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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625

u/Bloodmime Jul 31 '26

For me the entire last season of The Boys was anticlimactic. The show had already been losing me. Homelanders end I think was fantastic, but there was a whole season and we got a barely scorched carpet and more fetish jokes.

163

u/Animaloffear56 Jul 31 '26

You really could tell they were actively pulling back so they could make more shows in the the boys universe.

102

u/BarbellsandBurritos Jul 31 '26

Introducing characters for their new spinoff while ignoring characters we all liked from their old spinoff.

25

u/SecBalloonDoggies Jul 31 '26

They actually had a meta reference to this on one of the last Gen V episodes, where Noir 2 complains about this happening on one of the Vought TV shows he watches.

29

u/DescriptionTricky232 Jul 31 '26

Because the meta jokes are always a sign that the writers care and definitely aren't bullshitting for pity points

7

u/SecBalloonDoggies Aug 01 '26

It obviously means they anticipated the reaction to the final season.

2

u/No_Historian6377 Aug 01 '26

The only meta thing I noticed was when homelander is like you want me to suck your dick that's a stand in for the writer Eric kripke

113

u/TopicalBuilder Jul 31 '26

Show starts out mocking franchises being milked by corporations and ends by turning into one.

26

u/Darksider123 Jul 31 '26

And in doing so, completely loses their uniqueness, the hook of the show. I have 0 interest in watching whatever new comes out of them

5

u/TopicalBuilder Aug 01 '26

I was never likely to be interested in spinoffs, but the way they handled this completely shut that down.

13

u/PseudonymMan12 Aug 01 '26

Someone told me that is essentially what happened with Squid Game. A strong antcapitalist message followed by a sequel season that was made purely for capitalist reasons

3

u/TopicalBuilder Aug 01 '26

That's a shame. At some level there's a grim laugh to be had, though.

3

u/Blupoisen Aug 01 '26

That's why they completely stopped making of Corps

Amazon got wiser and realized the joke is on them, better make Vought completely get away with everything

2

u/TheHollowMusic Aug 01 '26

The first two episodes gave me a lot of hope, The Boys was one of my favorite shows. I agree that the ending got the results right, but the path they took was just way too convoluted.

1

u/Volothamp-Geddarm Aug 01 '26

Reminded me of the end of The Walking Dead for that.

58

u/Brilliant_Cookie_202 Jul 31 '26

I think it was a mediocre ending but not nearly as bad as GoT or HIMYM

27

u/AwakenedDreamer__44 Aug 01 '26 edited Aug 01 '26

The Boys ending was underwhelming and had people complaining.

The Stranger Things and Sherlock endings were catastrophic and had people mass hallucinating a secret episode to fix everything.

7

u/Brilliant_Cookie_202 Aug 01 '26

Exactly. It wasn’t great but it’s not at the same level 

1

u/delulumans Aug 01 '26

You could argue it was worse because it didn't really do fucking anything. The kills that should be triumphs and have been built up over the entire course of the show didn't feel earned or cathartic at all.

The writers just decided "ok time to wrap this up".

It was so unbelievably sloppy. At least HIMYM and GoT commited to its ideas no matter how controversial. The Boys played it ultra safe, reused the same trick from Season 3 and gave us NOTHING. Scorched earth... scorched carpet

1

u/Brilliant_Cookie_202 Aug 01 '26

For the flaws of the last season, I thought the last scene with Homelander was actually kinda cathartic, which is a big part of why I don’t hate it all as much as GoT; they did OKAY on the most important scene, even if they flubbed a ton of the surrounding material. IMO

1

u/delulumans Aug 02 '26

It was okay. But the way they reached that point was... fuckin hell man

171

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

I liked The Boys final season, but it was middling as far as the standards of the show. The end of Homelander was pitch fucking perfect, 1000x better than the comic

85

u/SecBalloonDoggies Jul 31 '26

I loved The Deep’s ending. 5 seasons of constantly making the wrong decisions finally catches up with him.

I was disappointed in how the show dealt with Sage. She was one of my favorite characters, but the writers never could figure out what to do with her.

42

u/pikpikcarrotmon Jul 31 '26

The no scream was pretty much perfect.

