (And we’re not sure that 2021’s limited-run revival, Dexter: New Blood, stuck the landing much better.) — C.M.
Surprised that Enterprise didn’t make the list. That was awful
Omg yes!!!
Tucker is alive damnit!!!!
Fresh pain he was the best character!!!
Chuck and BSG do not deserve to be on this list. Not by a longshot. Buffy, maybe. Supernatural, sure. But both Chuck and BSG had pretty solid finales.
Fun fact about Little House: they destroyed the sets on camera in order to prevent Walnut Grove from becoming just another generic “old town” backlot backdrop in TV and film going forward.
Hmm, widespread lore has it that they had to return the land to its original state anyway: https://www.nytimes.com/1984/02/06/arts/prairie-set-is-dynamited-for-finale.html
Chuck’s final season is almost entirely skippable. Hopefully, a movie will right that wrong.
I don’t know if it could ever happen. Zach Levi has kind of proven himself to be largely unlikeable in recent years. I’m not sure if he has changed since Chuck days or if he always was a tool but he always seemed much more affable in those days. From what I see he doesn’t seem to interact with those costars any more. In the immediate years after Chuck wrapped you would still see them together on panels in events and they’d talk fondly of each other.
I AM ONLY speculating from what I see as someone who follows television media closely in the news and online. For all I know they could all still be close friends but I would be willing to bet money based on all the time I spend following tv and media they aren’t still speaking and probably arent eager to work together. But I could be wrong.
But what I can say is that they were much more publicly close in those early years and I haven’t seen any trace of that in a long time.
Buffy? No. But I did like the BSG finale. They again “God” does not scare me.
NCIS Los angeles should be on this list, that was one of the worst finals I’ve ever seen and I have seen a lot.
Some of these finals a result of running too long after it’s original plot ended as The blacklist. or not moving from the original plot like pretty little lairs between evil twins out of nowhere and undoing the whole characters’ growth that shown the time jump so they end with their high school lovers.
I wish House of cards didn’t film the final season and just cancel it.
I made peace with Chuck ending after watching the vow.
Boardwalk Empire. That entire final season was an unwatchable atrocity.
Really? You must have been watching a different show to me. I loved it.
Boardwalk Empire was great from start to finish. I enjoyed every second of that show including the last season and finale.
LOST not being on here AT ALL invalidates this entire list. Sorry but that is hands down worse than at least a third to half of these shows listed. Actually, the entire 6th season is worse than some of these series finales.
You say that because you didn’t understand it.
I absolutely understood it and I still didn’t like it. Having people say I didn’t understand it has just made me dislike it even more.
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THIS!!!
The Lost finale bent heavily toward a religious/faith element which triggers a lot of people into unhinged rants. It was more emotion than adventure. Some just wanted Polar bear answers and the like which would have been boring.
Exactly, Dave. Part of the whole show — which they really drove home with Jacob and the Man in Black/Locke (and Ben) in the final season — was this supposed tug of war between religion and science. Ultimately, while the show started with such a hard science (fiction) bent, it moved onto faith by the end. I get why people were frustrated with so many things unanswered — they invested time and interest in a show that made such a big deal about all of these things — but I felt more emotionally resolved by the ending. That felt more satisfying to me than learning why and how the polar bear was on the island.
@Dave I have no problem with religious/faith elements. Which is one of the reasons I am a part of the minority that actually likes the BSG series finale. However, unlike BSG, LOST didn’t earn that religious/faith ending through its narrative. Also, some of my most favorite episodes from LOST are the more emotional ones so it wasn’t the lack of “adventure” that irked me. It was the total disregard to the prior 5 seasons worth of storytelling to shoehorn in a happy ending for *some* characters without any explanation as to why they were “chosen” and then toss in more unnecessary island mythology because they could.
Not sure how you missed the religious elements when one of the character’s names was literally ‘Christian Shephard…’
They’re there, you just have to want to see them.
@Rusty Wow. That was such a long reach I sure hope you didn’t hurt yourself trying to grab it.
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I mean, sure, were there teeny, tiny elements? Yeah. Pretty much most fans predicted the island was some form of purgatory during the first season including myself. Yet the producers were like, “No, no, no. It’s not. It has nothing to do with that kind of thing.” Only for it to end up being kind of like that. Except with no real narrative thread woven throughout. I’ve always felt the fans were a little too smart and figured out where the writers were going with the island so they tried to course correct but ultimately couldn’t stick the landing.
I think it’s a pretty big reach to say that season 6 was not a drastic change of tone from the five seasons before it.
Had no problem with the religious angle. Had no problem with not having all of the questions answered. For me it was like they lost confidence with the audience that had followed them through every twist and turn and just gave a way too simplistic ending. The ending they gave was the one that was the most boring.
I agree.
