10 TV Show Endings People Are Still Talking About Years Later

A good finale should live long in the memory, but there are also many TV show endings which have sparked endless discussion for all the wrong reasons. It’s not an easy task to wrap up a long-running show in a way that pleases everyone. A few shows, like Blackadder and Schitt’s Creek, deliver crowdpleasing finales, but it’s far more common for a show to be memorable because of an ending that leaves fans disappointed.

It’s human nature to want to discuss controversial topics more than those which people tend to agree on. This is why many of the most widely discussed TV show endings of all time are ones which split people’s opinions. Some shows create intentionally ambiguous endings to feed into these debates, while others end in such a controversial way that fans can’t help but offer their own opinions about what should have been done differently.

10

Game Of Thrones

Season 8, Episode 6, “The Iron Throne”

Game of Thrones was always bound to encounter problems when it outpaced George R. R. Martin’s material, and the final season was particularly controversial. The show angered many fans with the way it wrapped things up, especially with its treatment of Daenarys, Cersei and Jon Snow. The final season drew criticism as a whole, and the series finale didn’t help matters.

Game of Thrones season 8 seemed to shy away from many of the show’s greatest qualities. While previous seasons were happy to draw things out and give story lines as much time as they needed to develop organically, season 8 rushed along at breakneck speed, and this had the disappointing knock-on effect of cheapening the emotional impact of the finale, which brings a new era of peace to Weseros.

9

Seinfeld

Season 9, Episodes 23 & 24, “The Finale”

Seinfeld co-creator Larry David left the show after season 7, but he returned to make one of the most controversial finales in TV history. In “The Finale,” Jerry’s luck seems to have come in, as NBC are once again interested in giving him his own TV show. However, after a plane malfunction grounds Jerry and his friends in a small town in Massachussetts, they find themselves on the wrong side of the law, and they must face a trial amid a media frenzy.

Although the Seinfeld finale brought back a ton of fan-favorite characters to act as character witnesses at the trial, its ending has inspired heated debates for years. The four friends are sentenced to a year in prison, and the show ends with Jerry performing comedy for his fellow inmates. Larry David clearly took the criticism on board, as the Curb Your Enthusiasm finale remakes Seinfeld‘s final episode, but with a happier ending.

8

The Sopranos

Season 6, Episode 21, “Made in America”

The Sopranos can lay claim to one of the most divisive TV finales of all time. However, love it or loathe it, it is undeniably memorable. As Tony and his family sit down to eat at a diner, he is unaware that there are men waiting to kill him. The screen cuts to black as Meadow walks in from the parking lot, and that’s all there is. No Scarface-style final shootout, no emotional final words, no bloody corpse.

Although The Sopranos doesn’t show it, it seems fairly clear that Tony dies in the finale. The mystery over how it all goes down has been debated ever since the finale aired to a befuddled and enraged audience, but the more interesting question is why the show cuts to black. The finale lingers on a black screen for a while before the credits eventually roll. This is a bold, deliberate move, and it invites the audience to make up their own mind.

7

Mad Men

Season 7, Episode 14, “Person to Person”

Mad Men was created by Matthew Weiner, who worked as a writer and executive producer on The Sopranos, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Mad Men delivers a similarly thought-provoking ending. At a retreat in California, Don opens up emotionally more than he usually does. After some emotional phone calls with the people closest to him, he sits in group meditation, and an enigmatic smile creeps across his face. The episode then cuts to a famous Coca-Cola advert from the 1970s.

Mad Men‘s mysterious ending seems to give a satisfying ending to everyone except Don, who finds himself just as untethered as always. However, in the show’s final moments, it hints that he may have found some sort of enlightenment, or some freedom from his duplicitous life. The other possibility is that he’s smiling because he just came up with a great commercial for Coca-Cola, showing that work consumes even his most sacred moments.

6

Blackadder

Season 4, Episode 6, “Goodbyeee”

Blackadder‘s series finale is remembered for all the right reasons, and it’s often cited as one of the best episodes of the show. Each season of Blackadder takes place in a different historical period. The fourth and final season focuses on the trenches in World War I. The season inevitably leads toward Edmund and his fellow soldiers being ordered to march out into no man’s land, although they know they will almost certainly not make it back alive.