I was surprised they didn't even try the lazy route for Sage. All you really have to do is just have her say whatever happened was her master plan. They even hinted at her pushing people in certain directions many times, but then her goal turned out to be stupid and they let her fail over and over at even that.

Just tell us she set this all up to bring down Homelander and it had to happen this way. There's are better ways of doing it, sure, but at least that baseline preserves her being the smartest person.

16

u/Calfurious Jul 31 '26

Sage's plan was nonsensical. If she just wanted to live a solitary life in a bunker, she could have did that anytime she wanted. All the other shit involving Vought and Homelander was completely unnecessary.

4

u/TheChunkMaster Aug 01 '26

She did the extra stuff for kicks and to make humanity eat itself for disappointing her. She’s a selfish misanthrope.

1

u/Calfurious Aug 02 '26

The issue with that motivation is that the only time Sage talks about being disappointed with humanity is that one time a doctor did not believe her when she said she had discovered a cure for cancer when she was eight years old.

I mean that would give her motivation to dislike this particular doctor, but it's not enough motivation for her to hate humanity as a whole.

Usually characters who hate humanity as a whole do so because of the failures of society, not merely an individual.

For example, Dracula, in the Netflix Castlevania series, wages war against humanity because his wife, who was a healer, was falsely accused of being a witch. Dracula doesn't punish humanity merely because some individual killed her, but because society as a whole celebrated her being killed despite the fact she was only helping them. The priest that ordered the wife's execution was only able to do so because society was ignorant enough to go along with the priest's nonsense.

In Sage's case, it's never really established what her issue is with society. Society didn't refuse to believe an eight year old girl could secretly be a genius, an individual doctor was the skeptic. It's not established what is the major sin of humanity that makes Sage believe that humans should be wiped out.

All of the potential motivations (Society supports Vought and Homelander, are are committing acts of evil) falls flat because Sage is actively helping Vought and Homelander with their propaganda and cover up.

So honestly Sage just comes across as an atheist redditor who just hates humanity because "humans are dumb." Which is really lame and boring.

1

u/TheChunkMaster Aug 02 '26

The issue with that motivation is that the only time Sage talks about being disappointed with humanity is that one time a doctor did not believe her when she said she had discovered a cure for cancer when she was eight years old.

Her very first scene in the show has her telling Homelander that democracies inevitably fail because “humans are fucking stupid”.

1

u/Calfurious Aug 02 '26 edited Aug 02 '26

It's a pretty massive leap to go from "democracy fails because humans are dumb" to "I think all of humanity should be wiped out."

Is the writer trying to tell us that Sage wants humanity to die out because humans can't maintain a country with a democratic system of government for more than a few centuries? Because if so, they're going to need to put in a bit more characterization than just one random throwaway line. Also she is the primary reason why Homelander becomes a dictator. If she cared about democracy, she wouldn't be subverting it.

It's pretty obvious the writers just wanted to have a villain character who is so smart that she can predict anything and always has a plan to achieve her goals, but they didn't have the actual skill to write this type of character.

Her grand plan was essentially just a "mystery box" that they didn't actually have an answer for. When the writers realized they had to actually come up with some type of explanation in the final season, they just made up that Sage secretly wanted the supes and humans to all kill each other because they couldn't think of anything better.

I mean Sage's plan doesn't even make any sense. If the humans release the virus and kill all the supes (including Homelander) then humanity just wins. Supes are just going to be extinct, they wouldn't be able to retaliate at all. Now if there was a inverse virus that existed that killed only humans and spared supes, then maybe the plan would make sense. But that virus doesn't exist, so Sage's logic is dumb.

1

u/TheChunkMaster Aug 02 '26

It's a pretty massive leap to go from "democracy fails because humans are dumb" to "I think all of humanity should be wiped out."

You asked for evidence of disappointment with humanity, not evidence of genocidal intent. That sort of thing comes later as we learn more about her.

Also she is the primary reason why Homelander becomes a dictator. If she cared about democracy, she wouldn't be subverting it.

