Worst ending to a TV show?

So I just finished watching "How I Met Your Mother" and felt compelled to make his topic in response.

Holy shit that show couldn't have had a worse ending. I have never seen a show go and invalidate itself so thoroughly in the final episode. I actually enjoyed the show up till that last episode and had been curious as to why there had been so much hubub in regarding the ending. Then a certain couple of twists happened and I was just left speechless. Who ever wrote that ending needs to just get out of the business cause wow, just wow....

ANYWAYS, I am curious to what other shows had terrible endings, and for that matter I wonder what OT thought of the How I Met Your Mother finale.

Thoughts?

Dexter. A show that had such a stupendous first season ending like that is absolutely unacceptable.

Worst end to a TV show that I really liked would definitely be 'The X-Files'. I feel like I am one of the rare few who didn't mind season 7-8, but 9 was just shit and the finale was even worse.

I think the point of invalidating is important.

Seinfeld's finale is awful but it doesn't invalidates the previous seasons. They stand alone by themselves and I can just ignore the ending.

Buffy. What a steaming pile that was.

Relevant:

Thank you that was GOLD!

And Master, that is a VERY important point. A huge reason why the ending of How I Met Your Mother is so bad is it just takes a complete SHIT on the entire show. It just completely invalidates the whole plot of the show which was Ted telling his kids how he met their Mother.

Stargate Universe springs immediately to mind. In fact that whole franchise is chalk full of F you endings.

With how I met your mother it seemed like they forced an ending they chose at the start of the series even though the characters involved changed and evolved their relationships past that ending

Dexters ending was more just the last gasps of a creatively braindead show

I'd agree the show was great when it's started, by the time the season finale had happened though I had lost interest in the series completely, the more I watched the last season the less I cared, and I was already getting there in the prior season. It did what all shows tend to do and that's go on too log and not quite while they're ahead.

I think the better question would be: what has ended well? I can only think of one series that had a good ending... breaking bad.

HIMYM, Dexter, Young Justice(I put this one because they ended it in stupid cliffhanger and canceled the show. :( ).

Too many shows are canceled or end during a season, forcing creators to write an ending they didn't anticipate so soon. I blame studios and executives for all the bad endings out there

Yeah the HIMYM ending was awful.. Even the alternate ending was off too. You know what, the entire final season was structured in a way that any ending would just suck...

The Office, Lost, 30 Rock, Warehouse 13, Fringe (Well, kinda..)

I love the way 'The Wire' ended.

I didn't mind the last season structure. While it was ridiculous having it all take place in one weekend, the way they slowly introduced the mother was nice. I would have been fine with that last season if it weren't for that last fucking episode...

Yeah, so did I. Season 5 may not have been the greatest season, but the ending was perfect.

Never got the hate of the HIMYM ending, I liked it and it was leaps and bounds better then the alternative ending. That sucked IMO, Youtube it.

Bad ending? FlashForward, would have been a great season finale but was a terrible way to leave a show.

did not like the ending for the office or lost. haven't seen the ends to 30 rock or warehouse 13 yet and never got into fringe.

Seinfeld's last episode was horrible. They even poked fun of it in an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm from what I heard (never watched it).

The Sopranos, The Shield, Six Feet Under, Friday Night Lights, etc.

Quantum Leaps final episode was suppose to be a season ending, due to a studio head disliking the show, it became "Sam never found his way home". One of the best shows. Got fucked over hard.

I never watched the show, but it seems the Sopranos finale was pretty awful and pissed people off.

If I wasn't on mobile I'd write a longer comment on the issues with HIMYM

It took time for people to start mentioning Sopranos here, but that definitely was lame.

Dexter had a fine final episode IMO until the very ending part. First 4 seasons were by far the best.

Some may argue, but LOST and The Sopranos for me.

Has anyone been having issues with posts not going through?

Contrary to what a lot of people felt, thought the ending of lost was very satisfying

Although there is still one more season before the mentalist ends, the writers seem to have effectively ended the plot already; the remainder season is intended to give a sense of closure to everything I guess. Judging from how the plot ended, I can definitely see myself yelling and cursing at the writers of the show. I have no fucking idea what got into them all of a sudden. The show continued to get more and more interesting with each season and the plot twists were phenomenal. Then all of a sudden they decided to take a dump on the whole thing. Its quite perplexing.

And regarding the OP, man have I gloated at HIMYM fans’ reaction to the ending or what. Shitty shows deserve shitty endings its only natural this way.

Didn't watch the show but have seen the ending and I don't understand why people freak out about the Sopranos ending. I felt it was pretty clear what happened, and I think the way it cut out was actually pretty brilliant. It's like you are Tony and everything just goes black because he got shot. It was a pretty cool artistic decision IMO.

Lost definitely comes to mind.

I've never seen lost but I vote that due to having been told about the ending and remembering how I wrote a story at school similar to it and even then it was badly marked. I had to do another story.

I liked the Buffy ending but NOT Angel.

Bad endings: Quantum Leap; Deep Space 9

I never seen the show but several of my friends complained about "Heroes" The show ended on a cliffhanger because it got cancelled when another season was probably originally planned but was canceled because it wasn't getting the ratings anymore

There's not anything that can compare to Lost, it's the worst ending i have seen to anything. And i mean anything. It was such a copout for the show. Refusing to answer any question just saying that's how it is, now **** off. Just so terrible that i will prevent anyone from ever buying or watching that show again

Yep. What a big **** you to the fans.

Any question? Come on.. >_> They don't have to answer everything, just the mysteries that are essential to the plot. And not only did they answer those, they also answered a lot of the small ones as well. Even most of the un-answered ones can be explained by some of the hints dropped throughout the show.

Lost was pretty wonderful

No, those weren't answered. Those felt like crappy answers and did not answer them properly. The two last episodes are fubar and so bad that nobody should start that series seing how good it was before that

Whatever Lost did answer, especially in that spectacularly bad final season, was just really messy.

Last season could have used some tinkering. Was very much satisfied with last episode because it did what I thought it would do.

Light cave was some goofy shit they shouldn't have done

im going to watch himym finale right now, didnt watch last 3-4 seasons but idc

So because you didn't like the answers, they don't count? Can you post some examples of major unanswered things from the show?

The Borgias. The show was really good, but was canceled in it's third season and ended on a cliff hanger with so much story still left to tell. So annoying.

An idea I had before the last episode was that the alternate timeline was a result of them destroying the island and sinking it. That the end of season five basically displaced them out of time and space to a place before I guess the 70's. And that they eventually died prior to the start of the series but then in 2004 the new selves started to remember the experiences they had and gained during their past alternate lives.

Why were they on the island? Why was Jacob and the other dude there? Why did only the people from the flight land there? How did they go back to the island even considering how stupid that really is. Why is the time traveling in Lost? I can name several more

- Jacob brought them because he was looking for someone to replace him.

- By 'there' you mean the island? Because he was born on it! And what other dude?

- I'm assuming you mean the Ajira plane? When it went over the island only the candidates where moved out of the plane and back in time, the rest landed with the plane.

- They found out where the island was going to be using the Lamp Post, then picked a flight that goes over it.

- Wait.. are you asking why the show has time travel? Because it does.. Unless you mean something else, in which case you have to be more specific.

Every one of those were answered in a very clear way on the show. So yes, name more..

The other dude being the man in black

Honestly, are those even real questions? Anyone who was barely paying attention while watching would know all of this, they even had an entire episode focusing on both of them. And out of all the things that someone can ask, it's "why were they on the island"? We saw them literally being born there..