The Worst TV Endings: Part 1 

The ending of Blake's 7 was perfect as it is totally in-keeping with the tone of the show. All too often, particularly in that era, we are used to the good guy winning. But from the very first episode it is made clear that they are on the losing side, with the only thing keeping them ahead of the power and might of the Federation being the Liberator. It is an F-22 Raptor among P-51 Mustangs. But over time, they lost Blake, they lost most of the original team, and finally, they lost the Liberator. And with Avon becoming increasingly unhinged they did not even have their best thinker onside anymore. The ending may have been forced upon the writers, but it absolutely is the best ending possible. A victory for the heroes simply is not Blake's 7.

For me Game of thrones was rushed through to finish it and ruined what was a brilliant series

Don't forget Sapphire and Steel!

Only Fools And Horses surely has to have one of the worst endings ever. See, people still think of that great moment where the Trotters finally became millionaires as being the true end of the series. But then they had to go and spoil it by resurrecting the show for three very weak episodes, which only proved to make the show jump the shark, destroy the original perfect ending, and finally come to an ultimate close with the depressing fact that Rodney was not actually a Trotter, and the family had blown their fortune. How to ruin one of the greatest original endings to a series, ever.

Blake's 7 was my first ever WTAF moment. Damn, have to rewatch it now. Nice one 😅

There will never be a worst ending to a TV show then St. Elsewhere's infamous "Snow Globe" episode.

Enterprise for sure, that ending was just insulting. And the last episode of Star Trek (original series) is not loved by all. "Turnabout Intruder" has Dr. Janice Lester finding a machine that allows her to body swap with Kirk, an ex-lover(of course). She manages to almost take over the ship but is thwarted at the last minute. Great acting from Shatner, playing Kirk being used by Lester trying to pass herself off in Kirks' body. Wonderful stuff.

Odyssey 5. It was cancelled before its conclusion and left on a cliff-hanger. Odyssey 5 was a Canadian Sci-Fi show which aired in 2002. It was about a group of six people, four astronauts, a scientist and a television news reporter on board the Space Shuttle Odyssey on 7 August 2007. While in space, they see the Earth turn into a fireball and implode and one Astronaut is killed. They get help from an Alien known as The Seeker, who says 50 other worlds have been destroyed in the same way, but has been too late to observe the destruction. The surviving 5 people are sent back 5 years into the past to try prevent Earth's destruction. They were getting close to the point where we would find out what was going to cause Earths destruction when the show was cancelled. Other shows I can think of with bad endings: Star trek Enterprise, Mork & Mindy, Angel, House and Quantum Leap.

I watched Lois and Clark’s first two seasons but lost interest after that. Never knew it ended on a cliffhanger!

Forgot to say: That Lois and Clark ending, like the Blakes Seven one, was supposed to be an end of season cliffhanger. In a fifth season, you would have found that the baby was from a highly advanced civilisation from the future. Who were under threat from a terrible foe. A time traveller from the civilisation brought them back to Superman's time so he could protect them. Of course at some point the foe would have found their way to the twentieth century. Although a fifth season had been commissioned the network changed their mind and wanted to cancel it after four. So they made a deal with the the producers that if they would accept the cancellation, then the network would make their proposed science fiction show 'Prey.' This happened. Superman ended. Prey got to be a series. But didn't do well and was swiftly cancelled. I never watched it, but an ending that nobody seems to like was How I met your Mother

Dinosaurs definitely had a very dark weird ending.

‘The Tripods’ ended on a cliffhanger with the bad guys seemingly wiping out the resistance, it was then cancelled.

The ending of Blake's 7 was perfect, no fairy tale ending for them.

Quantum Leap still makes me rage. I loved that show as a kid.

Dexter had probably the worst ending ever, followed by the US version of Life on Mars which was just awful

As a teenager I had real issues with anxiety and seeing the endings to both Alf and Dinosaurs left me unnerved. I knew that Dinosaurs would very likely would have their last episode about the extinction of the characters, but I didn't think it would be so dark and a reminder of how humans are destroying the world and it's worse than ever now.

