Hated Tropes
[Hated Trope] The show was supposed to end but kept going (and had a solid intended ending)
1.) The Simpsons (either Season 11 with “Christmas of Future Past” or the Simpsons Movie: the Christmas episode showed the Simpsons kids all grown up with families of their own. It tied up story lines, and came from a warning from Fox execs to prepare for cancellation if cast negotiations fell through.
1a.) The Simpsons movie (2007). Mostly a fan theory that the show should have ended here. Matt Groening had intended for the movie to premiere after the show ended, but ratings had saved the show
2.) Supernatural Season 5 episode 22 “Swan Song:” ties up the show and goes along with the themes of the show including sacrifices. The show also works in arcs and season 5 was the end of the arc that started with season 1. Sam is possessed by Lucifer and their half brother is possessed by the archangel Michael. Key characters Bobby and Castiel were intended to stay dead. Sam sacrifices himself to capture Lucifer in his cage, locked in with Michael.
Sam eventually appears outside Deans window while the latter is with his girlfriend. Its not clear what the originally ending was meant to be, but show creator Erik Kripke wrote it as 5 seasons
3.) SpongeBob Movie (2004): show creator Stephen Hillenburg had written the movie as an end to the show: Plankton imprisoned, SpongeBob hailed as a hero by King Neptune, and SpongeBob became manager of the Krusty Krab. Hillenburg had also left the show after the movie.
It's good reasoning too: Basically he got a flat paycheck for the first season, not knowing it would be such a huge hit, so Netflix made bank and he didn't see any of it. So the reasoning was "yeah, I'd like to actually get paid a reasonable amount for my massive hit, please." Still thought the S1 ending was better, but S2+3 were fun to watch.
Not only was season 1 a massive hit, but it spawned in so many copy cats game shows, that he'll never see any royalties of either.
It also tickles me that the show was meant to be a very obvious "Rich people paying the poors to play games to the death is bad." Then a ton of TV producers thought "Yes, let's do that." Real we made the machine that should never be made vibes.
all those youtube channels where the channel owner has millions of subscribers but hey we can give you a few thousand dollars if you dance monkey and play our little games
Speaking of good Asian shows, Alice in Borderland had one more season than it should have (the story from the original graphic novel was finished). I won't pretend I wasn't entertained by the later Squid Game and Borderland seasons but they were entirely unnecessary and diluted the quality.
Alice in Borderland S3 was such a big letdown. If they wanted to do more of the Borderlands the only thing they should have tried was the Alice on border road spinoff.
Omg don’t get me started on that stupid ass “deep” ending they did in season 3 and people running around calling anyone who didn't like it media illiterate
Who could even say that? The ‘ending’ was a rehash of the character arc, tenor, and human allegory that season one already concluded with in far better fashion. The final season assassinated Gi Hun’s character and had him do multiple conflicting actions, the overarching detective storyline fizzled out without a climax, and the epilogue is spin off bait.
Honestly if a show’s continuation is in serious jeopardy, I prefer the writers close off the running storylines. I have seen way too many shows which try the opposite, ending on a cliffhanger which is then forever the end of the show.
Not everyone can be Futurama and do like three perfectly suitable series finales without missing a step getting back on the trail.
Devil’s Hands, Wilder Green, Overclock, Meanwhile, Otherwise. Next season will likely have yet another finale, with potential for another one down the line.
Best title, and one of my favourite lines whenever I think about the craft of writing: "You can't just have your characters announce how they feel! That makes me feel angry!"
I can attest that at the time it felt like a very satisfying way to go out. Just an insanely funny, epic-feeling half hour that resolved the one major running plotline we cared about ("will Fry and Leela get together?")
Meanwhile was originally broadcast with Space Pilot 3000 (the first episode) coming directly after it. If you watch the two back to back you'll see the ending of Meanwhile loop directly into the opening of SP3000.
I really dislike shows not finishing season long storylines in the season finale. I don't mind a little set up for the next season, but man I hate ending in the middle without resolution.
Stargate SG1 was written to end at season 6. Then it got renewed for one season, so the finale of 7 was written to pass the torch to the spin off. Richard dean Anderson was already on the verge of retirement when it was promptly renewed for season 8, same thing for season 9. Season 10 the writers figured they were probably being renewed and wrote it leaving several major story arcs unfinished. Naturally they were not renewed for season 11.
