These 13 controversial TV show finales left fans disappointed, scratching their heads and absolutely screaming at their televisions

Lost

Lost‘s two-part finale was polarising to say the least. Although a largely captivating show, the series raised a number questions over the course of six seasons, and the last episode failed to tie up the story’s many, many loose ends.

These include Libby and Hurley’s mainland connection, Walt’s powers, those bizarre numbers that were always around and were meant to have a deeper meaning, and the origins of Kate’s black horse. Moreover, they threw in an odd flash-sideways plot right at the end, leaving almost everyone dumbfounded and unsatisfied. Had they been dead the whole time? Was it purgatory? It was the ending that spawned a thousand think-pieces.

Eventually, the creators caved and confirmed that a) no, not everyone was dead the whole time, b) yes, that was a “heaven”-esque setting in the Church where all the characters met and that c) yes, the point of the show was tell the tale about people lost and in search of answers. But by then? The damage had been done.

Sex and the City

What we’re about to say might be controversial (you were warned!), but it has to be said: Sex and the City did not get the ending it deserved.

Sure, watching Carrie end up with Mr. Big at the time felt like the TV equivalent of putting a nice big bow around a box of Manolo Blahniks. However, it was actually significantly out of line with Carrie’s realisation that “the most exciting, challenging and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself”.

The show ultimately was not about sex or even romantic relationships, it was about female friendship, and as Carrie said, the relationship you have with yourself. It would have been so much more impactful if she’d ended up single with Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha by her side.

And we’re not the only ones who feel that way. The show’s creator, Darren Star, who stepped down as writer after the third season, felt the show’s ending was a disservice to the overall message of the series.

“[But] I think the show ultimately betrayed what it was about, which was that women don’t ultimately find happiness from marriage. Not that they can’t. But the show initially was going off-script from the romantic comedies that had come before it. That’s what had made women so attached,” he tole People.

“At the end, it became a conventional romantic comedy. But unless you’re there to write every episode, you’re not going to get the ending you want.”

How I Met Your Mother

Arguably one of the worst TV show finales of all time, the end of How I Met Your Mother metaphorically spat in fans’ faces on multiple levels.

Firstly, they couldn’t just let Ted meet his wife (you know, the entire premise of the show) and let that be that. No, they had to dash all our dreams and reveal that she died and that he got back together with Robin—after all the time we’d invested in moving on from their infuriating relationship.

It was not only a surefire way to mess with our feelings, but it kind of destroyed any growth the characters had made. Moreover, it was so bad, the show actually had to put out an alternative ending, where Ted just meets his wife and the show finishes (as it should have), but by then, the damage had already been done.

Girls

At its heart, Girls, like Sex and the City, was about friendship and all the complications that come with it, but based on the epilogue-style finale, you’d be forgiven for thinking that it was about Hannah and Hannah only.

Despite touching on relatable issues like being a new mother and difficulty breastfeeding, the finale only featured two of the show’s major characters (Hannah and Marnie… but mainly Hannah), which left fans reeling.

All in all, it felt very removed from the overall series, like an excuse to make narcissistic Hannah grown-up and relatable while somehow also taking a left turn into sit-com land for no apparent reason.

Dexter

Widely considered an absolute dog’s breakfast of a finale, even lead actor Michael C. Hall hated the ending of Dexter.

Significantly panned by audiences and critics alike, the ending saw murderous Dexter essentially disappear into self-imposed exile to assume a new life as a… lumberjack? There is no sense to be made here.

Suffice to say, it forced the series to end with a whimper rather than a bang, when a more satisfying finish would have been his arrest or his death.

Pretty Little Liars

Finishing in 2017, fans were not, well, fans of Pretty Little Liars‘ two-hour-long finale. Yes, it had its share of heartwarming, exciting and mildly terrifying moments, but the general consensus was that it was an absolute betrayal of an ending.

As for why it was so bad? While there were many things wrong with the finale, the biggest issue came down to the show’s central storyline. That is to say, when you sell a story on the unknown identity of a mysterious behind-the-scenes manipulator (CC: Gossip Girl), you have make sure the payoff is good with a capital ‘G’.

PLL fans spent seven years dissecting theories and following the show’s every potential hint to figure out who the anonymous ‘A’ was, only for the finale to reveal it was a character we’d never seen or heard of.

Furthermore, the finale felt rushed, left many questioning what happened between Spencer and Toby (something which the series didn’t address until the Pretty Little Liars spinoff, The Perfectionists) and there was a terribly cliché evil twin with a bad British accent. We rest our case.

Gossip Girl

Look, as much as we love the show and are thoroughly excited about the reboot and the new cast, we simply cannot deny that the series finale left a lot to be desired.

While the inconceivable decision to make Dan the anonymous blogger behind Gossip Girl was definitely the worst part of the episode (‘plot’, meet ‘holes’), the finale had a number of ‘WTF’ moments.

Serena—whose life had been ruined by Gossip Girl on more than one occasion—somehow found some warped logic that inspired her to take Dan back after all he’d done, Lily ended up with William (who gave her fake cancer), a time-jump suggested Nate might become mayor, and let’s not forget the whole random back-from-the-dead Bart Bass business (who we’re still not even sure was actually Chuck’s dad?). A train-wreck.

