10 TV Shows Utterly Ruined By Their Final Revelations

All else fails? Become a lumberjack.

Dexter Ending
Showtime

The final moments of a TV show can prove make-or-break: get it right and you've got a masterful capper to an incredible run, as with Six Feet Under and Breaking Bad, but get it wrong and you can force the fanbase to retrospectively reconsider just how good the show was in the first place.

These 10 beloved TV shows threw away most of their goodwill in the home stretch, serving up woefully unsatisfying big reveals, over-sentimental resolutions and infuriating ambiguous final acts that did precious little justice to years of audience investment.

Some fans might be philosophical enough to appreciate that the journey is more important than the destination, but given how each of these shows had an effortlessly superior ending in sight, it's baffling that the writers opted for the most lazy, pandering and illogical climaxes instead...

10. How I Met Your Mother - The Mother Dies, Ted Gets With Robin

How I Met Your Mother Ending
CBS

No series finale has been as widely lambasted in recent years as How I Met Your Mother's, which undid seasons of character development and threw away the nine-year wait for its titular reveal in one fell swoop.

The tail-end of the final episode revealed that the mother, Tracy (Cristin Milioti), had actually died from a terminal illness years prior, Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) and Robin (Cobie Smulders) end up breaking up, and Ted (Josh Radnor) makes a final, successful romantic declaration to Robin.

This is a classic case of a finale that wanted to tie everything up in a neat bow while also surprising audiences, but the simplicity of Ted and Tracy getting their happily ever after would've been enough.

Instead, we get Ted and Robin awkwardly paired-off despite being ill-suited for one another - especially given how appealing Robin and Barney were together - and a horribly-executed death thrown in for good measure.

An alternate ending was at least included on the series' DVD in which Ted and Tracy do indeed live out a happy life, but if we're sticking to canon, HIMYM will remain forever tainted by its bungled final episode.

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Contributor

Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes). General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.