Laverne & Shirley the last show in 1983 ended with without the two main characters appearing in the final scene . Cindy Williams (Shirley) who left the show in 1982 turned down the chance to appear in the finale and Penny Marshall was hardly seen . The finale concentrated on a sub character a failed actor Carmine (played by eddie Mekka ) who was leaving new york to go to LA for a part in the musical Hair. The theme song which originally showed Laverne & Shirley dancing through the streets which started with the familiar "Schlemiel! Schlimazel! Hasenpfeffer Incorporated!" was replaced for some unknown reason by schoolchildren doing the dance while going to school with Penny Marshall looking on and smiling.

Space, Above & Beyond. As a season finale? Perfect. As an end to a show? Deeply, deeply frustrating.

My worst tv ending is My Name Is Earl, we never found out who Earl juniors real father was.

I'd make it a law that if a TV company wants to end a show it has to produce a final episode that ties up all the loose ends. I've lost count of shows that just end without any resolution to the story line.

The worst ending ever has got to be St Elsewhere, I mean what the fudge was that.

I was and continue to be a huge Blake's 7 fan. It was a shocking but not a bad ending to the show. Terry Nation, the writer, we brilliant and he gave us a memorable ending. It was divisive, not bad.

How about the Seinfeld ending where they all end up in Jail. That was Bad.

The A-Team and Knight Rider both got terrible final episodes that didn't really get a proper send off😢

My Name is Earl was cancelled way to early. Recently, I was disappointed by the abrupt "deus ex machina" ending of The Expanse, which was otherwise pretty superb. There was also a recent but obscure fantasy show called Game of Thrones which completely shat the bed in the last season.

Got to add my vote to Blake's 7 having a fantastic ending. Im pretty sure I read it wasnt actually intended as the series finale, just a cliffhanger, and they could have written themselves out of it if they wanted to, but it worked as a hard stop to the series brilliantly.

Blake's 7 had a perfect ending as it was totally unexpected. It was a very dark ending, so it may have been unpopular, but that doesn't equal bad. Avon surrounded and in a seemingly hopeless situation as he smiles made me think that he saw the humor in how everything was undone by a simple misunderstanding. I think it was bold and a brilliant way to end the series.

I think it's probably harder to give multiple shows with good endings than to list the ones with bad. Writers seem to struggle (more than likely because it's forced upon them without adequate preparation) to produce a satisfactory finisher...

For me it was the final episode of House. In fact the whole final season. I know the show could be dark but that last episode left me feeling numb and miserable. Oh, and the series finale of Seinfeld is an obvious choice for being awful.

blake 7 great ending did not see that coming what program would dare do that today

Quantum Leap both series. They screwed over the original show and its fans and then did it again with the revival with the new people. They jerked the carpet out from underneath our feet. To add insult to injury, on the final episode of the original series, NBC didn’t tell anyone what was going on until the finale was too close to change anything and also refused to let Quantum Leap to have a proper ending credits sequence. They forced them to have their credits squashed to the side and music quieted to allow Jay Leno brag about his show still continuing. I agree on Lois and Clark. That was due to Michael Eisner coming in and revoking the renewal the show had been granted. They were allowed another season because The Rosie O’Donnell Show was going to air on abc stations so the contract was stated that since the new show was coming, Lois and Clark was renewed for season five. Warner Bros and ABC agreed and signed the contract. Eisner came in and said “well my network now so you’re canceled.” They told him that wasn’t fair and he basically said “I don’t care and you don’t get a closure. Go away you’re done.” He replaced it with The Wonderful World of Disney instead and did the same thing with ABC’s Wide World if Sports, The ABC Afterschool Special(also because Oprah whined about it preempting her show three times a year), The ABC Weekend Special, soap operas and other shows. So yeah, Eisner did not make a lot of friends and treated a lot of people and shows like garbage. He destroyed Lois and Clark and I only found out because USA Today and TV Guide felt it wasn’t fair to blindside fans and told us along with Entertainment Tonight that the episode would close out the entire series. Believe me, Eisner had no intention of telling ANYONE the episode called “The Family Hour” was to be the series finale. TV Guide and USA Today BARELY got to do a little blurb saying for the episode in its timeslot post that it was the series finale. Same with Entertainment Tonight. They only got to do a picture of Teri and Dean and say the plug had been pulled by the bosses at ABC. You could tell they were not happy either.

