The 10 Most Controversial TV Finales Ever

It's often said not to judge a TV show by its pilot episode, as those are notoriously difficult to get right. However, at the other end of the process, a finale is probably even harder to write. By that point, you have a whole series that's depending on you not screwing things up. It's not surprising, then, that so many popular shows have delivered hugely controversial conclusions over the years. Let's look at a recent example. Twin Peaks returned after a quarter of a century back in the spring and delivered a fittingly surreal follow-up to the 1990s cult favourite. Its finale, which could be the end of this show, naturally left viewers at a loss of what to make of it all. Still, most fans agreed that the crazy conclusion was the best way for the series to bow out. Not all TV finales are so lucky, though. Some are so divisive that they're still being discussed years after the show bowed off the air. Take the following ten, for instance, which we've named the most controversial finales in TV history. As always, if we've missed your own personal choice, let us know in the usual place. Sherlock Have we actually seen the last of Sherlock? That's a thorny subject that none of the cast and crew seem to be able to agree on - and the fans desperately hope isn't true. What is for sure, though, is that the season 4 finale was designed to be a potential closer that, if it ended up being the last outing, ended things on a high note. Unfortunately, not everyone would say that it did. A far cry from the far-fetched, yes, but still plausible detective drama it began as, "The Final Problem" was Sherlock at its most ostentatious and James Bond-like. In fact, with its inclusion of a secret sibling turned arch-enemy (who's actually been pulling the strings behind the scenes), it had more than a little similarity to the equally divisive Bond film, Spectre. Fans were also torn over how it left the relationship between Sherlock and John. Famously, a large subset of viewers believe that the pair should become a couple. In the end, the duo were shown raising a baby together, while any romantic tension was hinted at but left undefined. Writers Moffat and Gatiss no doubt aimed to reach a middle ground, but probably just ended up frustrating both camps. Quantum Leap Some TV shows have the luxury of knowing sufficiently ahead of time that things will be ending and can thus craft a suitably epic finale. Others find out late in the day that they're for the chop though and so the writers have to pull anything they can out the hat at the last minute and call it an ending. Unfortunately, that's what happened to cult favourite 80s/90s sci-fi series, Quantum Leap. To jog your memory, the show saw Scott Bakula's Sam Beckett hopping around time via other people's bodies, with the ongoing mission to find out what was happening to him and finally get home. What the finale had to do, then, was provide some satisfying answers to these questions that literally drove the series. Instead, it served up a nonsensical reveal that Sam had actually had control over his leaps all along and that he was (probably) the brains behind the Quantum Leap project in the first place. And, finally, as the screen faded to black, we got this message: "Dr. Sam Becket never returned home." If there's one surefire way to piss off the fans, it's to deliver a half-assed conclusion to your show in the form of a caption... and to spell your own main character's name wrong in the process. Smallville Smallville was the epic ten-year journey that told the tale of how Kansas farmboy Clark Kent grew into the world's greatest hero. While many felt the whole show was too protracted and gave up halfway through, others stuck with it to the very end. It would be worth it, they said, to finally see Tom Welling's Clark suit up as Superman. You can imagine their total anger, then, when the two-hour finale event never saw Welling in tights. Sure, the last few seconds gave us a recreation of the classic Superman image of Clark pulling open his shirt to reveal the 'S' shield underneath, but for many it was far too little too late. Likewise, Superman had kind of appeared earlier in the episode - in the form of a blurry, tiny computer-generated version. The nail was dug even deeper for longterm Smallville fans when Tom Welling revealed the lack of the Superman costume was his doing. Producers originally wanted him to don the red and blue spandex, but Welling believed that that would be against the premise of the show - which was about Clark Kent and not Superman. We admire the actor's commitment and passion for his vision for the series, but sadly it differed from virtually all of the fans. Seinfeld A lot of controversial finales irk people because they throw away their premise right at the end of the show. Seinfeld's final episode, though, decided to double down on its central conceit - and still ended up splitting the viewership. Deliberately designed to be a show where the characters never did anything, you can see where the idea for the finale came from. In the near feature length last episode, Seinfeld and friends end up being sentenced to jail for "criminal indifference" after mocking a man involved in a car crash. In other words, for "doing nothing." However, most fans saw this is as a betrayal of the characters, turning them from loveably bad people into legitimately terrible people. It seemed to some that the finale was chastising us for ever liking these characters in the first place. It was undoubtedly a brave thing to do, and kind of in keeping with the show's spirit, but it's still probably not a good idea to belittle the audience for liking your own work. Roseanne Never do an "it was all a dream" ending. It's something that everyone knows, whether you're in the writing business or not. It's head scratching, then, that so many TV shows have decided to drop this awful reveal in their finales. The only other surefire way to annoy the fans is to kill off one of the main characters. Presumably in an attempt to make it especially hated, Roseanne's final hour decided to implement both of these loathed twists. The