Well the polar bear thing was explained in the epilogue, which really should have run after the end credits. And even that was really just making very obvious what was already explained in season 3 — The polar bears were just brought in as test subjects, no other reason. The
show was very good at introducing ” omg, what does this mean??” things that really didn’t mean anything at all.
Can you give a more generic response? I can say the same thing about a bunch of the finales listed above. The sad reality is LOST lost (pun intended) its way when ABC started interfering with the direction of the show and J.J. Abrahams stepped aside because he was involved in too many projects at the time. Damon L. and Carlton C. just weren’t good showrunners and the finale season and series finale proved that.
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Was the series finale a good episode? In general, yes. But it was NOT a good *series* finale. It did not wrap up 6 seasons of the complicated mythology of the show. It ignored it in most cases. Personally I feel that the season five finale makes a much more interesting series finale. It’s not perfect. However the idea that these people are so tired of suffering at the hands of some mysterious force that they’d go so far to detonate a nuclear weapon in hopes it would “reset” whatever BS they have endured and be set free or die. And then the screen turns to white and we as the audience are left to figure out for ourselves whether they succeeded or not is more way more philosophically profound than what we got.
Well said, J.B.– I always thought they could have left it there, when Juliet detonated the bomb I imagined her thinking “the hell with this…”
I disliked this for the same reason I disliked Manifest after Season 2. Not every sci-fi mystery needs to be solved with religion.
Playing the god card to resolve stupid plots is an ancient gimmick in literature (deus ex machina), and is known as bad writing. I enjoyed the mythological references in LOST, I though they were going somewhere with it. Turns out they were just adding “hamburger helpers” to a sophomoric plot. The finale of LOST turns out to be an unintended send up of the “god steps in” ruse, it couldn’t be more trite. Obviously some crappy weed in the writers room.
Lost was the greatest tv show of all time with a great finale. It was great seeing the whole gang back again. Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Boone Charlie, Desmond, etc.
Lost finale is divisive, but I actually think it invalidates lists like this to put divisive finales on there. It may be one you didn’t like, there’s lots of people who love it and think it’s one of the best. The 25 worst finales should have more consensus that they’re bad rather than being popcorn argument starters.
I think you underestimate how many people there are that love the LOST finale. They may love the happy ending part but they don’t like the fact that it just ignored all the storytelling and hype of the previous six years. I would also argue that this is one site’s opinion on the matter not a general consensus. That in itself is very hard to so. But if that were even true this list would look a whole lot different. GAME OF THRONES was pretty much universally hated or panned yet it is nowhere to be found on this list. How many people even know of LA BREA the show? It barely made a blip on the cultural zeitgeist to even warrant a spot here. When was the last time you heard folks debating the finale of LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE? And if “the 25 worst finales should have more consensus that they’re bad rather than being popcorn argument starters” BSG should not be on here. There are just as many people who enjoyed it as there those who didn’t and they still argue about it to this day.
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For me, the finale of St. Elsewhere is the worst ever. as in ever. But Little House is a close second for me.
I love it because it’s the writers being massive trolls.
This list has no value without St Elsewhere. An autistic child is supposed to have imagined suicide and rape among other things? No way.
HIMYM deserves all the 1-5 slots.
The HIMYM finale was so bad that I gave away all the DVD sets. I have never watched a single episode since.
I’m with you on this. I re-watch shows I love all the time. But the final season plus the finale were so horrible that I’m still angry about it to this day and can’t even think about it without feelings of rage
Same! One of the few shows that the finale ruined the entire series. Haven’t watched a single episode since the night the series finale aired.
Same here. I have a whole list of shows I re-watch, and I wish HIMYM could be on it, but the finale ruined the whole series. I hate it so much. Seinfeld, on the other hand, I am happy to re-watch despite the mediocre finale.
I too have never watched a single episode since the finale… and I only refer to it as “the show that shall not be named”. It is a prime example of not listening to your characters (as Stephen King says) and sticking with a “clever” idea you had when you first came up with the show. One that might have worked if the show only ran 3 or 5 years, but not 9.
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Totally agree!! I never rewatch HIMYM because the finale tainted the entire series in my mind. You can’t spend so many years explaining why Ted and Robin shouldn’t be together to then put them together!! Still makes me angry. Plus I always liked Robin with Barney more.
I still contend the issue with HIMYM’s ending was editing. Can’t kill off a character and with only one commercial break in between pair off Ted. The story is fine, but it’s how they chose to put it together – and with all the real estate they had to fill in the “one weekend” season (still a terrible choice – Segel could just have been over there) – not giving Tracy’s story time to breathe until she couldn’t was their ultimate mistake.
Also: Star Trek Voyager for getting the crew home after seven seasons of wanting to get home to then just end… and not give us even ONE single reunion with our characters’ loved ones. Still a little mad at that disrespect for the audience. They should have arrived home at the end of the penultimate episode then the finale should have been the reunions/what happens.