Blackadder fires jokes at its audience thick and fast, but it ends on a surprisingly poignant moment, as the battlefields of World War I fade away, to be replaced by a sea of poppies. It’s a touching tribute to the fallen soldiers, and it has even more weight to it given the scope of the entire series. World War I is the culmination of Blackadder‘s jaunt through the annals of history, and the series finale shows that nothing will ever be the same again.

5

Gravity Falls

Season 2, Episode 20, “Weirdmageddon 3: Take Back the Falls”

Like Blackadder, Gravity Falls managed to deliver an incredibly satisfying finale. The genius of the entire “Weirdmageddon” arc is how it so deftly ties together the show’s narrative threads. Each of the books and each character with their unique visual symbols comes together for a huge payoff. Even some of the episodes which seemed like filler at the time are suddenly given new meaning in the finale.

Gravity Falls only had 2 seasons, and this allowed the show’s creator, Alex Hirsch, to plan everything out meticulously. The three-episode Weirdmageddon finale is not only the culmination of the show’s many mysteries, but it’s also the show’s emotional culmination, as Stan and Ford reconcile their differences and the people of Gravity Falls come together to defeat a common enemy. It’s the kind of finale with so many intelligent callbacks that it urges its audience to start over from episode 1.

4

Friends

Season 10, Episodes 17 & 18, “The Last One”

Friends delivered a bittersweet ending with its final episode. With Monica and Chandler moving homes, it marked the end of an era for the friendship group who had been through so much. Friends is about a very specific period in life, when people no longer rely on their parents but don’t yet have families of their own. After ten seasons, this period is finally coming to an end, and the characters no longer rely on their friendships as much.

The Friends finale is a sweet send-off for the characters, but it has still drawn criticism for the way it handles Ross and Rachel’s relationship. One of TV’s most notorious on-again-off-again couples always seemed like they would end up together, but their relationship may not have warranted such a fairy tale ending. Ross puts Rachel through a lot of emotional turmoil throughout Friends, so her decision to turn her back on a huge career opportunity to stay in New York with him is questionable at best.

3

How I Met Your Mother

Season 9, Episodes 23 & 24, “Last Forever”

How I Met Your Mother may have given itself an impossible task, with so much anticipation over the actual story of how Ted meets his wife. This anticipation builds over nine seasons, and each breadcrumb on the trail only makes the finale harder to pull off. The ultimate reveal was always going to be an anticlimax, but the way that How I Met Your Mother handled its final episode has drawn scathing criticism from fans.

After so much buildup, How I Met Your Mother‘s finale kills off Tracy just after introducing her. The entire story that Ted tells his children, the entire series, turns out to be his way of testing the waters and effectively asking for their permission to move on and rekindle his romance with Robin. How I Met Your Mother already showed multiple times before the finale why Ted and Robin aren’t quite right for each other, so their happy ending seems like it will be short-lived.

2

Schitt’s Creek

Season 6, Episode 14, “Happy Ending”

Schitt’s Creek delivered an incredibly simple finale, but stripping back any unnecessary fluff made the show’s final moments much more poignant. The characters, and the actors, get to wave goodbye to the show along with the fans, as the members of the Rose family each go their separate ways. Thanks to its emotional story and plenty of laughs, “Happy Ending” is one of the best episodes of Schitt’s Creek.

The “Happy Ending” of the episode’s title refers to the result of David’s wedding day massage. The series finale is a little more emotionally complex. Schitt’s Creek does provide a happy ending in the sense that David and Patrick get married, Johnny climbs back to the top of the business world with Stevie by his side, and Moira gets to wear one last absurd wig, but it’s also sad that the Rose family are parting ways just as they have emotionally reconnected.

1

Lost

Season 6, Episodes 17 & 18, “The End”

Lost‘s ending finally revealed the answer to some of the show’s most captivating mysteries, but there were just as many others left unsolved. While this naturally upset plenty of fans who were hoping for concrete answers, Lost benefits from not wrapping everything up in a neat little bow. For a show that got so much of its drive from its tangled web of enigmas, it could easily have come across as disingenuous if the finale had spelled things out like Hercule Poirot in the drawing room.

It’s common knowledge that Lost had to deviate from its original plan. While the show’s creators originally envisioned the entire arc of the show, they were forced to improvise a little when ABC implored them to extend the series to six seasons. This could explain why some mysteries in Lost go unexplained. Lost‘s controversial finale chose to focus more on the characters than the paranormal mysteries of the island.