r/TopCharacterTropes • u/hiiloovethis • Jul 31 '26

Hated Tropes (Hated Trope) TV endings so awful it completely ruins rewatchability of the entire show.

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Game of Thrones - Entire season 8 and finale completely ruins the entire narrative and show ends in the worst way possible. It kills desire to rewatch the show.

How I Met Your Mother - Show ends such awful they kill the... the mother. After spending years growing into a loyal partner and father, he instantly reverted to his old womanizing behavior after his divorce. Also he ends up with robin randomly.

The Boys - While not as bad as GOT but the worst aspect is the cheap Vought Rising spin-off tease, pointless storylines and rushed ending which leaves a sour taste. Despite hitting the right points... it feels cheap and not satisfying.

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157

u/BeduinZPouste Jul 31 '26

It doesn´t exactly ruin it, but... The ending of Battlestar Galactica is far from perfect. Them randomly abandoning technology and then throwing "this was kind of downer ending, since Hera died young," answering some question... but not lot of them... At this point it would be better if they didn´t answer any and left us guessing completely.

23

u/templar4522 Jul 31 '26

I didn't dislike the ending episode, but what was extremely underwhelming was the whole story leading up to it. The show kept pushing the mystery of the secret cylons and what they might do... until they had to wrap up the series and it all fizzles out.

60

u/PBKYjellythyme Jul 31 '26

I despised this ending. Very much felt like they had never thought about how to end the show and slapped something together.

21

u/-LaughingMan-0D Aug 01 '26

Fucking Starbuck angel.

14

u/TinyGIR Aug 01 '26

I basically hated the entirety of season 4.5.

12

u/BeduinZPouste Jul 31 '26

Which is kind of what happened.

19

u/inezco Aug 01 '26

The opening credits saying the Cylons have a plan and then Ronald D. Moore admitting after the show ended that they didn’t know what the plan was 🤣

3

u/wrtcdevrydy Aug 01 '26

The Plan is a movie....

2

u/tgillet1 Aug 01 '26

Which shows they didn’t really have much of a plan and that it was clear the writers decided to come up with one and make a movie about it to appease fans who were rightfully annoyed at the obvious lack of a plan.

7

u/RaisedByBooksNTV Aug 01 '26

It was no Babylon 5.

1

u/Sea_Lunch_3863 Aug 01 '26

At least BSG avoided spending half of its final series on a plot about the galaxy's most annoying telepath.

1

u/RaisedByBooksNTV Aug 01 '26

I'm not sure what show you're referring to but I feel defensive on behalf of Star Trek Discovery.

0

u/RainaElf Aug 01 '26

hear hear

31

u/Primary_Forever_4429 Jul 31 '26

This ending was essentially stolen from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The Galactica crew and the Colonial fleet are basically the Golgafrinchans.

15

u/keefka Jul 31 '26

The thought of Adama spending the whole series in a bathtub is hilarious

16

u/maturin1701 Aug 01 '26

At one point back in the 1950s or 60s there was an SF magazine where the submissions guidelines literally said, "If you send us a story that ends with human beings on a virgin planet and the last line is some version of 'His name was Adam and her name was Eve' we absolutely will not publish it and we don't care how good it is otherwise." That's how old and hoary an SF cliche that had become, and BSG went there. They actually went there. (Another comment mentions Hitchhikers Guide: this "...and the name of the planet was... EARTH!" trope is exactly what Douglas Adams, who was extremely genre-savvy, was making fun of.)

I was so blinking angry by the time the BSG finale got to the credits. The general dumbness was bad enough, invoking a cliche that dated back to before WW2 just felt like a lazy insult.

7

u/misterjive Aug 01 '26

I honestly thought we'd been punked.

The logic of shooting their tech into the sun and going to live amongst the cavemen. (Real ending: everyone dies of dysentery and/or gets eaten by bears.)

Picking the dude who carried around a dead cat for months to be their new leader.

The whole "a wizard did it" explanation for Starbuck.

And that Doctor Who-ass scary robot montage at the end, featuring ASIMO, The Robot Famous For Falling Over.