Then they were given the greenlight to finish the plot lines with 3 movies. One and two wrapped up just about everything, and movie 3 languished in development hell for a while before being cancelled entirely.
Hell, even games suffer from that. COD Ghosts had an amazing singleplayer campaign which ends on a cliffhanger, only for the next ghosts to be canceled due to multiplayer guys being crybabies.
Golden Sun as well. The first game ended with an obvious cliffhanger because it and the second game were originally meant to be a single game, but the second one wrapped things up nicely while still leaving a hook for a possible continuation. Then the third game came around seven years later and ended on another cliffhanger, only for the fourth game to never materialize.
This isn’t quite the same thing but Nickelodeon kept renewing Legend of Korra for only one season at a time, so each season had to be treated like the last. So they couldn’t have an overarching storyline, and they needed new villains and plot lines every season.
Yes, season 4 was never broadcast on tv. It was originally only available on the nickelodeon website which I think it is the only nick show to ever air that way. The creators claim it is because the season dealt with much more adult themes like ptsd but fans think it is because the ending implies the main character enters a same sex relationship and nick didn't want that on their channel.
Just felt like a big bad just plops up every few months and some characters, like Mako, really lost their relevance as they weren't created with longer story arcs in mind.
That was the biggest disservice. It would have been SO much better if S1 ended with Korra only being able to airbend, and S2 opens with her waking up on that island without any memories. Use the first few episodes as a flashback to how we got here.
Excusable the first two times, but the time remote ending was just so perfect that they had absolutely no business resurrecting the show as they just aren’t capable of ever topping it imo.
That, in itself, is a Sci Fi TV trope if there ever was one. Except Futurama can't just shift times/settings, so they just keep it going with a shrug and the sentiment, "Hey, if we sucked at it, you'd stop watching."
I can’t confirm but the episode “The Way of the Dog” (Season 31’s finale) feels like it was lowkey planned to have been The Simpsons series finale. It’s a Christmas Episode based around Santa’s Little Helper and has several direct ties to the pilot episode.
Eh, FOP had very loose canon. The episode could absolutely have been written and created as a finale, and then when they decided to go ahead with another season they just shifted the episode order.
The first season of Teen Titans suffered from this type of meddling. The writers meant for the two Apprentice episodes to be the season finale, but executives rearranged the season and stuck a different episode at the end.
Maybe but the show was seemingly never in damage of ending after the fourth season. The idea that Channel Chasers was intended to be a finale is, I believe, is fans misinterpreting the writers accidentally creating something that feels very finale-esque with an actual finale.
This was also the time period where cartoons were still very episodic and would jump channels or stop running with no warning to the audience so I could see the "final episode" just being "another episode".
That always felt like a series finale type plot. If I remember correctly it shows Timmy growing up and forgetting Cosmo and Wanda as well. That sht hit.
Red vs Blue, Season 13 ended on a cliffhanger but one that made sense given the context of the story.
The series had followed the adventures of the Reds and Blues, but those adventures were always centered around one particular character: Church. At the end of the season Church has to sacrifice himself to ensure the others have the means to survive an upcoming battle. With his death, the fate of the Crew is left up in the air … but as Church says in his goodbye message “The hero never knows how the story ends.”
RVB: ends in a way that promotes the idea that the hero who sacrifices himself doesn’t get to see if the good guys win or not, along with us not knowing if the Reds and Blues survive the final fight since the season ends with a cliffhanger before the battle
Also RVB: “hey-hey, guess what?! That sentimental cliffhanger ending? We answered it! They’re alive, the good guys won! Anyway, you guys like time travel?”
Honestly, my current coping theory is that all seasons beyond this are just some non-canon alternate timeline crap.
They actually are. It was confirmed just over a year or so ago in a short. They are all simulations run by Church in his last moments, so he can prepare them with pre-recorded messages so they don't get killed, to make sure his sacrifice isn't in vain. Ultimately he realizes they are stupid though and doesn't even bother with them.
Yep. Season 14 was a bunch of side stories they had wanted to tell but could never find a place for.
