At their very best (and very worst),series finalescan completely redefine what a TV show is about. Whether through a dramatic plot twist that serves as the perfect climax, an unexpectedly happy or tragic ending, or a revelation that reshapes everything that came before it,the final episode of a series has the power to transform how you see the whole thingin its entirety. Although many TV writers don’t make the most of this power when it comes to ending a project, some put everything they have into creating a climactic finale for their work.
Because a big finish inevitably raises the stakes, it can go one of two ways. Either it elevates the rest of the show to a different level, or it rides roughshod over characters and storylines that have taken years to build. Thebest TV finales of all timecement their show’s place in the pantheon of greatness, whereas theworst TV finalesruin pretty much everything else about it. However, there are also those dramatic TV series endings that sit somewhere in between,radically changing our perspective on a show without necessarily making or breaking it.
In 2023,Sex Educationdelivered one of the best examples ofa TV finale that the rest of its story doesn’t live or die by, but which makes us see the show in a totally different way. In the penultimate episode of the series, its protagonist Otis Milburn said goodbye to his first love, Maeve Wiley, as she went off to study in the United States.
Many viewers wondered if this plot point was setting us up for a finale in which Otis ended up with his other love interest, Ruby, or if, instead, Maeve’s departure was a bluff to subvert our expectations before a final twist in the tail. In fact, the show’s final episode demonstrates that the dilemmaOtis faces in choosing between Maeve and Ruby inSex Educationis really just a distraction from his real perfect match.
Sex Education’s endingproves that Otis’ childhood best friend Eric Effiong is the person he’s meant to be with for his remaining time in high school.The friendship between Otis and Eric is the real bedrock of the series, which often went unnoticed while Otis was preoccupied with first Maeve, then Ola, and finally Ruby. The show’s understated ending brings things full-circle beautifully, as the two friends walk home, arm-in-arm, with Otis’ girl trouble now out of the picture.
What’s more, Otis unexpectedly cedes the role of student counselor to his arch-nemesis throughoutSex Educationseason 4, O. Despite the fact that the entire series was setting Otis up to be a therapist,this final twist reminds us that he’s still just a teenager figuring himself out, and allows him the chance simply to be who he is before the future in psychotherapy that may well await him.
AsMy Name Is Earlsaid its goodbyes following NBC’s cancelation of the show after four seasons, it had something up its sleeve to make Earl’s final TV bow surprisingly moving. When Earl orders DNA tests to determinewho fathered the two kids of Joy, his ex-wife, he receives unexpected news. The biological father of Dodge, the son Earl adopted as his own, believing him to be the result of a sexual encounter Joy had with someone else before they met, turns out to be none other than Earl himself.
This cliffhanger was supposed to be the basis for the show’s producers to shop it to another network.
This hilarious turn of events, which ends up with Earl and Joy remonstrating with each other about which of them “did” the other, isa sweet note forMy Name Is Earlto go out on. It recasts Earl as the actual father of a son for whom he’d worked to become responsible throughout the show.
In one last surprise, it also emerges thatJoy’s current husband, Darnell Turner, isn’t actually the father of her second son. This cliffhanger was supposed to be the basis for the show’s producers to shop it to another network. Alas, no one agreed to pick it up for a fifth season, meaning we’re still waiting for aMy Name Is Earlrevival16 years later.
A series that was always destined to have a twist in its tail,Successionspends most of its four seasons showing us Kendall, Roman and Shiv vying for the corporate throne their father, Brian Cox’s Logan Roy, is about to vacate. When the time finally comes to determine the successor of Logan’s business empire, however,none of his children get their hands on the prize.
Instead,Succession’s series finalesees Shiv’s estranged husband Tom Wambsgans appointed the new CEO of Logan’s company, a position he’s openly been coveting since season 2 but seemed completely unsuited for. In fact, his own wife would rather fall into line behind her brother than support Tom in the role. Yet it’sTom’s apparent unsuitability to lead a business empire, due to his general mediocrity and lack of self-confidence, that make him the perfect candidate for the new parent company of Logan’s enterprise to install as its CEO.
Tom achieving exactly the position he’d always wanted, precisely because of his lack of competence and inability to scheme against his in-laws, isa brilliant subversion of our expectations throughoutSuccession, regardless of who we thought was going to be the successor. It exposes the hollow nature of corporate succession, even within the nepotistic terms of engagement depicted in the series. Even family ultimately means nothing when big business interests are involved.
AcrossJustified’s six seasons, Timothy Olyphant’s Raylan Givens develops an enmity with longtime acquaintance Boyd Crowder that shapes his career as a Deputy U.S. Marshal. Their shared antagonism is completely redefined, however, bythe show’s powerful final scene. Having helped put Boyd behind bars, Raylan travels thousands of miles to tell Boyd in person that Ava, his former fiancée, has died.