I’m not claiming she ever cared about democracy since she gives Homelander the Caesar pitch immediately afterwards. What does disappoint her is how the thing that many people in the country vaunt as one of humanity’s greatest inventions inevitably collapses because they are morons.

I mean Sage's plan doesn't even make any sense. If the humans release the virus and kill all the supes (including Homelander) then humanity just wins. Supes are just going to be extinct, they wouldn't be able to retaliate at all.

You’re ignoring the fact that the virus takes time to spread, which would allow for a fairly brief but brutal war between humanity and the supes retaliating against it for releasing the virus (additionally, another war objective for the supes would be to desperately grab any personnel that might help them make a cure). It’s kind of like how in Invincible, the Viltrumites exterminated their non-Viltrumite servants even as the scourge virus killed them by the billions.

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3

u/SecBalloonDoggies Aug 01 '26

I feel like a lot of the plot time that could have been used to flesh out her plan got taken up by the need to set up the prequel.

3

u/Artoriarius Jul 31 '26

I absolutely despise the whole "this character is super-smart and they HATE that" trope. It's just a way of idolizing ignorance—"Oh, you can't be happy/sociable/good and smart, so it's better to be stupid!" Screw that anti-intellectual nonsense.

5

u/SecBalloonDoggies Aug 01 '26

I don’t think it was so much that Sage hated being smart, it was that she was mad at the world (her parents abandoned her after getting her dosed with V to be raised by her grandmother who then died because nobody listened to her, etc) and she just wanted to be left alone. She would lobotomize herself for the same reason some people use drugs, to escape thinking about her trauma. She was happy to have her powers removed because it meant she could finally leave the superhero world behind.

26

u/RobertBevillReddit Jul 31 '26

Yeah, I agree, I think the final season was fine, if not exceptional. I think the hate is overblown

-12

u/Rasmusmario123 Jul 31 '26

It's perfectly fine to enjoy a season but if you think the hate is overblown I don't think you've read many proper criticisms.

7

u/Lemon_Phoenix Aug 01 '26

"Nah bro, if you don't agree with me, you just haven't read the right argument, no I will not make it or share it"

8

u/Consistent-Spell2203 Jul 31 '26

Nah that show is mercurial people got mad on the internet about it.  

7

u/Next-Accident-2970 Aug 01 '26

Someone on here said they wanted to choke the showrunner because of the final season. Overreacting, much???

2

u/PresentationOpen7879 Aug 01 '26

Why are you getting downvoted? They set up huge expectations and failed to meet the majority of them. Even the posters for the final season were completely fake compared to what happened in the show.

2

u/delulumans Aug 01 '26

Mostly people on reddit call it fine.

Everyone I know irl was confused what the fuck they were watching. Entire Season was filmed like a COVID shoot, dick jokes in EVERY SINGLE SCENE it felt like and scorched earth was... just a lie.

0

u/[deleted] Aug 01 '26

[deleted]

0

u/druk987 Aug 01 '26

I mean that's on you for expecting a fucking poster to be a screenshot from the show

2

u/PresentationOpen7879 Aug 01 '26

Lmao, posters hint at what happens in the the film. That's one of the BIGGEST points about them. Get out of here.

1

u/delulumans Aug 01 '26

The problem is when the difference between the marketing and the actual product is so unbelievably vast... yeah people will be pissed lmao.

3

u/PlacibiEffect Jul 31 '26

Man I thought the death of Homelander was lame. It seemed way too easy and anticlimactic.

2

u/delulumans Aug 01 '26

Because it was.

These weirdos are like Kripke just thinking about standing over him and making him beg to suck their cock.

Leftists got way too invested into this show and Kripke leaned into it detracting from everything good in the first 3 Seasons

2

u/poopoopooyttgv Aug 01 '26

My biggest complaint was homelander died too quickly. I would have liked to see his powers slowly sputtering out. And some throwback to the first scene, like homelander tried to run away at super speed, runs in hughies direction, you think hughies gonna splatter, homelander awkwardly bumps into him because he’s depowered

1

u/Mattbl Aug 01 '26

How'd he die in the comic?