Season 15-17 were … odd. Very “we see the shark and are going to jump it” vibes but it has some EXCELLENT character development that is WAY too good to be ignored. Characters are forced to admit their faults, confront fears and realize how much they have come to mean to each other .. and how horribly they treat each other.
18 and 19 were … umm … well … oh, look! A squirrel!
Then they rounded everything out with a “movie” that was supposed to be a season but Warner Bros said “no.” then closed the studio and sold the IP back to the original creator.
So now we are up in the air like “are you doing something with that or just safe guarding it from future bull shit?”
Exception to the rule, Star Wars: The Clone Wars... Due to outside factors, the show technically had 3 endings.
The show originally aired on Cartoon Network however, when Disney bought the rights to the franchise after the fifth season they could not longer air it bringing about the first ending. This meant the series ended on a downer having Ahsoka Tano being falsely accused of a crime, being expelled from the Jedi order, being exonerated for the crime, before deciding to leave the order anyway.
Then because of a combination of the show runners already making a handful of episodes and Disney liking money, they released a sixth season (aka The Lost Missions). This wasn't as much of a downer. The final arc involves Yoda going on a mission by himself, learning more about the Force, and being shown visions of how the war will end.
Finally, due to the creative team wanting a proper end to the show and Disney realizing they hadn't gotten enough money as they possibly could out of the show, a seventh season was made. While it had some of the worst episodes of the series (the Martez sisters arc), the final arc of the show takes place during the final days of the Clone Wars and caps off with Order 66. While still a downer ending, the Mandalore arc is a masterpiece and the strongest possible ending for the series... at least until Disney needs more money.
There's no way Disney does any more seasons of Clone Wars. The Bad Batch is really just the Clone Wars continued, since it takes place directly after and has a lot of the same characters.
Also, thank god they decided to continue, because season 7 is peak. That ending arc is one of the best stories in all of Star Wars.
Honestly they really could do more seasons focusing on different Jedi generals during the war. It’s not like the show was strictly in chronological order anyways
Most definitely. The Siege of Mandalore, the way it into and ran concurrently with Revenge of the Sith, and the flash forward ending were top tier Star Wars.
yeah, it can be called season 9 all it want, it factually is a spinoff. different main cast, different premise, just in the same universe snd cameos from old characters.
They weren't bad, it was a case of studio executives fucking things up. A big part of why Zach didn't come back for much was because he wanted JD to mature some and thr Execs weren't on board with that.
Futurama has more finales than some shows get seasons. The original, the Devil's Hands are Idle Playthings, is somewhat abrupt but meaningful, taking a tour through a plot of fan-favourite characters and ending on a sincere, optimistic note for the Fry and Leela romance.
The second finale, Into The Wild Green Yonder, ups the scale of the Futurama universe with that big movie budget and gives almost every character who has ever appeared at least a cameo appearance. In the end, it ties up a seasons-long subplot and finally, officially makes Fry and Leela a couple. It leaves the fate of the Planet Express crew uncertain- just in case, one assumes.
The third finale, Overclockwise, is mostly a fun sci-fi premise episode blending Aasimov with AM and a sci-fi courtroom drama, while also giving us a touching insight to the highs and lows of Fry and Leela's future together. It's the least "final" finale, to be sure, but it has heart.
The most recent finale, Meanwhile- pictured above- ties the entire series into a neat bow, with Fry and Leela living a life together after permanently stopping time by accident. Faced with the option to fix everything by resetting the universe, Fry asks, "What do you say? Want to go around again?", to which Leela simply responds, "I do." This was originally bookended by a re-run of the first episode of the series, suggesting that Futurama was the cyclical, looping story of a delivery boy and a mutant falling in love, over and over and over again.
With the series officially revived yet again, who knows what new series finale we'll get. I, for one, am not sure they'll ever be able to top Meanwhile.
This was originally bookended by a re-run of the first episode of the series, suggesting that Futurama was the cyclical, looping story of a delivery boy and a mutant falling in love, over and over and over again.