The Prisoner is my suggestion ! Loved this video, I'd agree with all of them asides Blakes 7, it was a great ending to a great series !

Honourable mention for The Expanse because the final episode had to wrap up a series that had another three books to go.

Terrible/anticlimactic show finales: Only fools and horses: They Should have ended it with the episode where they strike it rich with that watch. They kept pumping out more "Specials" though. Scrubs: The soft reboot was utterly unnecessary. Quantum Leap: An interesting failure but a failure nonetheless. Death of The Incredible Hulk.

Little House On The Prairie. What an absolutely ridiculous ending.

Both "Quantum Leap" shows had bad endings, neither Sam nor Ben and Addison returned home.

How I Met Your Mother definitely belongs on the list. They spent 8 years building up to the reveal of the titular mother, introduced her early on in the 9th season, then (spoiler), revealed in the final episode that she died, and had Ted get back together with Robin. This is a bit of a niche choice, but I’d also suggest The Parkers, a spin-off of Moesha (speaking of Moesha, that also had a terrible ending because the show was axed, so it ended on an unresolved cliffhanger like Alf). In The Parkers, Nikki Parker spends 5 seasons harassing and stalking Professor Stanley Oglvee. In the final episode, Nikki is about to marry a man named Johnnie, and the Professor suddenly gets jealous and has the audacity to propose to Nikki with the ring Johnnie bought. Nikki says yes, marries the Professor, and leaves Johnnie at the altar.

Jon Doe the American Scifi series curtailed after one season leaving viewers with all of the questions raised in the series and no answers. Sliders had a poor ending, but the last series wasn't terrible either. Quantum Leap. Sam Beckett never returned home. The American Version of Life on Mars. Very poor writing. Fawlty Towers (we were begging for far far more). Every final episode of The Blackadder, Blackadder II, Black Adder III and Black Adder Goes Forth (actually this was not too bad and very poignant.)

If you ask me Twin Peaks had a far better ending than anyone could have ever hoped for. It was however the kind of ending that when you first meet it might appear hard to take in. S3 of Twin Peaks is one that needs rewatching perhaps more than once but is worth it.

The way The Incredible Hulk ended was awful. The show ended it's original run with David Banner walking off down a road to the theme of "The Lonely man" as he did at the end of every episode. The show was cancelled, to the shock of the cast, and we only got a handful of episodes that made up a very short season 5. So it never got the ending it deserved. Then The Incredible Hulk came back in 1988 as three made for TV movies, the last one The Death of the Incredible Hulk airing in 1990, which sees the Hulk thrown from an exploding plane and fall to his death, which contradicted everything that had come before in the original show. There were plans to make a fourth TV movie, but sadly Bill Bixby passed away in 1993. Creator Kenneth Johnson had tried to get a propery final season made which would have included the She-Hulk, but executives at Universal felt the show had run it's course. Kenneth Johnson didn't even know about the reunion movies until he saw a trailer for them on TV. The Incredible Hulk got some closure with the reunion movies, but not the closure it deserved.

Angel, Firefly, Enterprise, Quantum Leap (couldn't even spell his NAME right!!!!). I wish some of these shows could've gotten a follow-up movie. I mean, Firefly did. JERICHO, there's another one!!! "Nuts!"

Blake's 7 just sounds like " Firefly !

