Season finalescan be a difficult craft to master, even for thebest TV shows. They’re often about finding the best way to round out the year’s main plot points, typically in climactic style, while teasing upcoming storylines for the next season to tantalize viewers. A major plot twist or signpost towards the show’s overall conclusion doesn’t go amiss, either, especially for adrenaline-inducing thriller series. Too often, however, season finales don’t quite hit their mark. Either they aim big but overplay their hand, or they simply fail to live up to their billing as the climax of multi-episode plotlines.
In the very worst cases, season finales can send an entire show completely off the rails, by doing irreparable damage to beloved characters, or setting up storylines that move a series in completely the wrong direction. This list isn’t just about episodes that happen to be season (or even series) finales. If it were, then thecontroversial finalesofSt. ElsewhereandThe X-Files, at least oneseason ending ofThe Crown, and some painfully badSimpsonsepisodes, would likely make the cut. Instead, we’re examining how specific season finales effectively ruined previously great shows almost single-handedly.
Houseremains one of the best TV shows of the 21st century, with Hugh Laurie’s incomparable central performance as the titular misanthropic medic redefining what it means to be a protagonist in a serial drama.Season 7 ofHousewasn’t the show’s best, but it still had plenty to redeem it. Even the disappointing end to Dr. Gregory House’s relationship with the love of his life, Lisa Cuddy, was handled sensitively, as painful as it was. That is, untilHouse drove his friend and colleague James Wilson’s Chevrolet Corvette straight through Cuddy’s living room.
If only Gregory House hadn’t done something so utterly senseless and destructive in the season 7 finale, the show’s final season might have had the chance to rediscover what was best about it.
If this shocking moment was definitive proof that House couldn’t live without Cuddy, then it was also a clear demonstration that we couldn’t live with this version of the title character anymore.Houseseason 8 was a shadow of what the show had once been, with Laurie’s lead character no longer funny, and just plain sad. If only Gregory House hadn’t done something so utterly senseless and destructive in the season 7 finale, the show’s final season might have had the chance to rediscover what was best about it. Alas, we’ll never know.
Seminal British teen drama seriesSkinswas always a messy affair, with its purposely inexperienced writers’ team dreaming up different kinds of decadent excess to live vicariously through its characters in each episode. What’s more, the show had already made a habit of inserting daring plot twists into its season finales before it reached series 4. There was the sudden car accident at the end ofSkinsseries 1, for instance, and the drug overdose to end the show’s second season. Yet, the series 4 finale was quite simply beyond the pale.
It was virtually impossible to invest emotional energy into anySkinscharacter in series 5 and 6, with the knowledge that the show’s writers were capable of the abomination that ended series 4. The bizarre turn of events that saw a psychiatric doctor who’d previously played no part in the series bring Kaya Scodelario’s Effy Stonem under his control, before beating her boyfriend to death, was only made more absurd by the season’s final scene.
Jack O’Connell’sSkinscharacterJames Cook seemingly beat the psychiatrist senseless, although we weren’t even treated to that act of teenage vigilante justice, as the credits rolled just as the beating started. In light of such a ridiculous season finale,the mafia car chase in the environs of a Moroccan villa that beganSkinsseason 6 was par for the course.Skinswas never a very realistic portrayal of life as a British high-schooler, but from its season 4 ending onwards, the show became more infuriating than entertaining.
When it started back in 2013,House of Cardswas an early landmark in the streaming age, and a yardstick by which all otherNetflix original serieswould be measured thereafter. The story of murderous, machiavellian Frank Underwood navigating his way to the top of the US state worked so well precisely because it was the personal mission of a politician to maneuver his way into the big time, by any means necessary.
But once Underwood reached the top of the tree, becoming President of the United States at the end ofHouse of Cardsseason 2, his efforts to manipulate the environment around him purely on the basis of individual self-interest no longer made any sense. It’s believable to imagine Frank’s sinister methods working on the level of local or even national politics, but watching him employ the same maneuvers in the field of global geopoliticsreducedHouse of Cardsto the level of a cheap political soap opera.