1

u/SmoothDiscussion7763 Aug 04 '26

well... it could have been a sick fight between homelander and noir lol. maybe they'll even do it on screen this time

0

u/CaterpillarJungleGym Jul 31 '26

Aww nice, he dies! Maybe I can watch this show now.

1

u/AgentAxillary Aug 01 '26

How did you not expect that to happen? And was Homelander not dying what kept you from watching?

12

u/AsherFischell Jul 31 '26

And the whole thing with the virus was pointless. So much buildup and it went nowhere. And then them going, "oh, well, let's just do what we planned on doing in season 3 then." The show literally could have ended with Soldier Boy blasting Homelander at the end of season 3 and absolutely nothing valuable would have been lost. It would have had a good ending, but nope, they had to drag it out and waste time and money. Two whole additional seasons for no fucking reason, it's astounding.

1

u/TheChunkMaster Aug 01 '26

And the whole thing with the virus was pointless

How? It’s a big part of what motivates the V1 search (because V1 makes you immune) and it causes Butcher and Ue’s final confrontation.

1

u/AsherFischell Aug 01 '26

You could completely cut the storyline and easily use something else since that confrontation was inevitable.

1

u/AgentAxillary Aug 01 '26

Butcher was totally mishandled. Kessler becoming an immune vector for the virus would've been the better way to go.

It still should've ended with Butcher trying to release it into Vought Tower's sprinkler system, but that should've been an entire episode of its own and involved a showdown between Butcher/Kessler and the entire team. There's so much about the final showdown between Hughie and Butcher that felt rushed and made no sense.

The show was good at how it presented pivotal scenes, but right around season 4 the quality of getting from each pivotal scene to the next started to drop off.

2

u/AsherFischell Aug 01 '26

Season 4 marked a massive change in the show for sure. It went from being irreverent to more corporate, soulless nonsense as soon as season 3's ending moved the football at the last second. The writers stopped caring and starting making a product exactly like the very things the show had just been satirizing. Everything about season 5 just lazily cheated to the ending

1

u/AgentAxillary Aug 01 '26

Right?

For all the off-screen nothing that Homelander's trial was, they could've just made that last scene in s3 a daydream that Ryan had, and that would've added a lot more tension in terms of, "Holy shit, is this kid as psycho as his dad?" Meanwhile, Homelander in reality would've maintained the PR bearing he had when he tried to win over the crowd at Victoria's rally in s2.

But no, Kripke had to bring his TDS to the screen and make a creative decision based on his obsession over a flippant off-hand comment made by a sleazy politician who doesn't even know that he exists, so that he could dumb down the main villain that they had spent 3 seasons establishing as shrewd and cunning and obsessed with maintaining his laudable public image.

1

u/TheChunkMaster Aug 01 '26

You really couldn’t. Butcher has a vendetta against supes in general and the virus was the only means to exterminate them on the scale he ultimately wanted.

It also helped worsen Homelander’s mental problems, since he was afraid enough of it to send his own dad out to fight Butcher in his stead.

7

u/wally-sage Jul 31 '26

I really did like what happened with The Deep tbh

7

u/AGuyWithTrouble Aug 01 '26

I still find it baffling that Homelander never really goes full scorched earth. It was the most anticipated and feared moment for both the characters and the audience. He had described what he could do, and it was horrific. The hype was so high.

And then... Nothing. Not even like... Something local? Not even something like his fantasy of lasering a crowd?

Why? It's so... Ugh, it's so stupid!

2

u/AgentAxillary Aug 01 '26

Two words: Budget limitations

5

u/Gakoknight Jul 31 '26

The final season had it's moments, but it didn't stick the landing at all. A chaotic emergency landing at best.

5

u/Kyliems1010 Jul 31 '26

What really annoyed me is they spent seasons on Ryan’s arc, and whether he’d end up like Homelander, or if he would escape the cycle of abuse and defeat him

Then the last season, Ryan barely does anything, and ends up with MM, which is thought was fine, if they actually developed it. 

4

u/killertortilla Aug 01 '26

People just wanted something different. If you remove all the blood and gore The Boys sucked from the beginning. The writing was always extremely bad.