Yes! Totally agree about Voyager. When the ship got lost, half the crew was made up of Maquis. During the Dominion War, most of the Maquis were…unalived. So, it would have been interesting to see these former freedom fighters have to adjust to the fact that everyone they knew, and fought alongside, was gone. And would they be pardoned for the crimes committed before joining Voyager’s crew? We could have gotten 2 episodes out of that!
Yes like we never got to see Paris and his dad make up…..
I would have loved to seen less janeway and more reunion
Also angel!!!!! Cody deserved better and to have angel
I still (after all these years) have a bad taste in my mouth about the cliffhanger ‘Vegas’ ended on because of cancellation.
Make that ‘Las Vegas’ ugh spellchecker
I think Seinfeld had the worst finale. I wanted Jerry and Elaine to end up together.
That would have been even worse.
That Blacklist ending should have been higher. Ridiculous & never clearly answered Who is Red?
The Chuck finale has grown on me since the initial airing. I’ve worked my way up to being fine how it ended.
It’s clear she was starting to remember things and all of her subconscious actions showed that she loved/trusted him. Heck, you can just view it as her falling in love with him all over again.
that’s what I did. I have a hopeless romantic view of their love.
Yeah that’s how I’ve chosen to view it; they fall in love all over again but a bit quicker this time. Makes it an easier pill to swallow.
Agreed. It wasn’t 100% definitive, but I’ve always contended that it’s only open-ended enough to satisfy people who like not having getting answers. In my mind, there is no doubt the kiss worked.
“How I Met Your Mother” painted itself into a corner when the creators decided on the ending way back when the show started. They didn’t figure on the facts that a) Cristin Milioti as “the mother” was such a refreshing and charming character that she actually breathed new life into the aging series, and viewers wanted more of her, not the insultingly short goodbye the show gave her in the end; b) we were more than sick of Ted’s seesawing feelings for Robin — it was bad enough that they continued when she was literally preparing to get married to Barney, but the last thing we wanted was to see those two as the series’ “end game”; and c) Ted had turned into way too much of a sad sack as his seemingly endless search for love continued through way too many seasons, so snatching his wife away at the end seemed like an unfair punishment for someone whose happiness we were meant to care about, even if we didn’t care that much by the end. The writers could have argued that, well, real life happens that way sometimes — but it wasn’t real life, it was a fictional TV show, and they should have been more aware of how aggravating the ending would be to viewers who stuck with the characters for so long.
You summed up beautifully my thoughts about the HIMYM finale!
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Calm down dude, you seem like an immature person who hates when people disagree. Take a pill and a nap. A good psychiatrist could do you wonders.
Exactly. They came up with that ending very early on in the series run, and couldn’t allow themselves to let go of it. Several seasons of storylines and character development later, that ending no longer made sense for the characters. But the writers just couldn’t let it go. It was almost like they didn’t understand their own characters anymore. It was a betrayal of years of character development for Ted, Barney, and Robin. Had the show only lasted 4 seasons, then it could’ve worked. But not after 9 seasons. The writers were entirely too stubborn, and they ruined the show in the process. They ruined the show just so they could use the dumb scene with the kids they had filmed years prior before they grew up. What a shame.9
There is even an alternate ending of the show filmed where he doesn’t end up with Robin. They had it and still screwed it up.
It’s hard when the ending they decided on was personal to their own lives. I can understand them not letting that go. And it’s not like we were going to get more of Tracey anyway, the series was ending, so we were losing her either way.
Lost — most disappointing.
Except wrong, wrong and laughably wrong again. Single best tv drama finale of all time. Unlike the Sopranos garbage.
I thought Seinfeld’s ending was perfect. It was always all about nothing.
Magnum PI’s series finale was filmed as a season finale, and some of the footage that could have made for a better final scene…the entire cast having a nice dinner together….hit the cutting room floor instead. The actual final scene was nice, but not all the cast was in it, and the show was definitely set up for a season 6. There is definitely room for more stories…and to wrap up season 5’s lose ends. I have lost faith in NBC bringing the show back, but CBS still truly owns the show. And I hope out hope that they will either bring back Magnum PI or sell Magnum PI to a streaming service who will also give us a Season 6.
I totally agree about Quantum Leap and I also hated the Blindspot and Good Witch finales.
I think Quantum Leap should maybe get a pass because the producers did not know for sure if it would be the final season.
There is a massive difference between shows that know they are in their final season and produce a definitive finale representing their final word on the show (like Seinfeld, Lost, etc.), vs. a show like QL (both versiona, really) where the show had not yet been definitively renewed or cancelled when the final episode is filmed. Many times a show in an uncertain status like QL will film a finale that they think could work either way, as a finale or cliffhanger for the next season, and often times it doesn’t work well as either.
