Last Call in 2025: The Summer I Turned Pretty, Conjuring, Downton Abbey and More Take Their Final Bows

2025 is going full farewell tour. A bunch of massive shows and franchises are taking a bow, and it feels like senior year when everyone is signing yearbooks and pretending not to cry. The upside: most of these are ending on purpose, with actual finales instead of slow fade-outs. The downside: yeah, no more seasons waiting around the corner.

1. Squid Game

Remember 2021 when everyone on your timeline was either wearing a pink jumpsuit for Halloween or debating the ethics of playground murder? That was the Hwang Dong-hyuk-created phenomenon with Lee Jung-jae as Seong Gi-hun, and it never really left the zeitgeist. Season 2 hit in December 2024 with seven episodes and pushed Gi-hun into a bigger war with the machine behind the games. Then Netflix dropped a six-episode Season 3 in June 2025, filmed back-to-back with Season 2, as a proper endgame. Gi-hun finally goes right at the Front Man, and it gets personal.

Three seasons feels exactly right for this show: loud impact, no dragging. Run/ratings: 3 seasons (2021–2025), IMDb 8.0/10, Rotten Tomatoes 95%. Streaming on Netflix.

2. You

Joe Goldberg started in 2018 on Lifetime (yes, really) before Netflix turned him into a global guilty pleasure. Penn Badgley’s charming nightmare bounced from New York to LA to the suburbs and then to London in Season 4 (2023), leaving therapy bills and bodies everywhere. Season 5 (2025) finally makes him face who he actually is, not who he tells us he is in that whispery voiceover.

Ending now is smart; pushing Joe forever would’ve dulled the edge. Run/ratings: 5 seasons (2018–2025), IMDb 7.7/10, Rotten Tomatoes 91%. Networks: Lifetime Season 1, Netflix Seasons 2–5. Streaming on Netflix.

3. Cobra Kai

The Karate Kid follow-up landed in 2018 and somehow made 30-plus years of dojo beef feel fresh. Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) vs. Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) kept the heart beating while the kids brought the heat. The final season is a 15-episode victory lap released in three parts (July 2024, November 2024, February 2025). The Sekai Taikai isn’t just a tournament; it’s where the entire Miyagi-verse cashes its receipts. Old enemies, odd-couple alliances, and more than a few full-circle gut punches.

Six seasons, 65 episodes, and out while it still stings. Run/ratings: 6 seasons (2018–2025), IMDb 8.5/10, Rotten Tomatoes 93%. Networks: YouTube Red Seasons 1–2, Netflix Seasons 3–6. Streaming on Netflix.

4. The Handmaid's Tale

Elisabeth Moss has carried this dystopia since 2017, and the show never whispered its themes; it hammered them. Season 6 is the last stand, premiering April 8, 2025 and rolling out weekly to the 10th and final episode on May 27. June reignites the fight, Luke and Moira press on with the resistance, Serena Joy tries to bend Gilead to her will, and Lawrence and Aunt Lydia reckon with the machine they helped build. Nick has decisions that could finally show us who he is when the excuses are gone.

The ending works because it points straight at the next chapter: The Testaments spin-off. Run/ratings: 6 seasons (2017–2025), IMDb 8.4/10, Rotten Tomatoes 83%. Streaming on Hulu.

5. Big Mouth

Since 2017, Big Mouth turned puberty into a horror-comedy support group and somehow made it sweet, gross, and honest at the same time. Created by Nick Kroll, Andrew Goldberg, Mark Levin, and Mark Levin & Jennifer Flackett, with a ridiculous voice lineup (Kroll, John Mulaney, Maya Rudolph, Ayo Edebiri and many more), the series wrapped with Season 8 on May 23, 2025. Ten final episodes bring the count to 81 total, making it one of Netflix’s longest-running scripted originals.

The last season hits all the chaos: first times, consent, future panic, porn, cancellation, bad decisions, and better friends. Run/ratings: 8 seasons (2017–2025), IMDb 7.9/10, Rotten Tomatoes 99%. Streaming on Netflix.

6. The Conjuring Universe

Since 2013, New Line’s haunted house machine gave us a decade-plus of jump scares that felt a little too plausible thanks to Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson as Lorraine and Ed Warren. The spin-offs (Annabelle, The Nun, etc.) fleshed out the lore, but the core always came back to the Warrens. The final chapter, The Conjuring: Last Rites, released September 5, 2025, brings them out of semi-retirement in 1986 to tackle the Smurl family haunting. Michael Chaves directs, leaning into creaks, cursed objects, and a slow build that pays off with feeling, not just loud noises.