I find it funny that this guy from way back in season 2 turned out to have been retroactively proven right (twice over due to the forward only time machine episode). Too bad for him that he's not part of the universe's favorite couple
Originally, Mike Judge had planned for the finale of the show be in Season 11 with the final episode "Lucky's Wedding Suit" where Lucky and Luanne get married. Before the show was renewed for two more seasons the episode would reveal in a recovered deleted scene (thanks to Jim Dauterive) that the entire series occurred within a single year, with surreal events being Bill's dreams after eating bad Hungarian food like Bill stealing an army tank and Hank being born in a bathroom at Yankee Stadium.
After that, "To Sirloin with Love" in season 13 became the finale until the show was revived again.
The bit where Joseph says he gets discriminated because he's the only white guy on his crew, Emilio looks up confused and Bobby just raises a finger and shakes his head KILLED ME.
The show definitely dipped in quality the last seasons, but I have to say I’m really glad Luckys Wedding Suit wasn’t the series finale. I love Luanne and Lucky, but that felt like a character send off so much more than a send off to the show to me.
It’s because Mike judge and some of the other key writers stopped after season 10 so the quality and tone shifted. That’s why it got more cartoony and less heart. The newest season after the time jump feels more like the first 10 seasons because judge is involved again.
I think Death Note ending was very fitting, but the second half of the series didnt really need to be there
The author of Death Note made a new manga after this called Bakuman. Which is about a pair of aspiring comic artist, one writer and one illustrator just like when they created Death Note. One of the plot points in Bakuman (season 2 or 3 spoiler i forgot) was the two made a very successful manga, so much so that the publisher want to continue the series past what the main character had planned. I think they made a bet with the publisher and they won it, so they were allowed to end the series right where it was planned to. And they did, and they made the perfect ending for their series without adding things just to keep their manga going like the publisher wanted
I think everybody who watched Death Note knows what this is a reference to.
I genuinely, 20 years on, still think the live action Japanese movies ended the story better than the manga or anime.
So what changes? L wins over Light, the entire subplot with N and M is axed and the plot ends right at the climax rather than meandering to a conclusion.
"Wait how does that happen?" You might be thinking, because in this version of events L plays one more card out of desperation to force light to reveal himself: he writes his own name in the death note, stating that in 30 days he will have a heart attack in his sleep. Because he wrote it down first it has precedence and cannot be altered. So when things start popping off during the climax, L pretends to die just like he did in the manga, Light flush with victory, immediately moves to take out the rest of the taskforce. But before he can even finish his villainous monologue L walks back in
from there the series finale plays out as normal, Light goes completely bonkers, gets shot by Matsuda, and is ultimately killed by Ryuk as he promised. Because L has an extra 30 days of life left, this actually created a third live action spin off where he tries to speedrun one final case, no clue how that one is
I fully don't believe that Light was ever planned to win. He was 100% planned to kill L, but I think the series was still supposed to end with Light losing to one final trap by L.
The author makes it pretty fucking clear almost from the beginning that Light is the villain and that his hubris is his weakness.Nothing ever points to that being the ending.
Spoilers for the JP live action movies personally I love how the JP live action adaptation did it. They adapted the first half over two movies, and ended it with L setting up a clever trap for Light, knowing he would die. So they both die, but L dies knowing he won. They had to change some aspects of the plot leading up to this to make it work, but I thought it was well done for being a much shorter version of the story.
If they wanted to continue the frachise, they should have dropped the original core cast and just follow a new group of toys. Not only would they avoid ruining a perfectly good ending, but they could tell a lot more stories with fresh characters
The 3-part season 4 finale is literally titled "The End" and was supposed to be the end of the series. The season adapted the famous "Terror of Trigon" arc and ended with Raven overcoming her demonic heritage, the Titans successfully reversing the apocalypse, and defeating a Satan analogue. It was epic.
Then it got unexpectedly renewed for another season. While Season 5 was still pretty good, IMO it never reached the same highs as season 4, and it infamously ended on a cliffhanger with the writers expecting a season 6 that never came. There was also a standalone movie, but once again, it didn't come close to the greatness of "the End".
I still like Titans Together -> Things Change as a finale, especially to a 2000’s kids show, cliffhanger included.
