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Game of Thrones ends tonight and a lot of daggers have been thrown at the final two seasons. Many are questioning if they have blown the ending.
What entertainment really nailed the ending in your opinion? I would say that:
Harry Potter - Honestly, JK Rowling really did a great job. I know she and a relative(sister?) sat down before she wrote the last book and made a list of what had to be resolved in the final book so that she would not mess it up. It worked well. Very satisfying.
**Babylon 5 - Yes, they struggled a bit with the middle of season 5 due to the near cancellation. However, the opening and closing episodes of the season are really fantastic and the actual finale is perfect.
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Mistborn - I will not spoil this one, but if you can get a hold of the Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson, do so. It sets up mysteries and ticks them all of in a satisfying way by the end of the final book. I closed the final book and said, “Wow.”
Avengers: Endgame - You know what? I know there are more movies coming, but this really did serve as a satisfying conclusion to many ongoing storylines across 21 previous movies. One of the greatest finales to a movie series, even if they are going to press forward with more movies in the future.
The Fugitive – The TV show that ran for four years (1963-7) and 120 episodes, of course, not the much later movie with Harrison Ford. David Janssen played Dr. Richard Kimble, falsely accused of murdering his wife. He saw a one-armed man escaping the scene, and spent the series not only running away from the Javert-like Lt. Gerard who pursued him, but also looking for the One-armed man. The series ended in a two-part episode where he finally caught him and was exonerated. As far as I know, it’s the first long dramatic series on US television that had a final “resolution” episode. (IMDB apparently agrees – The Fugitive (TV Series 1963–1967) - Trivia - IMDb ) According to them, ABC originally didn’t want to do it because they thought it would hurt syndication sales.
It wasn’t the first US TV series to do so, though. The comedy series Hank (1965-6), about a “college drop-in” who was trying to surreptitiously earn a college degree had a final resolution episode a year earlier in which Hank actually got his degree. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058811/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2
Breaking Bad: Although the antepenultimate episode was the peak, the final episode were a great way to deal with the aftermath of the main line of Walt’s story.
Star Trek: TNG Using fridge logic, some of the timings don’t make sense but it’s not noticeable first time round, and as a plot it’s a great way to bring back the plot started in the first episode and close the book
Only Fools and Horses (1996) This was the “last ever episode” so it still counts for me even though they made more 5 years later. Del Boy and Rodney are finally miwwionaires based on some old junk that’d been lying around and Rodney’s original diligence.
I agree as to ST:TNG. A very nice scene to end on, too, with Picard sitting down for a hand of poker.
Joe Haldeman’s sf novels Tool of the Trade and The Forever War both have particularly satisfying endings. Haldeman doesn’t always get his endings right, but for both of these he really did it well.
The movie Dark City has IMHO one of the most satisfying endings of any movie I’ve ever seen. When Murdock emerges from the dark corridor onto the sunlit pier and sees his true love standing there, looking out at the sea, I get a little verklempt every time.
12 Monkeys, TV show - perfect ending and a internally coherent story, gets extra props for being a time travel show which makes it all that more impressive that they managed to nail it.
Justified is one of my favorite shows. It’s about outlaw US Marshall Raylan Givens and plain old outlaw Boyd Crowder, and the cat-and-mouse frenemy nemesis relationship between those two. But it didn’t start off that way; apparently Crowder was supposed to be a villain-of-the-week in the pilot, but Walton Goggins and Timothy Olyphant had such amazing chemistry that Crowder got elevated to the antagonist for the entire series.
After having various villains-of-the-season throughout the show’s life, the final season returned to this conflict introduced in the pilot. And goddamn if it didn’t deliver exactly the ending I would’ve wanted. I loved it so much.
Brandon Sanderson again. I thought the final conclusion to The Wheel of Time series worked well enough. I’m not sure how much came from him, and how much came from Robert Jordan’s notes, but the final ending nicely sets the world on a trip around the wheel again.
I thought Dan Simmon’s Hyperion novels end extremely well. There are lots of loose ends and mysteries in the series, but the ending satisfactorily concludes them all. To me, as a reader, my questions were answered, and I know what had happened.
Of course the ending of Newhart is one of the greatest of all times. It only works because of the context of The Bob Newhart Show. It helps that ending a sitcom on a fantastic joke is better than something that just wraps up the current plot line, but isn’t funny.
NOTE: This clip contains some over-the-top violence and I have separated the last two characters of the link to be in accordance with the site’s “2-click” rule.
Unfortunately, there were two inferior sequels whose endings sought to be as astounding as this one, and neither one came close to succeeding.
Parks and Recreation managed to stick the landing twice. The end of Season 6 would have been a great series finale if they show hadn’t been renewed, and the actual series finale was even better.
Gotta disagree with Newhart, the greatest “fuck you, fans” ending to a tv series ever, one so horrible it couldn’t even be eclipsed by the X-Files “we’re going to give y’all a clip show recapping the past 7 years because even we’re confused as to how we got here” finale.
Newhart is easily the best series finale either – funny and with the perfect kicker at the end. Even better was the Bob Newhart Show reunion show a couple of years later that took it from there.
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend had a great ending: setting us up for one thing about to happen, then switching to something even better and logical – and which was actually set up for the entire show.
It was cancelled abruptly, but the reshot a new scene in Pushing Daisies that made for a strong closure.
As a Trekkie I’d rank the Star Trek finales(I’m omitting The Original Series because it didn’t have a “finale”) as:
Star Trek: The Next Generation---- “All Good Things…”
Star Trek: Voyager ----“Endgame”
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine —“What You Leave Behind”
Star Trek: Enterprise ----“These Are the Voyages…”
Now the first three were great; I’d consider the Star Trek: Enterprise finale to be one of the worst, most disappointing finales I have ever seen. The whole episode was framed around two characters from ST: TNG (Troi and Riker) watching a Holodeck simulation of the final mission of the original starship Enterprise, captained by Jonathan Archer. You had to listen Troi and Riker ostensibly debate moral issues around the TNG episode “Pegasus” when the finale should have only focused on the cast of Star Trek: Enterprise.
I guess you’d have to consider The Undiscovered Country (or maybe Generations) the TOS finale. But then you’d need to count Nemesis as the TNG finale. Still better than the Enterprise finale, and after they went to the trouble of turning the show around.
Cheers ended well, with a final season wind-up that ended with Rebecca finding true love (for awhile) Woody getting elected to city councilman, a return visit from Diane, one last bit of unexpected wisdom from Norm, and Sam feeling that he was the luckiest guy in the world.
Frasier had the absurd slapstick they had perfected lead on to what was maybe an oversentimental ending, but I think it worked.
MASH* stuffed too much into the finale but ended with a (literally) big goodbye.
Hill Street Blues Didn’t have a finale per se, but made it clear no matter how much people came and went, the station would still be there. Ditto with* ER*.