10 Most Bizarre TV Series Finales In History
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00:00As the writers of Game of Thrones know all too well, it's difficult to write a final
00:05episode that satisfies everyone, or anybody in the case of that particular finale.
00:10It's especially difficult in an age of instant reaction on social media and endless fan theorizing.
00:16This list collects 10 of the weirdest endings for much-loved TV series that delighted, flummoxed,
00:21and horrified viewers.
00:22I'm Jess from WhatCulture, and here are the 10 most bizarre TV series finales in history.
00:2910.
00:30Riker and Troy upstaged the crew of the original Enterprise
00:35Enterprise is often cited as the show that killed the Star Trek franchise.
00:39Whilst poor ratings led to its cancellation, it's more likely that the burgeoning Abrams
00:44Trek universe made commissioning new TV series more complicated.
00:48Whatever the truth, 2005's finale was the last Star Trek episode to air on TV for 12
00:53years.
00:54In a strange decision by writers Brannon Braga and Rick Berman, it was received poorly.
01:00In a well-meaning but ultimately misguided attempt to lovingly bring the franchise full
01:05circle, they decided to write the finale as a lost episode of Star Trek The Next Generation.
01:10To help him make an important decision, Will Riker seeks inspiration from a simulation
01:15of Captain Archer's final mission.
01:17The episode disappointed fans and irritated members of the cast, including the ship's
01:22captain.
01:23The only time Scott Bakula was mean to me, Braga later told a convention audience, it's
01:28not hard to see why everyone was frustrated either.
01:32After spending four years with the crew, we say goodbye to their holographic echoes rather
01:36than the characters themselves, whilst simultaneously being reminded of a superior Star Trek show.
01:429.
01:43The Little House on the Prairie blows up
01:46The Little House on the Prairie was a wholesome, all-American family series about the country's
01:51frontier spirit in the face of adversity.
01:53The official website talks of the themes of optimism, love, and joy, all of which is at
01:58odds with the series' final feature-length TV movie, entitled The Last Farewell.
02:04This finale finds the residents of the tight-knit community of Walnut Grove faced with the grinding
02:08gears of progress.
02:10Progress takes the form of a ruthless land-grabber who claims the town is owned by his boss,
02:15a rich railroad tycoon.
02:17In protest against this, the townsfolk decide to blow up their own homes with dynamite,
02:22leaving the rich tycoon with nothing but dirt.
02:25After the destruction, the frontier folks simply move on to the next town to start all
02:29over again.
02:30The story goes that the dynamite plot was purely a practical decision on the part of
02:34the writer and the producer.
02:36As part of the agreement producer Kent McRae had in renting the land on which the set was
02:40built, he had to leave the place as he'd found it.
02:43The quickest way to do this, he and writer Michael Landon decided, was to just blow up
02:48the whole town.
02:498.
02:50Zelda and Scully's Miraculous Conception
02:53The original X-Files series finale in 2002 was a chaotic climax of nine seasons worth
02:59of conspiracies.
03:00When the series came back in 2016, there was a hope that fans would get something more
03:05satisfying.
03:06The eleventh season was loosely tied together by the search for their son William, who wasn't
03:10their son at all.
03:11The season premiere had revealed him to be the son of Scully and the cigarette-smoking
03:15man, the result of a non-consensual science experiment conducted by the latter.
03:21William was, technically, Mulder's half-brother.
03:23The series ends with a blood-soaked finale that asked more questions than it answered.
03:28In 43 minutes, Skinner kills Reyes, the cigarette-smoking man presumably kills Skinner, cigarette-smoking
03:34man kills William, believing him to be Mulder, Mulder kills the cigarette-smoking man, Scully
03:39reveals that she's miraculously pregnant, William is able to survive the shooting due
03:43to his regenerative abilities, it's a lot to take in.
03:47This was never intended as the very end of The X-Files, and Carter harbors hopes of a
03:51twelfth season to build on the events he set up.
03:54Gillian Anderson has no intention to return, however, so for now, this brutal gunfight
03:59marks an abrupt ending for decades of mythology.
04:02Number 7
04:06The long-running Texan oil and cattle ranching drama Dallas ended in 1991 with a spectacularly
04:12out-there finale.