Big Little Lies

There are times in life where you have to make a choice, where just because you ‘can’ doesn’t mean you ‘should’. Case in point? The second season—or rather—the finale of the second season of Big Little Lies.

Despite not having a second novel to rely upon for storylines, the second series kicked off on a high note with plenty of juicy, fleshed-out drama. And even though season one was arguably enough to provide closure to all of the characters, things looked promising at the start of season two—until the end.

Largely saved by the incredible cast’s acting chops, the supposed series ending was unfortunately predictable, showing them all turning themselves in. It was, as The Sydney Morning Herald described, “a steady stream of clichés”, which might work for some shows, but seemed quite out-of-step for such a layered, nuanced drama.

That being said, we would watch it all again and we can pretty much forgive them for everything for giving us that scene of Renata smashing her cheating husband’s model train collection with a baseball bat.

The O.C.

Okay, it wasn’t technically ‘the’ finale, but The O.C. really should have finished after Marissa died at the end of season three.

The fourth season of the show felt empty, and at times, even seemed to venture into almost sit-com territory (especially with Ryan and Taylor’s bizarrely forced romance).

While we’re not sure how they would have tied things up neatly at the end of the third season, which had started morphing into more of an ‘adult soap’ storyline, we’re pretty positive that season four should have been left on the cutting room floor.

True Blood

Airing in 2014, the True Blood finale came after seven seasons of the series and remains one of TV’s most disappointing endings to date.

What commenced as a very sexy tale about vampires in an anti-Twilight sort of way, eventually descended into a wannabe-high-brow and somewhat preachy show, with virtually none of the characters getting the endings we wanted for them.

The Bill/Sookie romance was deader than, well, Bill, and the show flashed forwards and showed her married to some absolute random. Only Jessica and Hoyt got their happy ending. Le sigh.

Game Of Thrones

It may be of one the greatest shows to have ever graced our screens, but Game Of Thrones also had one of the most divisive finales in TV history, and even inspired a petition to have the entire eighth season remade.

In fact, the rushed nature of the last two seasons (which diverged from the books) may have been something of a precursor for what was a thoroughly disappointing series finale.

Storylines were undercooked, characters weren’t given the development they deserved, some were ruined completely (justice for Daenerys), several prophecies remained unfulfilled and Bran became king by default. Not happy, Bran.

The Sopranos

Easily one of the most polarising TV show finales in the history of the small screen, fans were left a little (read: a lot) underwhelmed (read: angry) with the ending of The Sopranos.

For a show that had, up until its last episode, been so definitive with its storylines (killing off characters, much?), when it finally came down to Tony’s fate, it was just left up to speculation. Naturally, it was made all the more perplexing considering we’d come to root for Tony (you know, even though he’s a murderer and generally just the worst human being).

To have all the pent-up tension—with every little thing leading you to believe he was going to die—just… cut to black. WHAT. After six seasons of committing to a show and the survival of a character? Disappointing.

That said, the creator of the show, David Chase, did have some things to say about the controversial finale, which (somewhat) assuaged our feelings about how things wrapped up the way they did.

“Tony was dealing in mortality every day. He was dishing out life and death. And he was not happy. He was getting everything he wanted, that guy, but he wasn’t happy. All I wanted to do was present the idea of how short life is and how precious it is. The only way I felt I could do that was to rip it away,” he said in an interview.

“Am I supposed to do a scene and ending where it shows that crime doesn’t pay? Well, we saw that crime pays. We’ve been seeing that for how many years? Now, in another sense, we saw that crime didn’t pay because it wasn’t making him happy. He was an extremely isolated, unhappy man. And then finally, once in a while he would make a connection with his family and be happy there. But in this case, whatever happened, we never got to see the result of that. It was torn away from him and from us.”

Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life (The Revival)

Sorry, but did we just witness The Sopranos finale all over again? The revival was Gilmore Girls‘ chance to give the series a more satisfying ending, but all it did was leave us wanting more—wanting better. In just four words, it all came undone. We learned that Rory, who we’d seen dive headfirst in to her career dreams, was (spoiler alert!) pregnant. And then it was over. Love her or secretly ‘hate’ her, fans wanted Rory, who had always been defined by her ambitions to succeed in life, and to see her (and Lane) both just end up pregnant was disappointing for many.

Funnily enough, showrunner Amy Sherman-Palladino, who left at the end of season six, always intended for this to be finale of the original series, to drive home the notion of coming full circle, a concept it seemed to cling to to justify the end of the story, as though it’s somehow poignant and beautiful, and not just thoroughly disappointing.

As writer Meghan Farokhmanesh aptly summarised for The Verge:”Lorelai and Rory were always meant to grow together, the two of them against the world, everyone else be damned. This is Gilmore Girls’ core idea at its best: the show says a single mother can raise a strong, smart, ambitious daughter who will have all the joys and opportunities she never had.”

She continued: “Not everything has to have a happy ending, or should. But for a show based in the alarmingly cheerful, Pleasantville-like Stars Hollow, this seems like an oddly pessimistic place to leave your prized daughter—single, struggling, and knocked up. The entire thing plays like a really bad Greek tragedy.”

This story originally appeared on ELLE.