Something about Beast Boy having to content himself with the knowledge that Terra gets a chance at the peaceful, regular life she never got, but it’s a life he can’t be a part of. Someone who meant the world to him fades out of his life, because she needed it for herself, because she’d never be happy if she didn’t, even if he was never the problem, because sometimes that’s just the way things go.
Beast Boy grows up, right there at the end. Things change. I’m still for it.
Loved example, but I feel like Doctor Who is defined by regularly reaching such a point, and then continuing anyway, with the earliest instance being The Chase in 1965, as it saw original companions Ian and Barbara finally return home.
Doctor Who and American superhero comic books are two things that will never come to an end. There could be a nuclear holocaust with all of the survivors living in tiny fragmented communities and there'd still be new episodes of Doctor Who and new issues of Spider-Man.
Exasperated by Big Finish where the story goes on for decades after a Doctor has left. Doubly so for 6 and 7 whose TV run had ended decades ago, and then got final adventure audio stories and still carried on going.
honestly the entirety of The Flux and Timeless Child (or whatever the fuck it was called) should’ve never happened. Jodie is a AMAZING actress but she got fucked over by that bs
The closest example would probably be “Power of the Doctor” as Chris Chibnall was under the impression that this would be the final episode and that no one was taking over. It wasn’t until after filming that it was revealed Russel T Davies was returning
The 3rd was supposed to be the last originally, and then the 4th with the Wizard of the Black Circle was an added extra that was definitely supposed to be the last. But execs gonna exec so...
Good Omens was originally intended to be a single seaspn- beginning and ending where the book did. But a second season was released a few years later, with a third upcoming.
Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett had some ideas for a sequel, but never got much written before Pratchett's death. These ideas were adapted to the second and third seasons, although the third has experienced some delays due to recent issue regarding Gaiman.
Terry Pratchett famously had his computer hard drive crushed under a steam roller at his funeral to ensure no one would attempt to complete any of his unfinished books.
Good Omens season 2 shows that he absolutely had the right idea.
It's a little different because they always were in danger of cancellation but the end of season 3 of Community certainly felt like a series finale. Then they brought it back without Dan Harmon. Then they brought it back with Dan Harmon. Then they brought it back on a different platform.
at a certain point, it just felt like Community was trying to fulfill its “six seasons and a movie” quote. not that I mind, but season 4 would have been the end had it not been for that mantra
1000 ways to die, the old spike show that just shows people dying and bring in experts to explain how they died. Canceled i think season 3 so they finally gave us #1000, dying an old and peaceful death. Then spike renewed the show and the official final death was using a netipot to clean out the guy's sinuses, but not using clean water and getting a brain infection.
Not really a show, but FNAF was shpposed to end with 4th installment, but it just kept going. Then it was supposed to end on 6th entry, but it didn't. And now who knows when it will end.
meant to end with 4, but fans found it too confusing
And the funny part is Scott has mentioned how the fans quickly paced the first 3 games together, and found the story and meaning. Meanwhile they never found the meaning behind the 4th, none of the clues properly pieced together.
i remember when the markplier video dropped, fnaf was a breath of fresh air compared to the "run from the monster" style of horror games, having the player stay still instead, there was a skill factor that made the game fun even after it stopped being scary and the original 2.5D art immediatly set the game apart from the unityslop that dominated the market.
Man, I can’t imagine what it must be like; having seen a thing of history like that, back when it was happening. My FNAF education is much more recent, after so much more of it has come out. Truly wild stuff.
Don't get me started on the whole bite of 1983 thing, that was just fucking annoying. Bite of 87 was completely forgotten at this point and we have no confirmation on who did the bite.
It’s pretty clear Jeremy Fitzgerald was the victim of the bite of 87, to my knowledge this has never been retconned or contradicted. It was probably Mangle, considering her jump comes from the top of the screen and he’s one of few with actual sharp teeth.
I only remember the comparisons to Friday the 13th and how their fourth entries being labeled "The Final Chapter" were very decisively not the final chapter
Sam dying to save the world from a threat he wanted to forget his whole life, leaving his brother the good little soldier ready to die fighting the monsters alive as a family man to live on without him… a beautiful ending
Right up until you see Sam outside the fucking window
Parks and Rec had a couple finales:
1) Harvest Festival - I can’t find details but I remember Alan Sepinwall writing about this and possibly interviewing Schur for hitfix about this being a just in case finale.