4

u/maturin1701 Aug 01 '26

I know if I were a member of a space-faring civilization given a choice between figuring out the technical manuals of a hydroponics ship and surviving on an untamed planet, my history of figuring out how to program a VCR and install an operating system is vastly better than my history of assembling a tent or lighting a campfire, and which option I'd have better odds at surviving more than a day.

Besides which, explosive decompression is a much quicker death than scurvy.

4

u/misterjive Aug 01 '26

"So why are we following this astonishingly dipshit plan to all die in swamps alone?"

"It's so in 100,000 years our descendants won't make robots!"

"...is it too late to side with Gaeta in the mutiny?"

(Jesus I have no idea why I'm spoilering shit, if people haven't watched this yet me giving it all away would save them from a brain bleed.)

3

u/GregBahm Aug 01 '26

I lot of my friends liked the ending of Battlestar Galactica, which was off-putting.

My issue with it was simple. "Deus ex machina" is a term in an ancient dead language, because even thousands of years ago, pre-industrial illiterate subsistance farmers could see that this was just bullshit.

5

u/Bo-Katan Aug 01 '26

Deus Ex Machina wasn't a derogatory term though, even Shakespeare used that resource.

1

u/GregBahm Aug 01 '26

Gods show up in Shakespeare plays, but not to invalidate the plot. For example, in "As You Like It," Hymen shows up at the end to blesses the tangled mess of marriages, which is funny, but the plot is ultimately unaffected. If the "god" is just Rosalind in disguise, the story plays out exactly the same.

If this ending didn't suck, we could just use it for every story. The writer can always put the protagonists in a precarious position and then say "Then god showed up and sorted everything out with miracles. The end." It's an omnipresent option.

But we don't take the option, because the option is bad. If god can show up and sort everything out with miracles in the end, why doesn't god show up and sort everything out with miracles at the beginning? The only time "deus ex machina" is an appropriate ending is when the plot of the story pointedly does not matter.

3

u/Sea_Lunch_3863 Aug 01 '26

Is it really deus ex machina though? The existence, or not, of the one true god was a central theme from the very first episodes. 

1

u/tgillet1 Aug 01 '26

If it was well executed I might have let it slide, but those themes always were used in a way that allowed the truth to be interpretable by the audience. We never are given a reason for why this supposed god is doing what it is doing or why it doesn’t do other things presumably in its power so it ends up feeling highly contrived.

0

u/GregBahm Aug 01 '26

The existence of gods is a central theme in a multitude of ancient plays. But if your story ends with a magically mysterious god coming down and altering reality in whatever way is convenient to the plot, that isn't a story worth telling.

In the last episode of Battlestar Galactica, god magically beams the coordinates of earth's new home planet into the protagonist's brain. But if this omnipotent deity really wants to give humans a new planet, what does the spaceship matter? They could just be on a new planet. It makes the whole journey leading up to the conclusion totally pointless. This is what makes deus ex machina stories stupid.

6

u/imariaprime Aug 01 '26

My first introduction to the JJ Abrams "mystery box" writing, before that term even existed. A whole bunch of mysteries thrown around, with no answers in mind, forcing the most slapped-together BS to conclude it.

A whole fleet that fought over every decision, suddenly sits down and unanimously agrees to throw all their shit into the sun?! Or Starbuck, the magical disappearing angel. In fact, EVERYONE GETS AN ANGEL!

When I watched it, my local TV station did this big event where they put together a little "panel" of people to talk about the finale as it was happening: some other writers, a narrative professor from a local university, stuff like that. They cut to them beforehand to talk about expectations, they cut to them at the halfway point (just as they were arriving at "Earth"), and after the end.

Beginning, everyone's excited. Even halfway through, lots of excitement over what had happened, but with the light tone of "Let's see how they wrap up all the questions!"

And then they cut back to the panel after the ending... and they were all just awkwardly sitting there, not saying anything. Until finally the professor speaks up: "Well... that kinda sucked."

HARD CUT TO COMMERCIAL, end of program. Any time I think about the finale, this whole thing replays in my mind. Any time any show botches the ending like this, I hear that professor.

12

u/Consistent_Phase_942 Jul 31 '26

Yeah this was pretty unsatisfying ending to the first show I ever really binged.

5

u/RainaElf Aug 01 '26

it was a hell of a lot better ending than the original series got.

