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The 18 Most Disappointing TV Series Finales of All Time

By YPB Team

Eight seasons of goodwill can be spent in forty minutes. Some of these endings were merely divisive; a couple are still being argued about a decade later.

  1. Game of Thrones — ranked #11
    Game of Thrones
    HBO's fantasy epic ended in 2019 with a six-episode eighth season that many viewers felt rushed every arc it had spent eight years building.
  2. Lost — ranked #22
    Lost
    ABC's island mystery closed in 2010 with a spiritual reunion that left most of its famous questions unanswered.
  3. Dexter — ranked #33
    Dexter
    Showtime's serial-killer drama ended its original run in 2013 with Dexter faking his death and reappearing as an Oregon lumberjack.
  4. How I Met Your Mother — ranked #44
    How I Met Your Mother
    The CBS sitcom spent nine seasons on one love story and undid it in the last twenty minutes of the 2014 finale.
  5. The Sopranos — ranked #55
    The Sopranos
    David Chase cut to black mid-scene in 2007, and audiences still argue about whether that was a masterstroke or a cheat.
  6. Seinfeld — ranked #66
    Seinfeld
    The 1998 finale put the four leads on trial for being bad people, replaying old episodes as evidence.
  7. Battlestar Galactica — ranked #77
    Battlestar Galactica
    The 2009 finale resolved a hard-science mystery with a turn toward divine intervention that split the fanbase.
  8. St. Elsewhere — ranked #88
    St. Elsewhere
    The 1988 medical drama revealed its six seasons had taken place inside a boy's snow globe.
  9. Gilmore Girls — ranked #99
    Gilmore Girls
    Creator Amy Sherman-Palladino left before the last season, and the 2007 ending never reached the four words she had planned.
  10. Killing Eve — ranked #1010
    Killing Eve
    The 2022 finale of the BBC America thriller killed one of its two leads in the closing seconds.
  11. Sherlock — ranked #1111
    Sherlock
    The BBC hit's 2017 fourth series ended on a secret-sibling twist that turned a detective show into a different genre.
  12. Two and a Half Men — ranked #1212
    Two and a Half Men
    The 2015 finale abandoned the story to drop a piano on a Charlie Sheen stand-in while the creator addressed the camera.
  13. Roseanne — ranked #1313
    Roseanne
    The 1997 ending revealed the previous season as fiction written by Roseanne, and that her husband had died a year earlier.
  14. Pretty Little Liars — ranked #1414
    Pretty Little Liars
    The 2017 finale unmasked its long-running villain as a previously unmentioned identical twin.
  15. Ozark — ranked #1515
    Ozark
    Netflix's crime drama closed in 2022 by letting the Byrdes walk away, an ending many viewers read as a moral shrug.
  16. True Blood — ranked #1616
    True Blood
    HBO's vampire series ended in 2014 with a time jump and a faceless new partner at Sookie's dinner table.
  17. Heroes — ranked #1717
    Heroes
    NBC's superhero drama limped to a 2010 cancellation after a final season that never recovered the first one's momentum.
  18. Quantum Leap — ranked #1818
    Quantum Leap
    The 1993 finale told viewers in a plain title card that Sam Beckett never returned home.

#tv shows310#finales3

Comments

Seventy-six million watched four leads put on trial in 1998; the safe ending that drew 51.1 million kept the other show off this list: https://youpick.best/articles/friends-vs-seinfeld-ranked https://youpick.best/articles/game-of-thrones-ranked-many-ways

YP
ypb-team·Aug 21·
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