Especially in serialized television, it can be hard to nail an ending. After so many years of built-up anticipation, fans expect a wrap-up that’s exciting, satisfying, and unexpected, putting a lot of pressure on the writers to meet expectations. Not to mention, dedicated viewers expect a sense of closure and happiness for the characters, though this isn't always the case.
While a lot of shows have ended on a high - take Breaking Bad, for instance - it’s quite common for series finales to be hugely disappointing. Still, there’s a big difference between a finale that’s downright bad and one that’s hated – although they’re often both. Here are the 10 of the most hated season finales ever put to screen.
Updated on December 23rd, 2020 by Svetlana Sterlin: Television is becoming more and more popular, especially with the heyday of streaming services. However, series are more likely to get canceled or cut short than left to become long-running classics. In fact, many of Netflix's shows often get canned after just two or three seasons. As a result, series finales can seem inconclusive, ambiguous, or rushed. But even when it's up to the show's creators, finales can be unsatisfying.
15 Jane The Virgin
The CW's critical darling Jane The Virgin concluded in 2019 on its own terms. After five seasons and one hundred episodes, it seemed like a good place to end the show on a high. Jane had faced so much already, as had her family and friends. Some important characters like Lina had already faded into the background, but season 5 decided to bring one back: Michael. Only he is no longer Michael, but a cowboy who goes by Jason.
He's unrecognizable and feels like an insult to Michael's memory. He only sticks around to throw Jane back into the love triangle that fans had gotten tired of three seasons ago. Jane marries Rafael, who behaves immaturely and irresponsibly throughout the entire season, so their union feels wrong. Furthermore, the identity of the narrator is revealed to be Mateo, something most viewers had guessed long ago.
14 The 100
The whole seventh season of The 100 feels confused and lost. After introducing some big ideas in the previous seasons, fans expected a lot of season 7 - perhaps too much. Clarke seems to be completely sidelined, sometimes disappearing for a whole episode at a time, and Bellamy only appears in three episodes - just to be pointlessly killed off.
Furthermore, the show's creator decides to deviate from the action entirely and throw a backdoor pilot into the middle of the season, right at the height of the tension. The pilot itself is interesting enough, but a little out of place at such a critical moment. It also undermines the current cast of characters. Then, of course, there's the finale: essentially, the extinction of the human race. What kind of message are viewers supposed to take away from this? Not only does it not make sense for the characters to support Clarke at this moment, but the finale leaves no room for any kind of hope.
13 Reign
The CW's Reign started out quite strongly and even gathered steam for a little while until the show's tone changed completely after Francis's death. Of course, this is inevitable, given how rooted the series is in history, even if it does take a few liberties.
In season 4, Mary returns to her home country of Scotland, which is an interesting story arc, but the show is undeniably darker. Instead of rushing through Mary's life, the series takes its time to expand on what is recorded in history, which is why the series finale comes as such a shock. Until a week before filming wrapped, the creators weren't sure if the series would be renewed or canceled, so they had already filmed a final scene just in case. When the news came, they had no choice but to cut Mary's story short and skip ahead twenty years to her execution.
12 13 Reasons Why
As if viewers didn't already have enough reasons to hate 13 Reasons Why, the finale completely ruined all hopes of an uplifting storyline. Clay spirals into what appears to be delirium, Jess is forced to forgive Bryce, and nobody ever learns the truth about any of the crimes committed by the teens.
What's more, the group of friends has lost all faith and trust in one another right at the moment they should be growing closer together. There's also Ani's unexplained absences, and of course, Justin's death to top it all off.
11 Skins (UK)
If each generation's final episode wasn't gloomy enough, the show decided to add an extra season of doom and gloom. The series is notorious for killing off its most beloved and innocent character of each generation (Chris, Freddie, Grace), but season 7 takes this to a whole new level.
Just when viewers were hoping to get some closure on their all-time favorite characters, the show does the exact opposite. Split into three parts, season 7 picks up a few years after the events of the regular seasons to follow the adult lives of Effy, Cassie, and Cook. Effy is sent to prison, Cassie has a stalker, and Cook is still wrapped up in drugs and violence, only on a much bigger scale. The episodes are bleak, and the endings completely devoid of hope.
10 Star Trek: Enterprise
Arguably the most hated finale of any of the Star Trek shows to date, Star Trek: Enterprise delivers a final episode that is both disappointing and frustrating. With the events of the episode being viewed in the distant future via holodeck – by none other than The Next Generation’s William Riker – the show’s fans and cast expressed anger at the finale.
Feeling the episode’s disconnected framing device cheapened the importance of Enterprise’s key characters and events, viewers couldn’t help but feel let down by “These Are the Voyages…” ending four seasons of increasingly well-told stories on a sour note.
9 Chuck
The series finale of NBC’s fan-favorite spy-comedy Chuck was well-received, boasting an impressive 9.3 on IMDb. This isn’t a list of the worst series finales of all time, however, but a list of the most hated. And some fans really hated it.