11

u/DoctorWaluigiTime Jul 31 '26

I get why people hated it.

I liked it. And I think after spending years in a space race, settling down on a fertile planet and just getting back to basics would be more acceptable than people living here now may think.

8

u/KiloJools Aug 01 '26

I also think people disliking them "giving up all technology" overlook the fact that whether they all settled on this planet or tried to continue on in space...the technology was not going to be with them forever.

And not just the mechanical stuff, but the medical technology (and education) as well. They had been keeping things running with very few resources, including intellectually (institutional knowledge of existing technology) speaking, and stuff was breaking down and running out in a way they could not keep up with.

So many of us thought they were nuts for settling on New Caprica, but if any of us had crammed into a van with 31 of our least favorite people and had to tour the country with very few pit stops, only basic first aid, no replacement parts for the van, shitty food, etc etc etc

WE'D TAKE THE OUT, TOO. Especially on this planet, which was way the hell better than New Caprica.

(And as a disabled person who relies on advanced medicine to stay alive, everyone who says "but what about the disabled people?" must have missed the part where it was fairly clear the fleet as it was already could not support their needs - if it was doing so, the clock was already ticking for us. We weren't going to last long regardless. We saw how well they handled Gaeta and all he needed was a decent prosthetic leg!)

1

u/Pulstar_Alpha Aug 01 '26

Thematically it is fine. Also I found that the show was quite enjoyable when I rewatched it since I paid attention to the character arcs, acting, camera work, little details rather than wonder about the myth arc and mysteries.

8

u/Verizon-Mythoclast Jul 31 '26

The show should’ve ended with they found the “first” Earth. There were some good moments afterwards, but overall what happened afterwards was lacklustre.

8

u/Happiness_Assassin Aug 01 '26

I'm going to disagree, but only in part. The episodes in the immediate aftermath of finding the first Earth are super compelling in an extremely dire sort of way. I feel like if they had decided to go the route of Mad Max: Fury Road and decided that searching for this mythical promised land was more harmful and them deciding to put down roots someplace else (similar to New Caprica) it would have been far better.

4

u/BeduinZPouste Jul 31 '26

Nah, the idea itself is imho very solid. Just badly executed.

2

u/darknum Aug 01 '26

Mutiny parts were second greatest part of the show.

15

u/ReySpacefighter Jul 31 '26

I can't get behind that, I loved the ending. Absolutely worked for me in a way I was surprised at.

3

u/Sea_Lunch_3863 Aug 01 '26

Same here. I can see why people don't like it but from my perspective it works perfectly with the mythology that had been part of the show since Number 6 told Gaius about the one true god in the pilot episodes. 

4

u/markcsoul Aug 01 '26

It's one of my favorite television finales as well

5

u/Accomplished-Low8460 Aug 01 '26

Agreed. Maybe not perfect, but that’s really only because I never wanted it to end. It truth, the ending was quite good for such an epic long running show.

2

u/ReySpacefighter Aug 01 '26

Definitely wasn't unsatisfied with the ending at all.

4

u/ArkAngel8787 Jul 31 '26

Agreed, one of my favourite TV show endings of all time. Them abandoning their ships makes perfect sense if you were paying attention to one of the core themes of the show... This has all happened before, and it will happen again.

3

u/ReySpacefighter Aug 01 '26

Yeah, really satisfied that whole mystic side of the show for me.

6

u/RaisedByBooksNTV Aug 01 '26

I felt the show went off the rails as early as s3, if not sooner. And Caprica was written by someone who was tripping balls while watching battlestar galactica and reading a porno graphic novel while cooking ramen.

7

u/UlrichZauber Aug 01 '26

Well this is making me want to watch Caprica now

2

u/BeduinZPouste Aug 01 '26

Honestly BSG was one of the very few works improved by sex scenes. Mostly because they were unhinged.

2

u/RaisedByBooksNTV Aug 01 '26

The be all and end all was the doctor guy having sex with the cylon in his head and getting caught masturbating lol. Is it possible for anything to be better?