So so so many great shows (and the casts that breathed life into them) given such terrible/sudden endings… two successes spring to mind; M*A*S*H, and The Good Place (I remember, as a teen, bawling to the mash finale). Writers and actors were able to deliver to fans and bring closure to the story

The plot of Blake's 7 often went where the effects budget could not follow, but it was always pure entertainment. Avon deserved better.

It's pronounced Rog. Blakes seven was originally cancelled during it's third season and the finale of that was going to be the end. But then when that episode went out, BBC director of serials liked it. And had also failed to find a replacement. The creators of Flipside of Dominic Hyde didn't want to turn that into a series. So he told the continuity announcer to say it will be back next year. Which came as a great surprise to the watching cast members. Which is why season four started in September not January. The ending was intended as a cliffhanger by script editor Chris Boucher. But although he thought it would get a fifth season, that didn't happen. Thus it ended up being an ending not a season finale. I remember watching it at the time as they were gunned down yelling 'no! No! No! No!' then as the credits rolled over the sound of gunfire going 'ooooooooohhhh!' only to scream with frustration when the music rolled. Urban legend has it the bbc got so many calls of complaint it crashed their switchboard. If it had continued, I think it might have been two rather than seven as Paul Darrow and Michael Keating would have been up for more, but possibly not the others. Four endings I don't like: Star Trek Enterprise. Would have worked if it had been a double length episode. But it tries to cram too much into forty two mins, so the death of Trip gets no emotional resonance at all. That was actually retconned by a Deep space novel which said he faked his death and went to work for section thirty one. Star Trek Voyager. Yet more time travel, which they'd done to death by then. And no emotional resonance to the ending either. There's Earth. It then stops. The 100: Frustrating final season which tried to do too much and was all over the place. I could see what it was trying to do from the final episode, but it was a hard journey getting there. It was nice that Octavia';s love interest was still around in the last scene, but disappointing that Raven didn't have anyone, so it was a very frustrating finale. The Flash [Arrowverse version] three episodes to build Cobalt Blue up as a villain. Then he gives up after one fight and a dose 'this isn't you, you're a good person really!' I had stopped caring about the characters by then, the season having become the Chester Allegra and Cecile show. And bringing in three new characters in the final scene didn't really work.

Dallas, both the original and the TNT revival. The It’s a Wonderful Life theme didn’t work, partly because the world would have been even more different if JR had never been born. Some of the other characters would not have been born either, including Bobby, Gary, Cliff, Pam, and Katherine. Also, the TNT show had an unresolved plot point, namely the identity and mother of JR’s daughter.

Two sticks to mind that frustrates me to this day: Moesha and Revolution. Moesha was a sitcom that aired on UPN from 1996 to 2001 and while its final season was already messy, it got even messy in its final episode when Moesha was possibly pregnant and her little brother Myles was kidnapped by gangsters whom half-brother Dorian owed money to. Revolution was a sci-fi action drama that aired on NBC for three seasons and the final episode saw the heroes go on a do-or-die battle with the Monroe Militia and it ends with a major plot twist: there is a part of the country where power has been restored but there are zombie-like people that are attracted to light. It was resolved in a webcomic by DC Comics but that wasn’t enough for me.

Brittas Empire has to be on the list

Little House On The Prairie, the scorched earth policy was so Hardcore and Final!

The ending of Blake's 7 in such a fashion was powerful (and if you read a few books about the series, you'd find it went deeper than you might imagine). Also, I think you watched too many endings to US sci-fi shows/films where the good guys always come up smiling.

You can’t do this series without Life on Mars (USA)… completely missing the whole tone of the series and source material in a “cancelled? We’ll show them” piece of insanity. Sharp contrast to the UK original which has a bleak but incredibly well done ending

Sod it. I never saw any of these shows. The only one my mates raved about was Blake's Seven, but I had a job after school, so I missed out on that one. I haven't heard of the others, because I grew up in England and have a life. Looking forward to part 2. Cheers.