4

u/[deleted] Aug 01 '26 edited Aug 03 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/AgentAxillary Aug 01 '26

It started to get that way in s4 and s5. In the first 3 seasons, the gore and shock value scenes were organic collateral of the premise. It's expected that horrible gory deaths and behind-the-scenes perversions are going to occur in a world where superheroes are corporate products who can get away with pretty much anything.

2

u/AgentAxillary Aug 01 '26

Disagree. I thought the first 3 seasons were well-written, and even the gore and gross-out moments made sense as organic collateral of the overall premise of people in the real world having superpowers.

For me, the writing really dropped off in s4 when it pivoted from corporate superhero satire to political satire. It changed the entire tone of the series and wasn't necessary at all. Kripke was trying to troll a segment of the audience that never really existed in the first place and wound up disappointing everyone because of that.

3

u/Clokwrkpig Jul 31 '26

Season 4 was pretty mid too, but had a big finish leaving a lot of hope.

Then they basically hit reset in the first episode of season 5 and quickly went back to the status quo.

The change in writing team between season 3 and 4 ruined it.

2

u/AgentAxillary Aug 01 '26

Zero scenes of Homelander on trial are what told me early on that s4 was gonna be a let-down. It was just completely off-screened with no hint as to why it went down that way.

Also, Maeve surviving her self-sacrifice in s3 because she's bi (this was literally Kripke's stated reason for not killing her off). Maeve was one of my favorite characters, but that was a lame reason for not killing her off and it made me realize that Kripke's politics were taking the wheel.

3

u/The_Raven_Born Aug 01 '26

And the excuse that 'it was supposed to be' is such a stupid one. Like, why the fuck was Homelander in space and WHY didn't we get that?

3

u/The_Grand_Briddock Aug 01 '26

The annoying part is how good the first two episodes were. People getting rounded up and sent to concentration camps, Homelander openly murdering people, the Boys killing Supes. It was a good set up with the Virus being used.

Then they threw it all out to reset the plot. Had to bring in a new plot element that went nowhere, then introduce a new thing at the very end to solve everything. They should've stuck with the Virus instead of having it all smashed up.

1

u/AgentAxillary Aug 01 '26

Butcher/Kessler getting exposed to the virus and becoming an immune vector for it would've raised the stakes considerably. Sameer should've used it to infect him only for that plan to backfire.

3

u/yijiujiu Aug 01 '26

Tbh, if you read the source material, it's a massive step up in so many ways. The comics were such dog shit, I was surprised. Like... Beating up and killing supes with baseball bats? It doesn't even make sense

2

u/AgentAxillary Aug 01 '26

Butcher's crew are all V'd up in the comics and those were low-level supes.

One of the things the comics did better than the show was use Homelander more as a background character, and Butcher's crew as people with a day job that didn't focus almost exclusively on taking down HL. The first 2 seasons went for that exact vibe and it worked really well.

By changing those two very big factors, the show ended up writing itself into a corner and had to hit the sitcom season reset button too many times.

1

u/yijiujiu Aug 01 '26

Your first statement isn't true, unless you consider soldier boy and stormfront to be low level supes. Also, a wooden bat should splinter in the hands of supe hitting a supe, plain and simple.

I do agree about Homelander being more of a lurking presence, builds more mystique.

All that said, the show is still a vast improvement, while not perfect

2

u/AgentAxillary Aug 01 '26

Soldier Boy and Stormfront in the comics were absolutely low-level. Even Stormfront in the show was less durable than Soldier Boy in the show. Show Payback wouldn't have needed novochok against show Stormfront or comics Stormfront or comics Soldier Boy. They could've just stomped any of em out like what happened to show Stormfront.

The show is an improvement in terms of the characters, except for maybe The Legend (I thought he was much better in the comics). But it had a lot of plotlines that the show would've been better off using (not Blarney Cock, though; definitely not Blarney Cock lol).

2

u/yijiujiu Aug 01 '26

I dunno, to me it felt like they build up one or the other as a big deal, then stomp him pretty easily. I put the series down when the started randomly reminiscing about WW2 stuff.

Overall, Kimiko, not Ving up the boys, and being creative with killing the supes at the start were massive improvements on the comics. Also, making Godolkin more of a world was also better.

