It's more common than it seems: a series manages to captivate the audience from the start, maintains its quality in the following seasons, and when it's time to present a conclusion, it falls apart. That says a lot about how some networks and platforms produce content, but viewers don't stay silent, and when a finale smells rotten, they turn to the Web to share their disappointment. With that in mind, Bo McCready used IMDb as a reference, and created an interactive table with the worst finales in television and streaming.
On the other side of the pond they use the expression "stick the landing", from the world of gymnastics: the routine can be good, but the ending must be up to par as well. That definitely extends to TV series, and one of the best examples of "sticking the landing" is Breaking Bad. Its last three episodes have an average of 9.86 on IMDb, and it's the most highly rated series on that platform.
However, what brings us together here today is the opposite case, that is, shows that maintained a good average during their seasons... and at the end flew out like the Dukes of Hazzard. To identify the worst finales in TV series, I recommend visiting Bo McCready's interactive table, which uses data extracted from IMDb, and presents a very interesting "Top 37"...
The worst TV series finales, ranked
The conditions to generate the list were as follows: all shows must have a minimum of 15 episodes, more than 40,000 ratings registered, and a minimum average of 7.0 across all episodes. The final position of each show is defined by the negative difference between the rating of the last episode and the average of the previous episodes.
At the top of the list, and without surprising anyone, is House of Cards. The first five seasons were widely celebrated by the public, but the "Spacey effect", his expulsion from the project, and a sixth season held together with duct tape completely ruined its finale.
In second place we do have an "off-radar" surprise, and it's the anime adaptation of Yakusoku no Neverland. The manga ran from 2016 to 2020, with a total of 20 volumes. Personally, I think the "third act" of the manga isn't that good (I read it all), but the changes in the second season of the anime only made things worse. Maybe it deserves another attempt, with more responsibility and a bigger budget.
And as expected, Game of Thrones closes the podium. The public's "emotional investment" was so great that five years after its finale, people still talk about the terrible result of the last season. Many decided to give this universe a second chance with House of the Dragon (almost half a million reviews with barely 22 episodes)... but the eighth season still hurts.
The Top 10 is completed by Killing Eve, Dexter, Two and a Half Men, Ragnarok, Power, Bloodline, and MythBusters. From there, the differences aren't that wide, and I'd dare to say that the examples at the bottom didn't have such awful finales. Have you seen any of the series that appear here? Do you agree with the evaluation of their finales? Leave a comment!
Access the table: Click here