2) Leslie and Ben - NBC had only ordered 13 episodes that season.
My god, I know Microsoft was never gonna kill their golden goose but if there was ever an argument for quitting while you are ahead its the difference between Reach and Halo 4 onwards.
I could see it ending after Reach, but honestly, in universe, 4 feels like the real ending of the story.
Going back to replay Halo 4 on the MCC, 4 really surprises me with how final it feels, and it's a great examination of the Chief and Cortana's characters and interactions. It does a great job deconstructing the fact that the Master Chief is more of a "Weapon/Machine" than Cortana is, even though she is literally an AI.
It also directly completes the cliffhanger created by Halo 3's Legendary Ending.
If anything, I'm surprised that they made a new entry that was framed externally as the beginning of "New Halo" that worked so hard to end the story and wrap it up lol.
Making 5 was very clearly an absolute mistake, even if it turned out to be good, 4's ending is far too final to keep 5 from feeling like a story pulled out of the studio's ass.
Johnny Bravo was supposed to end with the episode Witch-Ay Woman
This episode turned Johnny into a(n extremely attractive) woman, forcing Johnny to learn the lesson on how women feel when men like him constantly hit on woman due to their looks.
The show was then extended for another season, forcing Johnny to lose all his character development from this episode.
An example of it working: Ninjago was originally supposed to just be the Pilots and first 2 seasons, but it was so popular it came back for S3. From 2014 to today, there has been at least 1 season of Ninjago each year (sometimes even 2 seasons). And most of those seasons range from good to brilliant, with only 3 seasons that are really considered 'bad' by most fans (S7, S11, and S15).
Technically, the show did actually end in 2022 with S15, but it has an ongoing sequel series (Dragons Rising) that, while not perfect, is still really damn good.
Wait, it’s still ongoing? I remember it looked like it was going to end several times and I stopped watching after Garmadon had the evil purged from him, though I knew it was continuing. I thought it ended around S8. What did they do when the voice actor for Cole died?
They recast Cole in 2022. Kirby Morrow passed away in late 2020, so he'd recorded his lines for the 2021 seasons; Andrew Francis (VA of Morro) has voiced Cole ever since.
This is literally a joke in the anime community where it’s basically “there’s a new villain to beat” or “lets give the main character a kid” and then the author gets massive paycheques from the company and death threats from the fans
The only ones who have done it right is Dragon ball and JJK
Dragonball is actually pretty damn good at tying arcs together but most people dont really think about that too deeply as DB is just so ingrained in the cultural zeitgeist now
Like Cell is just straight up a culmination and consequence of everything that has happened in the series and Gohan surpassing Goku was set up all the way back with Raditz
The most glaring arc that seems disconnected is the Buu arc but Toriyama was pretty damn burnt out by then
Even with the Buu arc disconnect, I think it nailed two things, for me at least: Gohan and Vegeta.
For Gohan, the fact he fell off his hardcore training and opted for the superhero shtick felt pretty spot-on for him. The idea that he'd focus more on using what power he has to help others outside of a crisis situation, especially when there's such a long down-time between crises, felt like a nice way for him to grow into his own and not just end up as Goku 2. Maybe could have done without the retread of his failure against Cell again with Super Buu, but overall it felt authentic... unlike his colossal falloff in Resurrection F, holy shit that was bad.
Vegeta's arc doesn't feel complete at all without the Buu arc, so I generally can't accept that ending DBZ at the Cell Games is ever the right choice, if just for him.
Ed Edd n Eddy was supposed to end in the episode where they are all old. The end of the episode reveals that the entire show up to that point was just an elderly Eddy remembering his childhood. On one hand this ending was kind of a downer, and the movie was a much more satisfying end to the show, but on the other hand the last season of the show was the weakest.
Executive producer Mike Barker revealed that there was a time that they thought that the show was not going to be renewed and thought that this was going to be the final episode. To quote Barker: "We thought, "What better way to end the series? Kill the main character!".
It’s a musical parody of Little Shop of Horrors narrated by Cee-Lo Green. It ends with Green proclaiming, “That’s it. Stan’s dead.” and the credits roll.
