Most dramatic TV show endings ever from Line of Duty to Game of Thrones

When we’ve been following a TV show for months and sometimes years, let’s face it, we care deeply about the way it ends.

Viewers want to be completely satisfied by the ending to their favourite show, but sadly that’s not always the case.

Lost, Line of Duty and Game of Thrones were all heavily criticised for the way they ended, while other shows including The Sopranos, Chernobyl and The Office are believed to be some of the best TV show endings of modern times.

Here are some of TV’s most dramatic endings, from the very good to the terribly bad…

Line of Duty

The BBC police TV series was already incredibly popular, but season six, which has just ended, seemed to captivate pretty much the entire nation, if social media is anything to go by.

While the show encouraged camaraderie among fans most weeks, by the finale, many viewers were seething after it was revealed who the mysterious ‘H’ was.

(We’ll avoid any spoilers in case somehow there’s anyone left on Planet Earth that hasn’t seen the finale.)

“There is no way [name of H] is H, he couldn’t run a bath ffs. Everything is set up nicely for a Season 7 though… too many loose ends #LineOfDuty,” wrote one disappointed fan.

“laying in bed thinking about how almost 10 years of my life have been building up to most possibly the most disappointing ending in tv history #LineofDutyFinale#LineOfDuty,” another fan wrote.

“Jo the main guest star, not focused on at all, jo and kates relationship completely skipped over, Chloe just ignored, lomax ignored, random fast paced scenes, no dealt narrative. That was SO DISAPPOINTING IM SO SAD FOR THE SHOW #LineofDutyFinale,” another viewer said.

However, others were happy to predict whether the lack of neatly tied up storylines might mean another series is on the way from writer Jed Mercurio, who has yet to reveal his future plans for the show.

“I can’t see any way they could have tied up all the loose threads in any other way (unless characters started behaving in a totally different way, which itself would have sucked),” one said.

There was so much unrest about the finale, it reminded some fans about another finale many found disappointing recently…

Game of Thrones

The fan upset around the Game of Thrones finale overtook social media for days – and pubs, which had opened at midnight to show the episode, were hotbeds for anger and frustration too.

The year was 2019 and fans in the UK were staying up late to find out. who would take The Iron Throne. In it, Daenerys Targaryen was stabbed by her nephew and lover Jon Snow and Bran Stark was named king – but fans were boiling with frustration.

Over one million viewers signed a petition to have the final series redone with “competent writers” (ouch.)

“David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have proven themselves to be woefully incompetent writers when they have no source material (i.e. the books) to fall back on,” explains the petition. “This series deserves a final season that makes sense.”

“All these strong women and the winner is a white dude who isn’t even fully in touch with reality all the time. Checks out. #Got #DemThrones,” wrote one viewer.

“Also it is a hell of a thing when creators can imagine dragons but they can’t imagine a sane, smart woman as ruler of the six or seven kingdoms,” wrote another.

Rubbing salt in the wound, writers and showrunners David Beniof and Dan Weiss later did admit they felt badly prepared to write the show, which obviously wasn’t received well.

“There definitely are things we would do differently,” Benioff said. “I don’t know if there’s anything I would want to discuss publicly.”

The Sopranos

Fans of this Italian-American crime drama show felt equally hard done by when Tony Soprano’s fate was left unclear during the finale episode, in 2007. As he sat eating onion rings, the screen blacked out. Had he been killed by the man who had arrived in the seconds before or not? All wasn’t clear – and judging by creator David Chase’s actions, he knew a storm was brewing.

After the finale aired, Chase went to France from the States and told his publicists he wouldn’t take any phone calls relating to the show’s ending.

“It was interesting how David Chase worked it,” David Baldwin, HBO vice president of program planning, said. “Now it’s interwoven into the fabric of Americana. People always will talk about the surprise ending. They will have their opinion like they were [New York] Yankees or [Boston] Red Sox fans, or if they favor Ohio State or Michigan [in college football].”

After years of being evasive about the meaning of the ending, once telling The Star-Ledger publication that “it’s all there” in the finale, s eries creator Chase did refer to the final scene as the ‘death scene’ in an interview in 2019 with TV critics Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz, which re-upped the whole debate again recently.

Lost

The final episode of season 6 of Lost aired in 2010 and saw stranded islander Terry O’Quinn try to destroy the island the inhabitants were lost on, but Jack Shephard, played by Matthew Fox, was intent on stopping him.