04:13It may have once revealed a whole season to have been a dream, but the final episode went
04:18several steps further.
04:20It begins with lead character J.R. Ewing drunken alone, contemplating suicide.
04:24He's visited by a spirit who shows him just how the world would have been if he'd never
04:28been born.
04:29In a direct lift from It's a Wonderful Life, J.R. and his guardian angel watch as his brother
04:34Bobby becomes a down-and-out, and his brother Gary runs the family business into the ground.
04:40It soon becomes clear that several people actually benefited from never having met J.R.
04:44His ex-wife becomes a highly successful actress whilst a distant relation never learns of
04:49his connection to J.R. and lives a fulfilling family life.
04:53After these revelations, the guardian angel reveals himself to be a demon, and demands
04:57that J.R. kill himself to improve everyone's lives.
05:01Staring at this demon in the mirror, J.R. raises the gun to his head and we hear a gunshot
05:05ring out, his fate unknown.
05:08In a bizarre coincidence a month later, David Lynch's subversive soap Twin Peaks also ended
05:13with the protagonist doing himself considerable harm in front of a mirror.
05:176.
05:18Beckett and Castle Die?
05:20Castle was always a bit of a tonal mishmash.
05:23It was a frothy, romantic comedy about a roguish crime writer and a steely detective that also
05:28featured grisly murders.
05:30It was basically moonlighting for the CSI generation.
05:33Once the series eventually paired Castle and Beckett, played by Nathan Fillon and Stan
05:37Akadik, respectively, they had to find dramatic ways to challenge the relationship.
05:42Rather than infidelity or divorce, there were new careers, kidnappings, amnesia, and, in
05:47the final episode, a double shooting that left them both bleeding out on the floor of
05:51their apartment.
05:52This ending was originally intended as a cliffhanger that would have led into the ninth season.
05:57When the production team discovered that there would be no next season, they were granted
06:00permission to hastily insert an epilogue.
06:03Taking place seven years later, Castle and Beckett are seen to be enjoying breakfast
06:07with their three children, having apparently survived the shooting.
06:10Some fans reacted with frustration at the insulting, happily-ever-after climax, whilst
06:15others pondered whether or not the ending was an idealized future dreamt up by two dying
06:19lovers.
06:205.
06:21Kenneth the Page Is Immortal
06:24In the hands of any other writers than Robert Carlock and Tina Fey, the final scene of 30
06:30Rock's last episode would have been an indulgence too far.
06:33Far from being a disaster, it's a meta-gag that stays true to the show's absurdist streak.
06:38The final episode is fairly standard sitcom fare, or as standard as a show like 30 Rock
06:42can manage.
06:43Liz Lemon becomes a mother to two adopted kids, Jack Donaghy finds himself again, and
06:48production on TGS comes to an end.
06:50It's in the final coda to the episode that things get wonderfully weird.
06:54The new head of the network, Kenneth Parcell, is listening to a sitcom pitch from Ms. Lemon,
06:59based on the stories of her great-grandmother.
07:01Giving the audience a knowing look, Kenneth commissions the show, and the camera zooms
07:05out to reveal flying cars in the background.
07:07We're far in the future, and he hasn't aged a day.
07:10It's a very silly joke, but a brilliant payoff to one of 30 Rock's most enduring
07:15gags.
07:16That is, what's going on with Kenneth?
07:17Well, he's an immortal.
07:19An immortal who loves television.
07:204.
07:21St. Elsewhere Took Place Inside a Child's Mind
07:26The 1980s hospital drama St. Elsewhere is best known for two things, launching the career
07:31of Denzel Washington and unwittingly creating a sprawling fictional universe.
07:36Knowing that the show was to be cancelled, St. Elsewhere's writing team pitched increasingly
07:40ridiculous ways to end the series with a bang.
07:43Possible endings included a nuclear bomb wiping out the hospital, whilst another had one character
07:47admit to assassinating JFK.
07:50The least bad option was that the St. Elsewhere hospital was actually inside a child's snow
07:55globe.
07:56The characters and situations weren't real at all, they'd been thought up by young
07:59Thomas Westball.
08:00It's a daft ending, a Hail Mary by a departing writing team.
08:04However, it had extraordinary, unintended implications for the rest of network television.