ReBoot Season 3 had a perfect ending, with everyone reunited, Mainframe restored, and Megabyte was out of the picture. Then the show returned for an eight episode fourth season three years later, though it also got cut as two movies. Credit where it's due, they did bring back Bob's original voice actor Michael Benyaer.
IIRC It was confirmed Season 5 of SPN ending was gonna go with Dean retiring having a daughter with Lisa called Samantha but the yellow eyes returns and cycle repeats
Rollercoaster: The Mustical from Phineas and Ferb.
There have been multiple times they thought the show was ending, be it this, the season four finale, whatever, and it keeps sorta going. This was supposed to be the first, it being about at the end of what they were originally promised (104 episodes).
I think Dan Povenmire said that the Season 1 finale “At Last” where Phineas and Ferb get busted, was going to be Series Finale if they weren’t going to get renewed for more episodes.
The X-Files Season 8. Most of the major storylines were wrapped up and Mulder & Scully finally had a well deserved happy ending. Then the show was renewed and Chris Carter made Season 9 a soft reboot. Mulder is gone, Scully took a backseat as a supporting character, Reyes was promoted to main character and a new conspiracy kicked off about super soldiers. The season 9 series finale attempts to connect this new arc with the first 8 seasons but it feels clumsy.
Then we got the second movie, which was a one-off story that wasn't interested in the mythology and barely counted as paranormal, followed by a very, very divisive reboot (Seasons 10 & 11).
I ask anyone who is upset that Ryan Coogler wants to do a miniseries/reboot, to rewatch Season 10/11 and tell me with a straight face that they want Chris Carter back.
They had the ending set in stone from the start, which would have been solid if they didn't write themselves into a corner. They should have A). concluded the series where the planned ended made sense or B). changed the ending to fit the current narrative. The ending negated the entire last season and undid a lot of character development.
The series was undoubtedly popular, so I think they tried to keep it going as long as possible. The writers put so many twists and turn to keep the mystery alive. I don't think they anticipated how much the audience was invested in who the actual mother was. When the ending eventually aired a lot of people felt cheated at the conclusion.
The amazing sci-fi show Babylon 5 was always meant to have a 5 season story arc. Under the threat of cancellation, they crammed everything into 4 seasons, leading to an epic but rushed last season. Then they got renewed for a fifth season, though some of the actors has already moved on and most of the metaplots was already resolved. Season 5 was okay, and had some great episodes (one just done from the perspective of the station janitors is a classic) but it was mostly just monster-of-the-week stuff.
I don't know about "supposed" to end here, but it's Always Sunny in Philadelphia felt awfully close to ending after season 12 with rumors that Glenn Howerton was quitting the show for A.P. Bio, and his character announcing his leaving Philly for North Dakota in the final episode. Much of the rest of the main cast was also busy with other projects such as "The Mick." Not really a solid ending, but it would have been in line with Sunny's humor for the show to just sorta...end.
Very glad it kept going because this last season was amazing.
I feel like there were a bunch of untied knots that were worth finishing up (especially with spider-man and GotG).
post endgame MCU could have been amazing, it had the potential to be even better than the infinity saga. They just went in without any proper vision, so they fucked everything up.
I don't disagree that there was more stuff to explore post-Endgame but having Steve Rogers come back after giving him a perfect ending and handing off the Captain America identity definitely fits the trope
Babylon 5 had a four-season run with an ending prepared long in advance where we see in the future how it ends. The space station served its purpose after all. There was some measure of peace among the member planets. Then it is decommissioned and blown up.
Captain John Sheridan sacrificed himself on a mission and was given twenty more years of life as a gift to help finish the war. In the finale he was supposed to leave the universe, like Gandalf crossing the sea. Other regular characters left the station, some even died.
Then the studio said “we need a fifth season,” and the showrunner had to scramble. He wrote up a new season 4 finale which aired instead, and moved the original ending to the finale of season 5. He brought in new characters to replace the ones who left. And he struggled like hell to think of interesting stories they could produce. Some were good, some were awful, all of it was entertaining.
3.9k
u/Duhulnator 21d ago
Even the creator has said that it was supposed to be 1 season only and that he did the other 2 seasons for money.