With the romance between lead characters Chuck and Sarah serving as the crux of the show’s story, fans were shocked when Sarah suddenly lost her memory – forgetting her entire past with Chuck in the process. While fans may have assumed the writers would reverse this, the show was left on an ambiguous note, as the pair’s future was left uncertain – a move that star Zachary Levi claimed left certain fans "apoplectic".
8 Seinfeld
Although the intent of Seinfeld’s season finale – to provide just desserts to the morally reprehensible characters – seems a smart idea on the surface, long-time fans of the show expressed distaste for how the show ultimately wrapped up.
Falling victim to its own impossible-to-meet expectations, the show alienated fans who felt the finale left a lot to be desired. Others, however, firmly believed the finale is entirely in keeping with the show’s tone. After all, taking a show like Seinfeld and trying to force some meaningful, over-sentimental send-off would have been a much worse idea.
7 Roseanne
Of all the directions that the popular sitcom Roseanne could have gone during its final season, what fans ended up with remains one of the most bizarre and baffling finales of any show in TV history.
For some context, Roseanne’s final season saw a sharp change of course, with the previously working-class family suddenly winning the lottery. This altered the show's tone so much that it was almost unrecognizable to loyal fans. It doesn’t end there, however, as Roseanne’s series finale goes a step further. It’s revealed that Rosanne’s husband Dan didn’t survive his heart attack at the end of season eight, with the entire final season’s events taking place in Roseanne’s imagination – rendering the entire thing pointless and needlessly depressing.
6 Two and a Half Men
Following the infamous fallout between Two and a Half Men star Charlie Sheen and the show’s creators, Sheen’s character Charlie Harper was killed offscreen and replaced with Ashton Kutcher’s Walden Schmidt in the show’s final few seasons.
While this already rubbed fans the wrong way, teasing the return of Charlie Harper in the show’s final episode only to kill him off again was probably not the best decision. The show’s final seconds consist of a piano crushing Sheen’s character before cutting to show creator Chuck Lorre, who shouts “winning!” Whereas most series finales attempt to provide some sense of comfort and closure to fans who’ve stuck with it for so long, it’s clear that Two and a Half Men’s ending was made for the pleasure of one person – Chuck Lorre.
5 The Sopranos
Another finale that was divisive more than it was bad, the climax to HBO’s long-running gangster epic The Sopranos split its fanbase right down the middle. The episode’s final scene sees mob boss Tony and his family eating at a diner when a shady character enters – prompting Tony to look up as the screen cuts to black.
It’s left unclear whether the man ultimately killed Tony or not – a decision that infuriated many fans who saw the show’s ambiguous ending as a cop-out. Others, however, thought it was the perfect end to Tony’s story, indicating that he either dies or spends the rest of his life looking over his shoulder.
4 Lost
There are few shows whose fall from grace is as widely mocked as Lost’s. Initially one of the freshest, most compelling mysteries ever seen on television, the show quickly ran out of steam during its fourth season. Still, fans hoped that the show had a satisfying endgame up its sleeve. For the most part, they were wrong.
It turned out the events of the entire show were part of some purgatorial judgment, a revelation that not only had crossed everybody’s mind already but also cheapened years of interesting, complex mythology.
3 Dexter
While Dexter’s first four seasons were highly praised by critics and audiences alike, the show quickly started to go downhill in its later seasons, losing much of the charm and compelling narrative through-line it once had.
The show could be forgiven for failing to live up to the high bar set by the John Lithgow-starring fourth season, but by the time Dexter’s final season – and in particular its final episode – rolled around, fans were glad to wash their hands of the serial killer drama. Killing off Debra with as little fanfare as possible, the finale then saw Dexter drive his boat into the eye of the storm, presumably killing him. Although that was bad enough, the show’s post-credits sequence reveals that Dexter is, in fact, alive and well, working as a logger in the middle of who knows where.
2 How I Met Your Mother
Considering the entire premise of How I Met Your Mother was centered around the mystery of who the lead character Ted would end up with, the show really managed to make that question feel pointless by the time it wrapped up.
The show’s first few seasons promised a much more interesting take on the ‘will-they-won't-they’ romance between Ted and Robin since we knew there was no way they could end up together. How I Met Your Mother managed a last-minute rug pull that’s sure to go down as one of the worst in TV history. Divorcing Robin and Barney, killing off the show’s titular mother, and reuniting Ted and Robin all in the very last episode, the show wrongly assumed fans were still invested in the Ted-Robin romance.
1 Game of Thrones
Game of Thrones always had a very deliberate sense of pacing. Taking the time to slowly build up its characters and create an interesting world – even if it meant spending an entire season traveling between locations – character decisions always felt organic, like they made perfect sense.
While some criticized the show’s expedited timeline in the seventh season, it wasn’t until the eighth that things really started to go off the rails. Giving Daenerys an eleventh-hour heel-turn that resulted in her demolition of King’s Landing and its citizens, Game of Thrones’ subsequent finale episode rang hollow, delivering a series of slapdash character send-offs, nonsensical plotting, and truncated storylines. In short, the finale felt insultingly rushed, turning off fans who’d invested so much time in the series.
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