Very few things bring a community of movie and TV enthusiasts together like a disappointingly bad finale. Footage that falls apart in the middle and subpar episode orders can be forgiven to some extent, but a bad finale is a completely different story. Finales are the takeaway. It’s the parting blow. Go wrong with the finale, and it’s no longer a good thing that came before. In that respect, here’s a countdown of the top ten film and TV finales that left audiences gagging.
10. Die Alone
Overall, zombie flicks don’t necessarily need to introduce anything new, but they also need to see things through in terms of their concepts. Die Alone does appear rather interesting, with good atmospheric effects, plant-based zombies, and a heroine who develops memory loss, for example. Unfortunately, Die Alone peters out, thanks to repetitive vignettes and also lackluster developments in terms of the characters, for instance. Unfortunately, the ending is also rather hasty, suggesting that those in control ran out of story concepts rather than actual material in terms of the story’s plot, for example.
9. Promising Young Woman
No film in recent memory has stimulated so much controversy over a closing sequence as Promising Young Woman has managed to accomplish. The film makes Cassie a complex character in a quest to avenge past traumas. However, a sudden twist informs her death and settles her quest for revenge with a clean cut-through of institutionalized justice. This seems emotionally out of place for a film so antagonistic to institutionalized notions of justice.
8. The 100
The 100 was able to win the support of its fans through the various questions it raised concerning morality, leadership, and living. This was exactly the reason why it was so agonizing to watch it end. This is because the conclusion to the stories that were developed over the many years that the program was on air were superficially done, some decisions did not even make sense, and some concepts that were developed through all these years were left inconclusive.
7. Game of Thrones
It culminated when it redefined the art of television. Then there was the final season. The plot development happened too fast, the character decisions lacked any motive, and all the work that happened to develop these characters went crashing down because of sped-up development to build towards spectacle. The finale about an unexpected king sitting on the throne left the audience less surprised than exhausted. It has now become the rallying cry of how series finales come back to haunt franchises.
6. Lost
Lost was a point at which the buzzword of the town was Lost itself. It was the topic of every morsel of discussion at the water-cooler. The secrets of Lost were endless, and the allure of its symbolism was simply too good to pass on. The end of a series like Lost was the point at which each of these people was robbed of their sweet experience. What they were left with was not the solution to the biggest mystery among them but the roads of the spiritual and the irrelevant.
5. How I Met Your Mother
Nine years’ worth of storytelling had been building to one thing: the tale of how Ted was going to find his true love. However, the finale just ended all that with the death of the Mother and instead looped back to the conventional lou.e for Robin. It was as if these folks were living through some form of psychological whiplash. Episodes were chapters; memory tastes like betrayal.
4. Dexter
A finale of a series subverting the subject of a serial killer would obviously be a difficult thing to do. But Dexter managed to disappoint folks in the worst possible way. Instead of a meaningful and significant finale, it consisted of Dexter pretending to be dead, turning off Deb, and then simply becoming a lumberjack.
3. Pretty Little Liars
Shows that revolve around mysteries can go or come based entirely upon their reveals, and in the case of Pretty Little Liars, the series failed to land the final strike. Instead, after more than a decade’s worth of speculation, they revealed that the main antagonist was an unseen twin sister who provided information through too much monologuing, accompanied by a laughable accent.
2. Triangle of Sadness
Ambiguous conclusions can be quite impactful as long as they appear deliberate. Triangle of Sadness spends most of its length being quite pungent in social satire before abruptly cutting away in the most tense moments. Rather than being open to analysis and meaning, it may have come off as an ending that refuses to commit rather than makes one think.
1. Supernatural
Having told stories for 15 solid years, Supernatural had earned the loyalty of fans who were ready for the finale of the year to be nothing short of epic. Instead, the fans got served heartbreak in the most ordinary of fashions possible. As one reviewer summed it up, one of the lead characters bites the dust, and fans weren’t pleased about the impact-mostly because the impact felt nowhere near as significant as it should feel, especially because of the duration of time in the Supernatural universe.
But how often do these conclusions fall apart? The space between an effective vagueness and a convenient escape through vagueness can be very narrow. Intentionally embracing vagueness can help create unforgettable stories. The problem occurs when this choice becomes a convenient escape for a show to avoid tricky conclusions and ignore finished character paths. The reality is, at the end of the day, fans crave closure, consistency, and a commitment that they were an investment worth making.