08:10The show had alluded to several different shows whilst it was on the air.
08:13If St. Elsewhere was invented by Thomas, then surely so were those other series.
08:17It's a mind-bending concept that, in essence, means that series as diverse as Cheers, The
08:22X-Files, The Wire, and Arrested Development all share the same fictional universe.
08:27When you look deeper into the Tommyverse, it makes the MCU look like Amateur Hour.
08:323.
08:33The Dinosaurs Face The Ice Age
08:35Dinosaurs, a Jim Henson production for the ABC network, was a popular family sitcom in
08:41the early 1990s.
08:43It's best described as a reverse Flintstones, with intelligent dinosaurs living domestic
08:47lives alongside simpleton cavemen.
08:50It ran for four seasons and playfully turned various sitcom conventions on their head by
08:54having them performed by a cast of dinosaur puppets.
08:58It's therefore a shock when the final episode of the show goes down an incredibly dark route.
09:03It begins normally enough with Earl, the father, trying to work the new barbecue, and ends
09:08with the family facing down their inevitable extinction.
09:11In a convoluted series of events, the local corporation and an unwitting Earl have inadvertently
09:17brought about an ice age with toxic pesticides and deforestation.
09:22The show's writers wanted to use the finale to educate the younger audience about humanity's
09:27own potential extinction event.
09:29Having been informed of the cancellation before writing the final series, creator Michael Jacobs
09:33felt that this was the only way to go.
09:35When you do a show about dinosaurs, he said, you always have that extinction card in your
09:39pocket.
09:402.
09:41Life on Mars Goes to Mars
09:44On paper, an American remake of the BBC's Life on Mars had legs.
09:48By transporting modern cop Sam Tyler back in time, the show explored the tropes and
09:52problematic aspects of both 1970s television and policing in the UK.
09:58A remake could do something similar with American attitudes to both policing and cop shows.
10:03After all, there are marked differences between the grimness of The Sweeney and the hip coolness
10:07of Starsky and Hutch.
10:08Despite featuring some impressive performances, the remake never took off and was cancelled
10:13after one season.
10:15In ending the series, the American writing team made a wild departure from creator Matthew
10:19Graham's original vision.
10:21Rather than reveal that Sam had been in a coma, they opted for something much more literal.
10:25The closing scenes of the series find Sam waking from hypersleep on the first manned
10:30mission to Mars.
10:31The 1973 cop show he's been inhabiting has been a simulation created by the ship's computer
10:36to keep him entertained on his long journey.
10:39His fellow cops were all members of the crew, including Gene Hunt, who's revealed to be
10:43Sam's estranged father.
10:45Now that's far out.
10:46Number 1.
10:47How I Met Your Mother Kills The Mother
10:49Yes, you saw this one coming, How I Met Your Mother's finale is notoriously controversial
10:55and regularly features in lists of the very worst season finales.
11:00After spending nine seasons and nearly a decade building up to Ted Mosby meeting his future
11:04wife Tracy, the season finale gives viewers exactly what they want.
11:08Then it does something crazy.
11:10It kills her.
11:11The show's final episode jumps through ten years of the characters' lives to reveal that
11:15Tracy died of an undisclosed illness after four years.
11:19To make matters worse, it's also revealed that the series' framing device, Ted's story
11:24to his teenage kids, hasn't been about the mother at all.
11:27It was all a means to seek their permission for him to get back together with his ex-girlfriend
11:31Robin.
11:32The two give their blessing and he runs off to be reunited with her.
11:35Creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas had conceived this finale during production on
11:39the second series.
11:40Eight years of speculation and emotional investment later, it just feels gross, as we're told
11:45rather than shown that Ted has grieved Tracy's abrupt death for six years, and the closing
11:50scene of him arriving at the doorstep of the one who got away isn't the big romantic ending
11:55the show thinks that it is.
11:57That's the end of our list, but do let me know down in the comments if you can think
12:00of any more bizarre TV series finales that deserve a spot on this list.
12:05As always, I've been Jess from WhatCulture, thank you so much for hanging out with me.
12:09If you'd like, you can come say hi to me on my Twitter account, where I'm at JessMcDonald,
12:13but make sure you stay tuned to us here for plenty more great lists.