2

u/RaisedByBooksNTV Aug 01 '26

Caprica made 0 sense in the BSG storyline but it was so good. Great acting, visuals, etc... the writing if it was its own beast was good. I was confused any time I tried to put the two together and really was ticked off it was cancelled. I hope it either evolved to tie in to BSG or just kept going with what it had going on. It was good and it was a mess. I recommend.

5

u/misterjive Aug 01 '26

It absolutely ruins it. That ending insulted my intelligence so badly I haven't been able to rewatch the show at all, even amazing shit like the Adama maneuver is tainted because I know it's ending up at that absolute wet fart of a finale.

I tell people to watch the finale up until the big climactic jump and then turn it off and make up their own ending, because holy shit you can't possibly do worse.

2

u/KiloJools Aug 01 '26

I think ending it at Laura saying "so...much...life" would have been fine too.

2

u/0kafaraqgatri0 Aug 01 '26

I loved the BSG crew being the galgafrinchens from Hitchhikers

2

u/The_Raven_Born Aug 01 '26

'And then God fixed everything oh and by the way, this is how our earth came to be.' It's Deus ex Machina taken to the most literal sense.

4

u/Antique_Umpire1534 Jul 31 '26

the first major tv show I watched from start to finish. ngl it killed my expectations of any tv show going forward. I just prefer movies now fr.

7

u/DoctorWaluigiTime Jul 31 '26

You're missing out on a lot of excellent television.

Also I don't get this. A ton of movies end terribly too lol. Gonna swear off those when you see your first "good movie with a bad ending?"

1

u/Antique_Umpire1534 Jul 31 '26

a bit of hyperbole from my end but i was like 14 at the time. so I did for a good bit until I get older. young me was so upset lmao. I still find the ending to be awful enough where I find it hard to recommend

3

u/ContheJon Jul 31 '26 edited Aug 01 '26

Agreed, it was such a disappointing ending to a great show. There was some canned alternate ending or something that placed BSG only 10,000 years in the past as opposed to the... 150,000 iirc? That ending wasn't fully fleshed out (only an image and some lines of info I think) out but I very much remember they made a cover of National Geographic where it showed an unearthed Raptor in South America or something for the skip to modern times

1

u/BeduinZPouste Jul 31 '26

Now that would be good.

3

u/KiloJools Aug 01 '26

It was always going to be far from perfect, but in my opinion the abandoning technology was not one of the disappointing things, considering that technology was never going to last.

And we already knew that the Colonials were not going to live that much longer - Thrace was leading humanity to its end. But at least they got to live out their last days on a MUCH nicer planet and thanks to setting the fleet into the sun and setting the Centurions free, they never had to worry about Cylons coming back to fuck with them.

The show was never meant for a happy ending. It was always the story of how (that) humanity ended. There was never a single true "pure" victory - every single high was paired with a devastating low.

And the nature of how it was written so ad-hoc (serial storytelling outside of daytime soap operas wasn't exactly big or welcomed at that time, so they couldn't really plan a beginning, middle, and end) guaranteed that we would not get a completely satisfying ending to every storyline - I am still miffed at "the truth of the opera house", for example - but I think they managed to pull together a decent overall ending. Which is pretty incredible considering everything was always by the seat of their pants.

I think for people who are coming to the series for the first time after experiencing newer TV series that were able to build on what BSG established (that an awful LOT of viewers really WOULD watch a series that wasn't written for syndication), BSG will look messy. Because it really was. It was kind of acting as a polar icebreaker for future "prestige television", without any of the budget or security that those shows would go on to get to create stories that were truly serial with an actual plan (and not just hype for a plan that never existed, lol).

The fact that people often include BSG among "best of" lists that are mostly made up of more modern, bigger budget shows - even when it comes to a potentially disappointing ending - is pretty incredible.

So uh TL;DR: it really did a lot with what it was given and I am pretty satisfied with how it ended overall, even if there are some individual conclusions I didn't care for. And it was always going to include some "bummer" in the ending, that was always obvious from the start.

1

u/ai1267 Jul 31 '26

The show would have been perfect if it ended after season 3. Don't even need to make any changes to the story.

1

u/VegetableLetter4896 Jul 31 '26

It has been a long time since I watched the show and I couldn’t quite remember why I was so let down at the end. But I know it was enough that I never spoke of it again.