For those of you who are unaware, the television series “The Boys” ended this week, with a finale that caused a ton of anger and consternation.
I won’t bore you with the details, but fans are basically feeling betrayed after spending so many years watching the show only to have the rug pulled out from under them in the final episode.
If that sounds familiar to you, then you’ve come to the right place, because today, in honor of “The Boys'” lackluster ending, I wanted to look at four more television series that ended on a sour note.
This doesn’t necessarily mean I think the endings to these shows are bad (though that’s true for a couple), but at the time of their release, these respective finales caused a massive amount of backlash.
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Some have aged more gracefully than others, but all four were slammed by fans and critics alike upon immediate viewing.
Without much further ado, let’s talk some TV!
*Spoilers ahead*
4. How I Met Your Mother (2014)
Let’s start with one that still hasn’t recovered from the contemporary hate it received from its fanbase, as “How I Met Your Mother” and its controversial ending enraged a large portion of its loyal followers.
The problems stem from the fact that the show spends its entire run building up “The Mother” as well as Robin and Barney’s marriage, only to pull the old bait and switch by killing off “The Mother” and having Barney and Robin divorce in the final half hour of the show’s existence.
The final twist of the knife came in the form of Robin and main character Ted ending up together, whom the kids even refer to as “Aunt Robin.”
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Gross.
The fans of the show claimed this finale destroyed years of great character building in favor of just “ending up where they started,” since the very first episode opens with the now-iconic “and that, kids, is how I met your mother.”
This will be a theme for another show further down the list, but eschewing your character development to hastily achieve an ending might as well be the kiss of death for any TV show, and HIMYM is no different.
3. Seinfeld (1998)
Since “Seinfeld” is the greatest sitcom of all time (I said what I said), there are almost no flaws in its game, but the series finale is often cited as one of the few blemishes on an otherwise spotless resume.
Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer nearly die in a plane crash then get arrested for for violating a “Good Samaritan law.”
They then spend the two-part finale on trial while past characters testify about how selfish they are.
On paper, it sounds like the perfect send-off for a “show about nothing” where the characters spent nine seasons never learning their lessons, but many fans felt the premise was too “mean-spirited.”
The finale also gets dinged for being too reliant on past episodes and guest stars, and, at the time, it felt like a lazy end to what many deem the king of all sitcoms.
Public opinion has softened on the matter, and show creator Larry David even came out years later and offered a mea culpa to the disgruntled fanbase.
That coupled with the quasi-Seinfeld reunion during season seven of David’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” has quelled the angry mob somewhat, but in 1998, the show certainly had its fair share of haters for the way it all ended.
2. The Sopranos (2007)
If “Seinfeld” is considered the greatest sitcom of all time, then “The Sopranos” is likely considered the greatest drama series of all time, and in my opinion, it isn’t particularly close.
After six-ish seasons of batting near 1.000, though, the good times had to come to an end, and leave it to show creator David Chase to not exactly tie things up in a neat little bow for his audience.
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With the war between New Jersey and Shah of Iran impersonator Phil Leotardo ending in dramatic fashion, Tony can now breathe a brief sigh of relief, though his crew now looks like a shell of its former self and there are looming indictments hanging over our favorite mob boss’s head.
As we make our way through the final episode of the series, you get the uneasy feeling that something big is about to occur, so when the Soprano family sans Meadow all sit down at Holsteins for a plate of onion rings, viewers felt the tension escalate.
As the dulcet tones of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin'” echo through the jukebox, Meadow bursts into the diner as the screen fades to black.
That’s it. End of story. That’s all she wrote.
Viewers were so shocked by this cold ending that many called up HBO or their cable companies to see if maybe something happened to their TVs.
Chase was very intentional with every detail in the series, and the ending was no different, and although this one has aged gracefully a lot like “Seinfeld’s” ending, it was a shocking and ultimately unsatisfying ending for large swathes of the “Sopranos'” fanbase.
It just goes to show that people hate when you cut something off mid sentence and never res…
1. Game of Thrones (2019)
Anyone angered by the finale of “The Boys” must not have been around for the “Game of Thrones” ending, because everything else compared to this HBO fantasy adaptation seems like child’s play when stacked up side-by-side.
While shows like “The Sopranos” and “Seinfeld” angered their respective audiences in their final episodes, “Game of Thrones” spends an entire season pissing all over its fanbase.
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The whole premise of “Game of Thrones” centers around political intrigue by way of a real-life chess match taking place across an entire continent, and this was at its best when the writing was strong and the character development was established over multiple seasons.
By the time season eight has run its course, the show has completely trashed all of that character development in favor of subverting expectations and rushing to give the show a “proper ending.”
Characters like Jon Snow and Jaime Lannister, two fan favorites, are reduced to simping idiots, losing all the agency they once had.
The last episode in particular is universally hated by fans thanks to Bran Stark’s reveal as the king after he sat around and did absolutely nothing for the final season.
His powers could have been used in such creative ways but there was no payoff for him becoming the Three-Eyed Raven in the end.
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And don’t even get me started on Daenerys, whose turn to the dark side over the last handful of episodes makes Anakin Skywalker’s look subtle by comparison.
I could go on and on, but suffice to say, “Game of Thrones” went from being a cultural phenomenon to a reviled afterthought in the span of just a few short episodes.
It’s almost impressive how the show can take all the goodwill it cultivated over the first seven seasons and flush it down the toilet in just a few hours, and it sits at number one on this list for that very reason.
What is your least favorite series finale? Let me know in the comments down below.