Blakes 7 was the fjrst time I was shocked at what I saw on TV. I was only a kid then. Took me ages to get over it, especially when I realised the weapons weren't set to stun and the cast wouldn't be coming back for a new series.

“Project: Alf” was not intended to tie up loose ends from the Alf series. It was intended as a movie of the week in order to set up a potential new Alfred series. This is why nobody from the previous show turns up, and they are only vaguely referenced

I disagree about Blake's 7. I thought it was a great ending with Avon smiling, then the screen goes black and all you hear is gunshots.

Time Tunnel, Lost in Space (original), Otherworld and Land of the Giants - if you can call their lack of any conclusion an "ending".

Dafuq? Blake's 7 is one of the greatest endings of all time. Cold, brutal, and totally in keeping in the ethos of the show. It ends as it begins, with a group of rebels being executed by faceless grunts.

That little house ending 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

I can only think that the viewers who complained about the end of Blake’s 7 hadn’t seen any of the rest of it. From the beginning, it’s framed as a doomed adventure. Every character is flawed, every idealistic notion is thwarted, and the (anti) heroes are murdered to smithereens in one of the best and most shocking bloodbaths ever seen on TV. It is very rare to see a series end with such apocalyptic pathos, and out of B7’s 52 episodes, the last one is its best by miles.

JAG with the coin toss unresolved.

Two of the worst endings for me (And both for the same reason..neither show knew that they were going to be ending) were "Dark Shadows" and "Quantum Leap", which both ended in almost the same fashion..Dark Shadows with a hastily created voice over narration, and Quantum Leap with hastily created title cards

I enjoyed the finale of Blakes 7. There was a follow up novel to it ,bringing the story back again. For the life of me I can't remember what it was called or the author. My copy has long since been lost.

Did you get the footage of the Blake's 7 ending from my channel?

Doesn't everyone just find a baby left in their home without a explanation ! Or is it just me !

Sadly Alf never did come back from his visit to the POG factory...

The blowing up of Walnut Grove seems like an opportunistic way of creating some profitable stock footage to be used in other films and TV productions. Disappointingly, I can't find any direct info.

heheh, "The Little Rubble Pile on the Prarie"

Farscape! Dargo screaming like a lunatic after his friends are disintegrated. They made a movie that wrapped things up, but jeez that was an abrupt ending!

Hard disagree about Little House. You didn’t show the townspeople walking away together defiantly at the end. That ending left a strong sense of hope that these people will go on even if the town would not. You can read that as metatextual to the characters living on even as the show ended. An excellent final episode.

I'm not sure if anyone else watched this show, it was a late-night made in Canada cheapie for the US market, but I thought that Forever Knight's ending was awful. One character was cured of being a vampire by falling in love and then taking small amounts of blood from her lover until she recovered. When the hero Nick Knight (Geraint Wyn Davies) tried to do the same with his love interest Dr. Natalie Lambert (Catherine Disher) it didn't work and he couldn't "live" with what he had done.

7th Heaven also had one of the worst TV endings I can think of.

The Blakes 7 Ending - I remember watching it as a child and DAMN IT HIT FREAKING HARD! But Now as an Adult... Yeah, It is a POOR ENDING! However, They had to come up with an ending fast as the BBC confirmed there would be NO RENEWAL!!! Everyone who worked on the show wanted to continue... But it was not happening! Many still beg for a Continuation or Reboot - I am on a couple of Blakes 7 Facebook Groups... And with regards a Reboot, I shall simply paraphrase Paul Darrow from the documentary "FOREVER AVON" as his words say it all... "... Well, We already have, It was called Serenity or Firefly... That was in essence Blakes 7... It perfected what we started" IRONIC that Firefly also ended as badly as Blakes 7 did with Unresolved Plot Threads and the Movie left fans desperate for more, as well as upset at the loss of so many fan favourite characters! It LITERALLY WAS THE BLAKES 7 REBOOT... Like Blakes 7, Ended before its time!

