The 20 worst final seasons of TV shows

It would be hard for any show to find its footing after the firing of its main character, but House of Cards  flubbed this effort particularly badly. Given the centrality of Kevin Spacey’s Frank Underwood to the story, his absence felt almost insurmountable in the series’ final season. Robin Wright certainly gives her all to the role of Claire, and to the extent to which the final season succeeds, it does so thanks to her. Even so, it’s impossible not to compare this final outing with the deliciously melodramatic offerings that preceded it. 

Two and a Half Men was one of those shows that loved its own bad taste and often crass humor. However, like several other notable sitcoms, it had to endure a cast change when Charlie Sheen left the show. It never quite recovered — even with the introduction of Ashton Kutcher — and the final season feels quite tired. The finale, in particular, is more than a little disingenuous since it teases a return of Sheen only to take a rather tired potshot at him in his absence.

Vampires were all the rage in movies and TV throughout the 2000s and into the 2010s, and The Vampire Diaries took full advantage of the popularity of this phenomenon. While it was a strong show throughout much of its run, the departure of its main character prior to its final outing was a challenge it ultimately struggled to overcome. The final season came to feel more like an anticlimax than a satisfying conclusion to what had otherwise been a very strong vampire show.

The Office is one of those sitcoms that can truly be considered one of the genre's best. However, the departure of Steve Carell’s Michael left a gap that could never really be filled, no matter how hard the show tried. The last season showed signs of strain, and it was clear to even its most devoted fans that more than a little of the magic had already gone. The finale managed to bring back some of the lost appeal, even as it also reminded audiences of the past glory days.

There’s no question that Modern Family is one of the most successful and beloved sitcoms of the 21st century. However, it has to be said that the final season is arguably the worst, and by this time, it was clear that the series had overstayed its welcome a bit. The storylines fall flat, and the characters and actors sometimes seem to be just going through the motions. While it still manages to be a very funny show, it’s hard to shake the feeling that it might have been better had it called it quits earlier in its run rather than staying past its height.

Like many other long-running series, House endured its fair share of cast changes during its long run. For the most part, it managed to weather them pretty effectively, but things began to change in the final season. Though several original cast members would make appearances in the final season, they were mostly reminders of the series’ better days. The finale also seemed somewhat of an anticlimax to many viewers, who no doubt expected something more emotionally conclusive and satisfying than what they ultimately got.

Friends was and remains a powerhouse of a sitcom, continuing to attract new viewers. For those who stick with it from beginning to end, however, it’s clear that the final season is by far the weakest. In some ways, this makes sense, as by this point, the show had been on the air for ten years. Even so, it’s quite distressing and disappointing the extent to which the characters had largely become caricatures of themselves, and several of the storylines felt both rushed and unearned.

When it first premiered, The Crown quickly became the jewel for Netflix, focusing on the late Queen Elizabeth II and the other members of the Royal Family as they struggled with the burden of the institution of the Crown. By its final season, however, it had come close to the present, which robbed it of its period drama appeal. Moreover, the younger generation of royals simply lacked the gravitas of their elders. The fact that Elizabeth became a bit player in her own show made this a remarkably weak way to say goodbye to what had once been a great show. 

Killing Eve  reveled in darkness, focusing on a sinister assassin named Villanelle (played by Jodie Comer) and the intelligence agent, Eve (played by Sandra Oh) who sets out to apprehend her. Their game of cat and mouse worked well for several seasons, but then it all started to unravel in the fourth and final one. None of the characters got the send-off they really deserved, and the finale in particular seemed like a slap in the face to those who had already invested so much in these characters and their relationship. 

For its first three seasons, Netflix’s Sex Education offered a frank and touchingly intimate look at its various characters and their emotional and sexual lives. However, the fourth season marked a remarkable shift in quality, not least because several important characters either didn’t return or had their storylines reduced. Though some of the magic was still present, the absence of several critical voices and stories meant that it could never quite live up to the expectations that had been set by the earlier seasons. 