As viewers, we’re aware that Raylan’s story is a lie to protect Ava and her son from Boyd. But as Boyd himself notes, that still doesn’t explainwhy Raylan came all the way from his new home in Florida to tell Boyd the storyin person. With a final piece of dialogue that cementsJustifiedas the best neo-Western show ever made, Boyd surmises what Raylan struggles to articulate, that he came to tell him about Ava because they once “dug coal together”.
Timothy Olyphant returned to his role as Raylan Givens for the 2023 miniseries Justified: City Primeval, which is set in Raylan’s new home city, Miami.
This simple expression signifies a profound sentiment shared by the two men. Although they stand on different sides of the law and the woman they both love,they have a mutual respect that runs deeper than any antagonismdepicted during the course of the show. It reframes every scene involving Boyd and Raylan inJustified, and turns their enmity into one of the most brilliantly unlikely friendships in TV history.
The prominent role of spaceships and sentient robots known as Cylons in the 2004 reboot ofBattlestar Galacticamade itone of the most futuristic shows on television. That is, until the show’s finale episode, “Daybreak Part 3”, aired in March 2009. The episode turned the relationship between the universe of the show and our own world completely on its head, in surely thebiggest twist in the history ofBattlestar Galacticaas a franchise.
In the closing epilogue at the very end of the series, it’s suddenly and unexpectedly revealed to us that our own present time is “150,000 years later” than everything that’s happened throughout the show. Rather than the battlestar and Cylons being prospective developments in the future of humanity, they’rerecast as formative elements of a long-forgotten past. While this timeline shift doesn’t impact the plot ofBattlestar Galacticain any real way, it certainly makes us see the show differently.
If onlyHow I Met Your Motherhad gone with its alternate ending, the show might just have staved off much of the criticism leveled at it for one of the most controversial series finales of all time. Ted Mosby has to have his cake and eat it, though, meeting the love of his life inHIMYM’s final moments, only to realize via his exceedingly patient children that his true love isn’t really their dead mother, after all, but his initial romantic interest, Robin Scherbatsky.
The decision to have Ted and Robin end up together after all was one double-twist too manyfor a series that had spent the previous years tying more knots than a Cub Scout. We’d only just gotten used to seeing Robin back together with Barney, after season 7 made us root for Barney and Quinn’s relationship instead. Before that, Robin and Barney the first time around seemed to be a much better fit together than Ted ever was for his first “one”.
Alas,the show finally decided to ride roughshod over the previous seasons of labyrinthine dating historyand careful chemistry-building we’d diligently been keeping up with, landing us right back where it was at the end of its fourth season. It’s now impossible to watch a singleHow I Met Your Motherepisode in which Robin and Barney are together without thinking of how things end up. Talk about trying to do too much.
Theending ofGossip Girlis quite simply one of the biggest mic drop moments in the history of TV finales. It turns out thatthe show’s titular narrator, voiced by Kristen Bell for six seasons, isn’t a girl at all. She’s Dan Humphrey, the male love interest of Blake Lively’s protagonist Serena van der Woodsen. Dan chose to spread gossip about the socialite children of Manhattan’s wealthy elites as a way to ingratiate himself with the city’s old money circles. In his words, “I wasn’t born into this world. Maybe I could write myself into it.”
We can reimagine every piece of narration about another major character inGossip Girlfrom Dan’s point of view.
It’s an ending that isn’t overwritten, and makes a fair amount of sense while still springing a surprise. The beauty ofGossip Girl’s identity being a major character is that it allows us to rewatch every sceneof the show featuring Dan Humphrey with his online identity in mind. Even better, we can reimagine every piece of narration about another major character from Dan’s point of view. The shoe doesn’t always quite fit, but the writers still made a pretty shrewd choice on balance if they didn’t know whoGossip Girlwas from the off.
St. Elsewhere’s final scene is either the best or the worstdeus ex machinain TV history, depending on your perspective. The scene gave rise to thebiggest shared universe in TV historyby suggesting that its entire show took place in the mind of a young child with autism. St. Eligius Hospital, the fictional Boston setting for this 1980s medical drama, is seen inside the snow globe that Tommy Westphall was playing with.
Meanwhile,Tommy’s father, Donald Westphall, the doctor at the center of the show, is revealed to be a construction workerin the “real” world that his son actually inhabits, who struggles to communicate with him. “What’s he thinking about?” Donald asks rhetorically in the closing moments ofSt. Elsewhere.
The events viewers have seen depicted over the previous 137 episodes of the show are what Tommy Westphall is thinking about, apparently. Asseries finalesgo, this one definitely makes us think differently about what we’re watching, one way or another.