But yeah, not everything was a hit, I just can't see anything the comic did better up to where I read. Difference of opinion, though

2

u/AgentAxillary Aug 01 '26

Oh yeah, absolutely just a difference of opinion. We're both fans here and I'm certainly not trying to start any fights.

Kimiko and Frenchie in the show were VERY much improvements. They were pretty much background extras with comedic shock-value origins in the comics. Like I said, the show greatly improved on the characters.

Stormfront getting stomped in the comics was a vehicle to make Love Sausage even more likeable. He really was great in the comics lol. The front-door scene at Herogasm was a reference to that in the show. I hate that he didn't side with Butcher's crew in s4/s5. Lotta wasted potential there. Dude deserved his own episode as an ally of The Boys.

I've read up to the end of Hughie's return to Scotland. It dragged a lot there, but I'll finish it soon.

I think MM at least should've been naturally V'd up in the show. The reason why he was called Mother's Milk was a huge reveal in the comics, but it meant nothing in the show. It left a lot of his potential on the table, especially given how likeable Laz Alonso was in the role.

I thought the Russia, G-Men, Super Dupe, Tek Knight, Teenage Kix, and The Legend subplots from the comics would've brought a lot to the show. If they had made it a 6-season show and spread those out over the entire run, while grounding them a bit more in reality than the comics did, then we'd have a more favorable post-finale opinion of the show overall.

2

u/Kaurifish Aug 01 '26

And so disappointing that Terror didn’t get his happy ending.

1

u/evilforska Aug 01 '26

When I watched final seasons of The Boys, i had that "breaking bad universe phase 2" meme video on loop in my head. I cant believe they actually did it for real. Genuinely RIP

1

u/EatThatHorseWithMe1 Aug 01 '26

The way I explain it to people is: as a final self contained episode, the finale is great. Tack on the whole final season? Its not great and it's all filler nonsense.

1

u/BamberGasgroin Aug 01 '26

I felt it jumped the shark when the tiny supe climbed up some guys urethra.

It was never the same after that.

1

u/AgentAxillary Aug 01 '26

That scene in particular was comedic shock, sure, but at least the overall point there was that Butcher's crew were still at their day job of keeping supes in-check rather than being almost exclusively dedicated to taking down HL.

That's one thing the comics did way better than the show, and it's why the first 3 seasons of the show were better than the last 2. Even recruiting Soldier Boy in s3 could've been about more than Homelander. Once it became all about HL and then HL being a Trump analog, the writing began to decline.

1

u/AgentAxillary Aug 01 '26

Anticlimactic, yes, but it's what Clara would've wanted

1

u/kinghyperion581 Aug 01 '26

Yeah I'm not MAGA or a huge Trump supporter, but turning Homelander into a caricature of Trump killed the character for me.

The first 2 seasons were just a perfect parody of corporate america and multi-billion dollar media industries and how they control our lives.

1

u/idolpriest Aug 01 '26

I like season 1-4 but I got tired of the dick and balls jokes, I thought season 5 was going to get really serious and dark, but it was probably the least serious and unfunny season of the show, it was so dissapointing.

1

u/Infinite_Jelly9321 Aug 02 '26

I genuinely stopped watching when Anthony Starr started doing adverts for shit mobile games. I couldnt take Homelander seriously as a threat anymore after seeing him poorly act like he was invested in a shitty swipe left and right, x2/÷2 horde shooter.

1

u/AdeptnessLiving1799 Aug 01 '26

Funny enough, I had a choice at one point of where I couldn't watch invincible and the boys at the same time, so I chose invincible. At first I thought I backed the wrong horse only to find out later the boys was committing character assassination. I don't even know if I could start it knowing what I know, not to mention the Creator was experiencing TDS

1

u/darkness_calming Jul 31 '26

The only good thing about last season was the first episode and that was because we had the GOAT-train

0

u/Underwear_royalty Aug 01 '26

If you wanted scorched earth Boys you misunderstood the show. Which is ok, but not a claim against the show

1

u/AgentAxillary Aug 01 '26

How so? The show is what made us want it by making it seem like an inevitability.