I think if you’re going to do a “Worst TV Finale” list again, you should limit it to shows that knew they were in their last season and who had every opportuinity to do a true wrapup show that completes all storylines, etc. I don’t think it’s fair to include shows where the producer had a reasonable expectation that the show might come back.
Dexter has to be #1 for having the two worst finales in TV history.
I honestly don’t think the second series finale was too bad. Yes it was sad and depressing, but I believe it had to be written the way it was in order to have the ending they needed to keep Dexter and his son to stop all the killings!
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I still can’t see red being Liz’s mother. That was just a decoy in my opinion. The final episode was just terrible!
No Game of Thrones?
I agree with a few of these choices, but I loved the Younger finale and *did* think it was a good idea to end with an ambiguous moment of flirtation between Liza and Josh. Never liked Charles at all.
Same. The way Charles treated her after her lie came out always bothered me. And I was team Josh from the get go, so I was very happy with the ending and it’s callback to the 1st episode.
The GG finale was egregious. A complete disservice to the fans and a reminder of how poor the quality of the series became. There was no reason to reveal GG’s “identity” after the S2 finale. Not to mention, the decision to make the S1 couples endgame is yet another sign of how regressive the series is.
Agreed, it did seem regressive. Dair should have been endgame. As for the reveal, I applauded the effort. It did seem plausible.
What? No mention of Game of Thrones. Such an excellent series until the source books ran out, but the last season still had its moments until that gawdawful resolution in the final episode.
Glades should have been on this list.
Exactly. I just came on here to say that. The Glades will forever remain the WORST ending to a series ever. I still get angry thinking about it. Grrr.
That got canceled. It didn’t have an actual series finale.
We know. But Matt Passmore is still bleeding out on the floor with no closure for us.
Be that as it may, it is not a true series finale so it doesn’t qualify for this list. My Mom loved that show and was heartbroken over how it ended so I get how upsetting it was. However, that was not a creative decision to end the entire show that way on behalf of the writers and showrunner. That was meant to be a season finale but A&E just decided to cancel the show for reasons I can’t recall at the moment. If they took every show that got canceled into consideration this list would be 20x longer or more.
Horrible ending! Glades still had a good good following. TNT just decided to go a different way. They could have done a shorter season and wrapped everything up for the fans. I have not watched anything else on their network.
While there’s certainly some sadness to it, I guess I’m one of the few that wasn’t that bothered by the original Quantum Leap’s ending. (Other than the egregious misspelling of Sam’s last name.)
It set up some confusion about how Sam and Al would’ve met and started Project Quantum Leap, but it was touching to see Sam help his friend. And when God/Time/Whatever/Al the Bartender revealed that Sam was always in control of his leaps, it was the final piece that fulfilled his purpose: he was always meant to do this.
Sam not going home, in favor of being an agent to put right what once went wrong, fit the character. He knew he could do more good by continuing to leap.
And though he never went home permanently, I’d like to think he visited Donna on occasion before getting back to business. Maybe even Sammy Jo, unbeknownst to her, though probably never revealed to her that she was likely his daughter.
Interestingly, neither appeared in the continuation series — nor were they ever mentioned. Perhaps Donna never told anyone, even Al, that she encountered Sam from time to time. (Though, it would be cruel to think that Sam never visited Al, and Al spent the rest of his life trying to bring Sam home.)
The planned Bakula cameo in the continuation pilot allegedly would’ve seen Sam leap into the body of someone who was helping Janis with her own work on time travel.
The one bad thing about the ending was that it was abrupt because of the late decision to cancel the series. The apparently scripted (possibly filmed) ending that made Al a leaper looking for Sam to set up a season 6 sounds wacky. Would’ve been nice to see (the ending and the new season), but I’m actually happy with the ending we got.
Still, it would’ve been nice to see Sam in the new series.
It took a long long time, but something clicked with me not too long ago, and I more or less made my peace with the OG QL finale. For a long time, I HATED the final card. But then I realized, it was just phrased wrong. The finale DOES imply that Leaping was Sam’s ultimate destiny, and it sets it up really well, thanks to Al the Bartender. If the end card had read, “Dr. Sam Beckett KEPT LEAPING,” or ‘Dr. Sam Beckett IS STILL LEAPING,” then it would’ve worked beautifully. It would’ve been open-ended. Sam wouldn’t have been home with his adventures done, which is bittersweet, but he’d still be out there putting right what once went wrong. And maybe, since he could control his Leaps, he went home from time to time. The title card as aired put a nasty stamp of failure on Sam’s fate. A different phrasing (with correct spelling, of course) could have literally been the difference between a fondly-remembered finale and one that still burns today.
I agree. Sad is not the same thing as *bad*. It wasn’t the ending people wanted, but I think it was well done and thoughtful, and Sam’s sacrifice for his friend was perfect for the character.