The 10 Most Controversial TV Finales Ever

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.