final season of the show had seen the Conners family's fortunes rise after winning the lottery. Or so it seemed. It actually turned out that the show had been a fiction written by Roseanne all along. In real life, she hadn't won the lottery.... and her husband, John Goodman's Dan, had died. Though Roseanne Barr's performance in this unexpectedly emotional episode was praised, most found a needlessly depressing outing to end the series on. It's no surprise, then, that the upcoming revival of Roseanne is set to totally ignore the last episode and resurrect Dan. If only every finale on this list could be stricken from the record like that. Lost Oh, the Lost finale! For six seasons, millions were gripped by the hit show from writers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse that was like nothing else on TV. The lives of the survivors of the plane that crashed on the mysterious island back in the pilot episode had just grown stranger and stranger over the years, so the final episode had a lot of explaining to do. It was naturally controversial, then, when the showrunners decided they would rather answer none of it. Instead of clarifying the actual plot specifics, the Lost finale focused on being a spiritual ending for the show, dealing with themes of life, existence and destiny in a bid to wrap up the series on a thematic level, even if it totally failed on a, you know, actual level. While a number of Lost fanatics swear by the finale and love it for leaving so much up to interpretation, others view the ending as a total cop-out and a sign of laziness on the writers' part. It's likely the relative merits of it are going to debated by TV fans for a long time to come. Dexter It's an unfortunate fact that some awesome TV shows grow stale and dip in quality over time, but the sharp decline that Dexter suffered in its later seasons is on a completely different level. Gone was the engrossing, tight drama of the show's first half, replaced by increasingly wayward developments and characters acting out of character. This all came to a head in the season 8 finale. The big question it had to deal with was: would Dexter finally be punished for his crimes? If he was sent to jail, that would be fair enough considering he's a serial killer. But if he escaped justice, the finale would need to provide a suitably fitting end point for the character. Instead, they had Dexter commit one last kill - his own sister, who had been on the show the whole time! - and then leave his young son and go and live as a lumberjack. Yes, a lumberjack. "Becomes a lumberjack" deserves to be up there with "jump the shark" as one of those phrases to denote when a TV show has totally lost it. The Prisoner Classic 1960s spy series The Prisoner was perhaps the first of its kind - a show with an ongoing mystery that kept viewers coming back week after week. In this case, it saw Patrick McGoohan's Number Six trapped in a superficially idyllic village in which the brainwashed civilians were given numbers instead of names. What was this place and why was Number Six here? These are the questions that were promised to be answered in the finale. In the event, though, McGoohan - who also wrote and produced the series - decided to throw out the expected ending and delivered a balls-to-the-wall surrealist masterpiece instead. Rather than solving mysteries, the finale just left viewers scratching their heads even more. Had the Prisoner really made it out? Was the village actually destroyed? And what was the point in that "Dem Bones" musical number? While critics have retrospectively applauded McGoohan's ambition and audacity, people at the time hated the finale with a passion. In fact, the actor had to disappear to the Welsh countryside for a few weeks until the storm had calmed down and irate fans were no longer baying after his blood. How I Met Your Mother Once again, we have another show that hinged on one big question and totally failed to deliver a satisfying answer. In How I Met Your Mother's case, though, the big reveal of the final episode was so integral to the plot that it retroactively ruined the whole series. After nine seasons of HIMYM, fans had moved on from the show's original pairing of Ted and Robin and were pleased with the revelation of the long-awaited Mother. Unfortunately, the ending tore up this good will by carelessly killing the character off soon after we got to know her. The true end of the show then saw Ted run off to be with Robin again, despite most fans wanting her to stick with Barney. Not to mention that the pair were just wrong for each other. Apparently, this had been the plan all along. While you have to admire the showrunners' foresight, then, they should have realized that they needed to be open to altering this ending as the series and its characters developed over time. It's a shame it had to end this way, as nowadays, people don't tend to talk about how great HIMYM was but rather, its awful finale. The Sopranos The Sopranos is undoubtedly one of the most critically acclaimed TV shows of the 21st century, with the crime drama never dropping in quality over its eight season run. However, no series is completely perfect and there is one blemish on The Sopranos' otherwise spotless record: its ambiguous finale, which left many fans riled. Let's set the scene. The episode is building up to a tense climax as James Gandolfini's Tony Soprano is joined in a restaurant by his family - but the camera keeps cutting to random bystanders who seem to be keeping an eye on Tony. It looks like things are building up to what's been hinted at throughout the season: that Tony's going to get "whacked." So, what's going to hap- Oh, ok, it's faded to black. Yes, The Sopranos finale ended just before we found out the fate of its central character. It's a bold move, for sure, with many citing it as another reason for the show's unique genius. Others, though, were left aghast that the series concluded on such an open-ended note that went against all the rules of storytelling. If The Sopranos' writers were trying to create the most divisive TV finale of all time, then congrats - they might have managed it.