(Hated Trope) Endings so awful they completely destroy the legacy of the media.

[u/MeepMan324]

1. Two and a Half Men's final episode teased Charlie Sheen's character coming back and going to harm the other characters whilst also having insults to his character and Charlie Sheen himself. It's clear the director had a grudge and the ending where his character comes up to knock then get crushed by a piano before it cuts to the director before he says "winning" before getting crushed by another piano
2. This was an upbeat animated show about a magical teen princess. The writers desperately wanted a romantic endgame for her and her best friend, but the way they got there was essentially multiversal omnicide. To stop a villain, the main character unilaterally decides magic is the root of all evil and destroys it entirely. By doing this, she casually commits mass genocide against every purely magical being in the multiverse. It also triggers a massive apocalyptic event that violently crashes different dimensions together into a chaotic hellscape. But the show frames this horrific, mass-extinction catastrophe as a sweet, triumphant ending just because two teenagers get to hold hands in the rubble (Star Vs The Forces Of Evil)

[u/ryncewynde88]

Star didn’t end quite that way: it ended worse. There was a surviving purely magical creature, the most annoying one. Also, it wasn’t 2 teenagers holding hands, it was 1 teenager holding hands with a mid-30s man in a teenager’s body.

[u/Human_Lavishness7112 → u/ryncewynde88]

l mean, to be fair, l don't think he spent a second of that time actuaIIy maturing, but yes, you are right

[u/nullJaeger → u/ryncewynde88]

Gosh yeah, I forget that he's mid-30s for every scene past a certain point. And like, why would he bother with Star when he can have hundreds of Hekapoos

[u/ryncewynde88 → u/nullJaeger]

Because Star didn’t get genocided I guess?

[u/MsSelphine → u/ryncewynde88]

Whaaaaaaaa

[u/Elysium_Chronicle → u/MsSelphine]

Just to de-vague-ify things, the implication is that fan-favorite magical characters like Hekapoo are killed, while the annoying, selfish, drama-causing Ponyhead somehow got to live.

And the "mid-30s" man is the male lead, Marco. Due to time-dilation shenanigans, there was a brief part in the series (in that the incident happens mostly off-screen, between episodes) where he goes through 30 years of his life traveling through dimensions in a half-antagonistic, half-romantically charged cat-and-mouse chase with Hekapoo. Star finally catches up to him and brings him back to his home dimension, where he's physically transformed back to his younger body, like nothing ever happened. Yet he retains all the memories of that lifetime.

[u/ryncewynde88 → u/Elysium_Chronicle]

Hekapoo’s magic was immortality and opening portals with magic scissors that others could also use; she might’ve been made of magic but she also might’ve just been using magic devices and taking advantage of temporal shenanigans. Ponyhead’s was that she was literally just a floating horse’s head and neck with no organs, and a complete inability to face any consequences ever.

[u/Elysium_Chronicle → u/ryncewynde88]

Yeah, her status isn't specifically confirmed. It's just somewhat implied because the finale explicitly shows other members of the magic council de-magicked and presumed dead.

[u/Schnutzel → u/Elysium_Chronicle]

in that the incident happens mostly off-screen, between episodes

It wasn't between episodes, it was a time skip / montage during the episode.

[u/Elysium_Chronicle → u/Schnutzel]

Eh, been a long while since the show was on air. I remembered there being an episode split before actually revealing "Buff Marco". Guess I was wrong.