Time to close the case files. Universe size/ratings: 9 films (2013–2025). The first film sits at IMDb 7.5/10, Rotten Tomatoes 86%. Studio: Warner Bros./New Line Cinema. Buy or rent The Conjuring: Last Rites now on Paramount+.

7. The Summer I Turned Pretty

Jenny Han’s YA love triangle did the coastal nostalgia thing without feeling stale. Season 3 (the last) premiered July 16, 2025 with two episodes, then went weekly until the September 17 finale. We pick up roughly two years after Season 2: Belly (Lola Tung) is with Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno), summer plans are set, and then Conrad (Christopher Briney) strolls back in and scrambles the board.

Three books, three seasons. Clean and earned. Run/ratings: 3 seasons (2022–2025), IMDb 7.3/10, Rotten Tomatoes 83%. Streaming on Prime Video.

8. Downton Abbey

We all knew this stately obsession would end; now it does with Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale. Set in the 1930s and written by Julian Fellowes, directed by Simon Curtis, the last film puts Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) under a microscope after her divorce from Henry Talbot fuels gossip and class snobbery. The estate’s finances are shaky, upstairs and downstairs have to evolve, and a few new faces poke at old rules. It’s nostalgia with consequences, and leadership shifts in ways that actually feel earned.

For the record: the series ran six seasons (2010–2015 in the UK, wrapped stateside in early 2016) with two prior films (2019, 2022). Series ratings: IMDb 8.7/10, Rotten Tomatoes 86%. Networks/studios: PBS in the US; films from Focus Features. Buy or rent Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale now on Paramount+.

9. Mission: Impossible

Eight films later, Ethan Hunt is finally punching the clock. Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning, directed by Christopher McQuarrie and released May 2025, threads together the fallout from Dead Reckoning Part One. The team is back (Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Vanessa Kirby, Hayley Atwell, Henry Czerny), with reinforcements (Angela Bassett, Esai Morales, Pom Klementieff, and more). The big bad is an AI called the Entity, and the stunts are the kind you watch through your fingers because you know Tom Cruise insisted on doing them for real.

"It’s the final! It’s not called 'final' for nothing."

That’s Cruise to The Hollywood Reporter, and, yeah, the title is not trolling. Franchise highs: Fallout sits at IMDb 7.8/10, Rotten Tomatoes 97%. Studio: Paramount Pictures. Buy or rent Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning now on Paramount+.

10. Alice in Borderland

Tokyo in ruins, kill-or-be-killed games, and a constant reality check: this series has been a brutal hang since 2020. Season 3 arrived September 25, 2025 and pushes past the manga’s endpoint. Arisu (Kento Yamazaki) and Usagi (Tao Tsuchiya) are married and trying to be normal, which lasts about five minutes. Usagi disappears, the Joker card from Season 2 resurfaces, and Arisu gets yanked back into Borderland. Expect nastier games, heavier psychological warfare, and some moral choices that will make you queasy. New players Ryuji and Rei complicate things, and a few familiar survivors return to face what they did to stay alive.

Going off-book means real surprises. Run/ratings: 3 seasons (2020–2025), IMDb 7.7/10, Rotten Tomatoes 88%. Streaming on Netflix.

11. Stranger Things

Nine years, five seasons, and countless Demogorgon-adjacent nightmares later, Stranger Things is finishing the story. Season 5 has eight episodes split into three drops: four on November 26, 2025, three more on December 25, and the finale on December 31. It’s Fall 1987, Hawkins is under quarantine after the Rifts, and everyone you care about is back: Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), Mike, Max, Dustin, Lucas, Will, the whole crew. Vecna’s still the problem, only bigger and slipperier.

The Duffers are aiming to answer the big ones: what exactly the Upside Down is, what really happened at Hawkins Lab, and how this group pulls off one last save when the town (and their childhoods) are basically gone. Run/ratings: 5 seasons (2016–2025), IMDb 8.7/10, Rotten Tomatoes 92%. Streaming on Netflix.

So yeah, 2025 is a lot of final bows. The trade-off is we’re getting real endings: planned, punchy, and designed to stick. Which one are you most ready to ugly-cry over?