14 TV Shows with Disastrously Disappointing Endings

1. Game of Thrones (2011-2019)

Game of Thrones, Rotten Tomatoes' score of 89%, was like a box of chocolates in that you never knew what you were going to get – especially towards the end. What began as a nuanced, intricate story of politics, warfare, and dragons, culminated in a final season that felt like a rushed game of musical chairs.

The Night King? Defeated in a single episode. Bran, who essentially did nothing for two seasons, was declared King. And Daenerys, the Breaker of Chains, hastily turned into the Mad Queen. The whole thing felt like a poorly conceived mad dash to the finish line.

2. How I Met Your Mother (2005-2014)

Despite nine seasons of building up the character of The Mother, the creators decided to kill her off due to a mysterious illness. The real kicker though? Ted, the show's protagonist, ended up with Robin. The same Robin he's been pining over for years and who the audience had been assured was definitely not the mother. It was like the creators played a nine-year-long game of gotcha! with the viewers. Oh, and Barney's character development? Tossed out like an old Playbook.

3. Lost (2004-2010)

Lost started as an intriguing drama about plane crash survivors stranded on a seemingly deserted island. Then things got weird. Time travel, smoke monsters, and polar bears – oh my! The show built up so many mysteries that by the time it ended, not all of them could be resolved. The revelation that the flash-sideways of the last season was actually a form of purgatory felt like a cheap cop-out, leaving fans to feel, well, lost.

4. Dexter (2006-2013)

Serial killer Dexter Morgan, despite his murderous hobby, had somehow captured our sympathies. However, the finale saw Dexter leaving his son with a known killer and faking his own death to become... a lumberjack? The ending was so ill-received, Showtime decided to produce a revival season in 2021 to try and fix it. Guess they felt the need to clean up the blood spatter from that finale.

5. Two and a Half Men (2003-2015)

This show had been through a lot: Charlie Sheen's public meltdown, his character's off-screen death, and Ashton Kutcher's introduction. But the finale took things to a whole new level of absurdity. Charlie, declared to have been kept hostage by a crazy stalker (instead of being dead), returns only to have a piano dropped on him in the final scene. And to top it all, creator Chuck Lorre turns to the camera and says, Winning, before a piano falls on him too. It felt more like a spiteful dig at Sheen than a conclusive finale for the show.

6. Roseanne (1988-1997)

The ending of the original Roseanne run was a shocking turn of events that left fans feeling cheated. It turns out the entire final season was a fantasy Roseanne Conner had concocted to cope with the death of her husband, Dan. The down-to-earth, working-class comedy had taken a sudden turn into fantasy, only to end with a twist that invalidated an entire season. It was a bewildering, bewildering narrative decision that left many viewers disoriented.

7. Star Trek: Enterprise (2001-2005)

Star Trek: Enterprise was a prequel series to the original Star Trek, featuring an early team of starship explorers. The final episode, however, inexplicably turns into an episode of The Next Generation, with characters from the future using a holodeck to watch the events of the Enterprise crew. The actual Enterprise crew was reduced to mere holograms in their own finale. It's like planning a party and finding out you're not even invited to it.

8. The X-Files (1993-2018)

The X-Files finale was meant to wrap up the long-running series' central conspiracy and resolve the fates of its main characters, Mulder and Scully. Unfortunately, it did not deliver. Rather than answering questions, it piled on more confusion. To quote the series, the truth was out there, but it certainly wasn't in this final episode. Even a revival in 2016 couldn't quite recapture the original magic or satisfactorily answer all the lingering questions.

9. Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life (2016)

The original run of Gilmore Girls ended on a sweet, satisfying note. But the 2016 revival, A Year in the Life, ended on a cliffhanger that left a sour taste. Rory, a journalist throughout the series, tells her mother Lorelai that she's pregnant… without confirming who the father of the baby was. It was an abrupt, out-of-character moment that seemed to set up a potential new season rather than providing closure for the characters we'd come to love.

10. Scrubs (2001-2010)

Scrubs had a fantastic season 8 finale. The problem is, they decided to do a season 9. The ninth season shifted focus to a new set of characters at a medical school, with the original cast relegated to supporting roles or written out entirely. The charm of the original show was lost, and what was left felt like a spin-off rather than a continuation. The real finale at the end of season 8 is the one fans choose to remember.

11. True Blood (2008-2014)

In its heyday, True Blood was a guilty pleasure with its southern charm and over-the-top supernatural drama. However, the series finale left viewers feeling more drained than a victim of a vampire's dinner date. Sookie's brother Jason, who spent the entire show as a womanizer, suddenly settles down and has kids.

Bill asks Sookie to kill him so she can have a normal life, and she complies. Sookie ends up pregnant by some random guy we never see. As endings go, it was bloodless and bland, without the vibrant, wild charm of the show's earlier seasons.

12. Quantum Leap (1989-1993)

Quantum Leap was an entertaining sci-fi show where Sam Beckett leaped through different periods in time, occupying people's bodies to correct historical mistakes. However, the series finale left fans on a frustratingly unresolved cliffhanger. The last scene reveals that Sam never returned home, abandoning him to an eternity of time-travel do-goodery.

13. Seinfeld (1989-1998)

For a show famously about nothing, the finale tried to be about everything – and ended up feeling like less than nothing. Seinfeld took its main characters and threw them in jail for violating a Good Samaritan law. The final episode attempted to bring back numerous guest stars from the show's past but ended up feeling overstuffed and out of sync with the rest of the series. For a comedy that prided itself on observational humor about daily life, ending on a bizarre, high-concept note felt off-brand and unsatisfying.

14. The Sopranos (1999-2007)

The notorious cut-to-black ending of The Sopranos has been a topic of debate among fans and critics since it aired. Some argue that it's a brilliant subversion of expectations, while others felt cheated out of closure. One thing's certain – after investing in six seasons of mob drama, family tensions, and Tony's therapy sessions, getting cut off mid-scene with no resolution is, to say the least, a shock. Whether it's a good or bad shock is subjective, but it definitely left many viewers shouting at their TVs.