The Little House ending was bad, but there was a reason for it. The lease for the land required them to return the land to how it was before the lease, meaning they had to destroy any buildings they added to the land. They had to blow them up anyway, so they included it into the script.

A sad ending isn’t the same as a bad ending!

Terrible ending?? The terrible US version of Life On Mars. What the heck was that?!

The ALF ending was terrible. Idk why the cast wouldn't have wanted a proper finale given the brutal hours they spent?

One of the worst series endings of all time had to be the final episode of "King of Queens." The final season was a shaky, uneven mess anyway, the writing so inconsistent (and sometimes downright terrible as to be unwatchable), but they could've at least delivered a half-decent final episode, but they couldn't even do that. Instead we got a disjointed, thrown-together mess with a whole bunch of newly-made loose ends that were never tied up, never resolved & went nowhere. Not only that, it wasn't even _funny._ It was about as funny as a gutful of pinworms & left such a lousy taste in one's mouth it very nearly soured one on the entire series. Definitely one of the worst final episodes in TV history in my never-to-be-humble opinion.

Dynasty's final ending with aliens taking one of the female characters was a pretty bad ending

Monk. The finale rejected everything that had made the detective show great.

Blake's 7 ending was awesome because you still didn't know if Avon was a spy .

Dark Shadows. I know it was cancelled abruptly but it killed me not to see any type of resolution for any of the characters.

Most obviously- The Colbys and St Elsewhere

Choujin Sentai Jetman (Birdman Squadron Jetman) the series that nearly got adapted for Power Rangers before Dinosaur Taskforce Zyuranger [Juuranger] became Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Gai Yuki [Guy You-Key] has spent 50 episodes fighting as Black Condor & together have stopped the Earth Invasion. In a pre credit 5 year epilogue, we see Gai picking up the Bouquet for Red & Pink's wedding - only to give chase to a handbag snatcher & get stabbed retrieving the bag. He hides his internal injuries to get a wedding picture taken with Ryu (Red Hawk) & dies quietly on a bench. This is BEFORE the year clipshow credits.

Lois & Clerk....never heard of it

Some of these I wouldn't call bad endings as they didn't really end but were cancelled before a proper ending was scripted.

Sapphire and steel had a pretty bad ending in my opinion ... unresolved etc

to be fair any show that is cancelled between seasons can't be on the list, you can't blame them for finishing on a bad cliff hanger. only shows that have an actual ending can be

ALF was so close to being a perfect ending and they just had to fuck it up.

Game of Thrones for me, awful end to a great series.

Star Trek: Voyager's ending was a bit of an anti-climax. We never saw them arrive back on Earth and everything that was hinted previously that would happen. The closest we got was them flying off back in the direction of Earth with some other federation star ships. The plot by which is happened was also a little contrived to say the least. I suspect that they only got to find out it was the last season toward the end, and also ran out of ideas in how to end it all, tried to wrap it all up in one fell swoop. Quantum Leap was another than just ended without any conclusion, probably because they couldn't think of a proper ending, so they just had him die, never getting to go home. Disappointing to say the least.

Should of called the Connor's Dan.

Gareth Thomas who played blake was friends with my dad

Breaking Bad and Six Feet Under had awesome endings. That's how you do it.

Probably been mentioned but My Name Is Earl 4 seasons then a cliffhanger ending and bam cancelled. Couple more with just bad endings: Dexter How I Met Your Mother Both terrible wrap up of their respective series.

Sliders had a bad ending too.

Byker Grove, never watched it myself but seen a video here about the last episode. It was weird.

Sopranos, Seinfeld, dinosaurs, in-betweeners, cheers, Cosby show, Alf, the prisoner, Get a life, ecw on tnn, Just the Ten Of Us

Blake 7 terrible ending probably the writers being pissed about the series ending.

Byker Grove ended super weird.

Any American series that gets a degree of popularity is almost certain to be dragged on well past the point where it should have ended.