Television finales: the ones that got it right and the ones that did not

[CaptainStatic56]

Series finales are perhaps the hardest thing in television. After years of investment from an audience, the finale has to resolve things without resolving too neatly, honour the characters without being sentimental, and give people a reason to have watched all of it. This is almost impossible and most finales fail in some way.

But not all. Some finales are exactly right and some retroactively improve everything that came before them. I want to know which ones you remember as working and which ones still frustrate you.

[Red Wrench]

The Sopranos ending is probably the best television finale ever made and I will defend that position. It understands what the show was actually about in a way that a conventional ending would have betrayed. The people who hated it initially often changed their view.

[Luke_67]

Breaking Bad's finale is the most technically satisfying ending I have watched. It is almost too tidy and I sometimes think a messier ending might have been truer to the show's DNA, but as a piece of narrative closure it is expert.

[Marcus]

Lost is the obvious wrong answer and I am aware that saying it is almost cliche but the abandonment of the plot in favour of emotional closure after years of explicit mystery-building is still one of the most frustrating television experiences I have had.

[Marnie]

Fleabag series two ending. Perfect. Understood exactly what had to happen and did it with the specific tonal mixture the show had earned over two series. The camera looks are doing enormous structural work in that final scene.

[RightAbout24]

Game of Thrones is the fascinating case because the decline was so rapid and so public that the finale almost does not matter separately from the penultimate season. You cannot discuss the ending without the context of how the show got there.

[Demi-Q]

Six Feet Under finale. Not the ending sequence which is famous and genuinely exceptional, but the whole episode as a piece of closure. It earns every emotional beat it reaches for and the flash-forward is one of the most affecting things in television history.

[Cass]

The Americans finale is the one I think about most. Quiet, devastating, and completely committed to its characters' logic even when that logic produces an outcome that is not satisfying in any conventional sense. Exactly right.

[SuperPosition]

I will always be angry about the specific way that a series I loved deeply ended. Not naming it because the wound is still fresh. Some finales are a betrayal and I am not ready to process it academically yet.