Once Upon a Time seemed capable of infinitely reproducing itself. However, even though it could, at times, be repetitive in terms of its overarching stories, it could at least lean on the strong members of its cast. Season seven, unfortunately, was marred by the absence of several of the characters that audiences had already grown to know and love. The series struggled on gamely right up until the end, but it was clever to everyone that the magic that had motivated the series up until that time had gone.

Ryan Murphy’s Glee was strongest during its first two seasons when its unique magic had yet to wear out and when the original characters were still center-stage. As time went on, however, the bloom fell off the rose, and the final season made it abundantly clear that, as with so many other Murphy productions, the key to a strong legacy is knowing when to quit. By the time the series finale aired, it was clear that the series’ original ingenuity had been replaced with an anything-goes approach to storytelling that didn’t cut it. 

Scrubs had a good run during its heyday, and despite a few hiccups here and there, it managed to hang onto its core identity. That all changed with the ninth and final season, which is so different from what came before that it was almost unrecognizable. Only a few of the original cast remained, and the season was set in an entirely different location. This was quite a jarring way for the series to end its run, so it’s not surprising that it didn’t end up returning for a tenth season and that many fans would prefer to ignore this season altogether. 

From the beginning, True Blood was one of those HBO series that wanted to push the envelope in terms of practically everything, from plausible storylines to the depiction of gender and sexuality on-screen. While this made it a very fun and entertaining series, things went off the rails after a couple of seasons, and it became distressingly bad in its concluding chapter. It couldn’t even manage to pull off a satisfying finale, and all of this still leaves a bad taste in the mouths of even the show’s most devoted defenders and fans.

Dexter is, in some ways, the paradigmatic example of the antihero story that was such a key feature of 2000s and 2010s TV. Though the series managed to last eight seasons — no small thing for a prestige production — it fell more than a little flat during its final outing. This season committed many of the grave sins of TV storytelling, with several characters being let down in their stories. As happens so far too often on television, the finale just ended up adding insult to injury.

While Will & Grace certainly deserves praise for the way that it moved the needle in terms of positive LGBTQ+ representation, it dropped the ball in the final season. By that point, it had come to rely too much on celebrity casting and less on strong storytelling, and it didn’t help that Will and Grace were seemingly always on the outs. The lackluster finale, which was so bad that it was retconned out of existence at the beginning of the reboot, was the nail in the coffin, leading many fans to prefer the earlier seasons of the show.

For most of its run, That ‘70s Show  was the perfect kind of fun and silly late ‘90s and early ‘00s sitcom. Like many other shows, however, it started to run out of steam, and by its final run, it had lost several of its key cast members, with no one really managing to replace either Topher Grace or Ashton Kutcher. The series did the most that it could with its remaining cast, but there’s no question that the chemistry was unalterably altered and that it never quite regained its former sparkling sense of humor.

Few final seasons of a TV series have been as universally reviled as that of Game of Thrones. In addition to being cut down to six episodes (as opposed to the usual 10), it featured some puzzling story choices and character development that showed how much those additional episodes were missed. Arguably, the biggest misstep was having Daenerys decide to unleash her dragon on the people of King’s Landing without giving this climax more time to develop naturally from the story. The entire season felt like a giant misstep, forever tarnishing the series’ legacy.

There’s no question that How I Met Your Mother was a powerhouse for CBS during most of its run. It managed to make the most of its framing device and gave viewers characters they could actually care about and cheer for, even as they also recognized their shortcomings. Things went quite awry in the last season, however, with some major pacing issues, to say nothing of a finale that felt to many people like a betrayal of the characters they’d come to love.

For most of its run, Roseanne had something to say about the nature of American life, particularly for the white working class. The last season saw major changes for the Conner family, including winning the lottery. This change of fortune took away much of the series’ potent social commentary, and the lackluster final season was made even more frustrating by a finale that revealed the whole thing to have been fiction in the first place. This was quite an ignominious way for such a groundbreaking series to end.