The finale was more polarising than Game of Thrones’ or Line of Duty’s. Some critics and fans thought it was a decent way to end on an emotional high, while others felt strongly that many of the storylines were left massively incomplete.

“So I’ve given it another day to sink in, and I’m still profoundly irritated by that ending. It rendered this whole season of Lost pretty silly. And it barely made sense on its own terms,” a critic wrote for Slate.

“Lost crashed, and crashed hard… This season wasn’t a long con. It was a weak trick,” wrote another for the same publication.

But on the other side of the coin, viewers agreed that – even if parts of the narrative felt misleading – they had at least invested in an emotional set of characters, who they’d journeyed with since the show premiered in 2004.

“I’ve always thought it was one of the smartest-written shows on TV; certainly the most ambitious. I also knew that ABC kept this show around for prestige and Emmy consideration, but this was pretty good television — like one long movie,” wrote a critic from the Globe and Mail.

“Satisfying in a sentimental way, the eagerly anticipated finale was neither as challenging as the series at its best, nor as convoluted as the series at its most frustrating,” wrote another from the Denver Post.

Friends

She got off the plane! At the time in 2004, the finale of Friends was viewed as a triumph by most viewers for how it finally achieved the series-long dream of putting Rachel and Ross back together. It also felt like storylines were neatly tied up.

“Starting a TV show is hard. Ending one of the most beloved series of all time in a satisfactory manner? Almost impossible, yet Friends pulled it off here,” wrote a critic for What Culture.

“It was more than a phenomenon; it was a smart, classy show,” wrote a writer for PopMatters.

However, more recently, experts and fans have criticised how Rachel sabotages her chance for a big career break in Paris to go back to Ross. Should he have left her to travel the world rather than ask her to return?

“I’m still furious that Rachel abandoned her dream job for an absolute trashbag of a man,” wrote a TV writer for Metro.co.uk.

Regardless of the way the two lovers ended up, there’s a poignant final line from Chandler. When all the friends are moving out of their iconic apartments, Rachel asks if there’s time for one quick coffee. They agree that, of course, there is. And Chandler quips, “where?”

Chernobyl

This mini series, which dramatises the 1986 nuclear disaster in Chernobyl which cost the lives of 31 people and caused tens of thousands of residents to flee their homes for safety, is widely agreed to have had a stellar ending.

“Chernobyl is a thorough historical analysis, a gruesome disaster epic replete with oozing blisters and the ominous rattle of Geiger counters, and a mostly riveting drama,” wrote a critic in The Atlantic.

Fans agreed, and given the show ended in 2019, some pointed out how much better the finale felt that Game of Thrones.

“Hands down one of the best shows I have watched. Haunting, crisp and on point in every way possible #ChernobylHBO,” wrote one fan.

“Chernobyl better win every goddamn award possible. Props to everyone who helped create such an accurate, harrowing account of a very preventable tragedy #ChernobylHBO,” wrote another.

The Office

The US series of The Office starred Steve Carrell in the role originally played by Ricky Gervais in the British TV series which was set in Slough. Dry in wit, it was an unusual style of show for US audiences to get to grips with, but they warmed up quickly.

When the final season 9 aired in 2013, critics and fans praised its authentic humour, which sustained throughout the time the show was on air, from 2005.

“For nine years now, The Office has provided us with more laughs than we can count, and anyone who doesn’t have it on their list of the Top 10 TV comedies of all time needs to redo their list,” wrote a critic from Orange County Register.

Fans were sad to see the show go. “I just finished The Office for the first time. And my god that final episode did not have the right to hit me that hard in the feels. What a show. Now what do I do with my life?” one fan wrote recently.

Another said: “No matter how many times you see it, it’s always emotional watching the final episode of the office. “

It’s A Sin

Devastating AIDS drama It’s A Sin, about a group of young gay men who lived through the peak of the virus in the 1980s, has helped changed perceptions about HIV.

Although fans felt the ending was incredibly sad, they also agreed the final scene was done so well. Russell T Davies spoke to HuffPost UK about how as survivors, “we do not remember it as a funeral parade – we remember the fun that we had.” And amid the tragedy of the pandemic, and in the final moments of the show, he managed to end the tragic show on a light-hearted note.

“These performances in the final episode of #ItsASin are just outstanding! When his mum finally holds him and he’s telling her he’s sorry .. just wow,” wrote one user.

“We all need an emotional support network after that finale of It’s A Sin. Simply going to be on my mind for a v long time,” wrote another.

Originally from https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/most-dramatic-tv-show-endings-24108931