The episode was strangely preoccupied with getting rid of the one redeeming feature of Frank Underwood’s depraved Chief of Staff, Doug Stamper.
Like Underwood himself,the show had ideas above its station, and its shortcomings were grievously exposed by this fictional presidency. A scene in theHouse of Cardsseason 3 finale that depicted Frank having a tiff in the Oval Office with his wife Claire, played by Robin Wright, about whether the presidency belonged to both of them equally, as though it were part of their marriage, rang particularly hollow.
Even worse, the episode was strangely preoccupied with getting rid of the one redeeming feature of Frank Underwood’s depraved Chief of Staff, Doug Stamper. Around half its runtime was devoted to Doug tracking down, kidnapping, and killing Rachel Posner. He apparently thought about letting her go, butHouse of Cardsultimately decided that it shouldn’t give any of its characters anything to live for. The show descended into a procession of one grisly cover-up killing after another in its fourth and fifth seasons, withthis season 3 finale having marked the point of no return.
Along with his mentorship of bodyguardDembe Zuma duringThe Blacklist’s first eight seasons, Raymond “Red” Reddington’s humanity could chiefly be found in his relationship with adoptive daughter Liz Keen. There was no coming back from the show’s decision to kill Liz, and, in retrospect,The Blacklistshould have endedthe moment it did so in its season 8 finale. The extended sequence of Liz’s life flashing before her eyes felt like a final goodbye for the entire show, in which case it would have made more sense.
As a season finale, though,Liz’s death was a gut-punch too many, that stripped Red of much of his appeal as a character, and robbedThe Blacklistof one of its main strengths. Viewers spent the months afterThe Blacklistseason 8 ended wondering what the show would do without Liz Keen. They were right to wonder, asthings went downhill fast from this point on, with increasingly absurd plotlines reinforcing the sense that the heart had been ripped out of the show.
How I Met Your Mother’sseries finale is among the most hated in TV history, but it wasn’t actually the episode that killed the show. In fact, the ending toHIMYMseason 7, a two-parter entitled “The Magician’s Code”, was the moment the show completely lost its mojo. While most of the double-episode worked fine,it finished with a monumental twist too far, a habit that would become a trademark of the show’s disappointing final seasons.
Immediately after showing Barney Stinson’s proposal to his girlfriend Quinn, the episode jumped forward to a scene at Barney’s wedding, in which it was revealed that he was marrying Robin Scherbatsky instead. This moment was actually the real low-point of theRobin-Ted-Barneylove triangle, as Barney had already broken up with Robin once, and he genuinely seemed happy with Quinn.
It felt as thoughHow I Met Your Motherwas just messing us around for the sake of it, something the series proceeded to do throughout seasons 8 and 9. Barney’s character arc was arguably the one opportunity the show’s creators, writers and showrunners, Carter Bays and Craig Thomas, had to write an ending for a story, rather than writing a story solely for its ending. Sadly, they blew it, with disastrous consequences for the final years ofHow I Met Your Mother.
Although it wasn’t the worst episode in the entirety of Gameof Thrones, “The Dragon and the Wolf” was probably the point at which we could say definitively that the show’s best days were behind it. The scene in whichGame of Thrones’ sneakiest schemer Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelishwas tried and executed by the Stark sisters reflected the series at its crudest, with jarring elements of exposition and a damp squib of a climax.
Seasons 7 and 8 ofGame of Throneswere the only ones not directly based on the novels of George R.R. Martin.
On the other hand, the Night King’s spectacular destruction of the Wall at Eastwatch with the help of Viserion, a dragon he’d apparently slain in the previous episode, took things too far in the other direction. It seemed as thoughthe dragon had been brought back to life specifically to play the part of adeus ex machinain this crucial scene, undermining the internal logic of the fantasy elements in the series.
Raising dragons back from the dead essentially suggested that almost anything could happen inGame of Thrones. This penultimateseason finalesetup a dramatic decline in quality throughout its eighth and final season.
