10 TV Shows That Failed Spectacularly In Their Final Season
Ted Lasso sadly saved the worst for last.
There are few grander creative challenges in Hollywood than bringing a hit TV show to an end in a manner that leaves most people happy.
When a show has been on the air for enough years, the prospect of ending it becomes massively daunting, especially with an enthusiastic legion of fans ready to leap on every creative call.
As such it's little surprise that so many shows struggle to deliver a truly gratifying series finale, but sometimes the problems go much further than this and end up infesting the entire final season.
That is, sadly, very much the case with these 10 TV shows, each of which signed off with a graceless, wrong-headed, and even deeply infuriating final season.
Perhaps those in charge rushed fans through a hurried conclusion, were forced to pivot due to unexpected production changes, or had simply drained the creative well dry, leaving nothing behind for what remained.
Whatever the reason, these 10 TV shows, at one time widely celebrated and award-winning for their ingenuity and entertainment value, fell hard at the last hurdle, perhaps even tainting their enduring legacy forever more...
10. Game Of Thrones
Let's get the most infamous example in recent times out of the way first - Game of Thrones' eighth season was a crushing, agonising disappointment, enough that some fans now consider the entire series "ruined."
It's telling that HBO's generally stellar adaptation of George R.R. Martin's fantasy novels fell out of cultural discourse near-immediately after its final season finished airing, so infuriated were fans by its perceived failures.
Indeed, its rushed, clumsy six-episode final volume only proves that much more maddening because the show had hit such stratospheric highs in the years prior.
It was later widely reported that creators David Benioff and D. B. Weiss were keen to wrap the show up and move onto other projects, but in turn they aggressively truncated numerous crucial storylines and character arcs which ultimately failed to convince.
Worst of all, of course, was Daenerys' (Emilia Clarke) hurried, unpersuasive heel turn and eventual demise, and the wildly unpopular decision to crown Bran (Isaac Hempstead Wright) the new king of the Seven Kingdoms.
Given the show's incredible dramatic achievements up to this point, it clearly needed more runway to execute its final vision in a satisfactory manner. Instead, it raced to the finish line and the end result was a sweaty, jerky mess.