Lost Isn’t Alone: The 10 Most Controversial Series Finales Ever

When viewers settled in on Sept. 22, 2004 for the premiere of a new ABC show about marooned survivors of a plane crash, there was no way of knowing what the next six years had in store for them.

Very quickly, Lost revealed itself to be so much more than a survival drama. The sci-fi series created by Jeffrey Leiber, J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof would introduce enthralled fans to hatches, polar bears, smoke monsters, the Dharma Initiative, the Others and more obstacles meant to prevent the passengers of Oceanic Flight 815 (played by Matthew Fox, Evangeline Lilly, Josh Holloway and more) from leaving their tropical prison—or lure them back if they managed to escape. Overseen for much of its run by Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, Lost encouraged viewers to try and solve the puzzle at its heart while always promising that answers would eventually arrive.

But by the time the show signed off in 2010, it had introduced more mystery than could reasonably be resolved and its finale chose to focus more on the characters we’d come to know and love over the specifics of why and how every last strange occurrence had come to pass. Naturally, fans were left reeling at the perceived bait-and-switch, earning the show a spot on the list of TV’s most controversial series finales ever. 

In true Lost fashion, let’s celebrate the anniversary of its arrival with a flash-forward to its end. What can we say? We love non-linear storytelling just as much as Lindelof and Cuse. 

Fans were stunned when ABC’s groundbreaking sitcom signed off after nine seasons with the titular heroine (played by Roseanne Barr) revealing that the entire final season had been a figment of her imagination, with her beloved husband Dan (John Goodman) having not actually survived his heart attack in the season prior. It was a callback to the character’s desire in the early seasons to become a writer by having Roseanne sitting at a typewriter, writing a different ending to her story, but it left viewers feeling like their time had been wasted in the worst way. When the show was revived in 2018 after 21 years, it forgot all about its controversial ending. Little did we know, something even more controversial was on the way…

When ABC decided it was time to end this family-friendly sitcom starring puppet dinosaurs after four seasons, the creators decided to do it in the most depressing way possible by having its main character, Sinclair family patriarch Earl, trigger a catastrophic extinction event that would not only kill every main character, but his entire species. Bleak.

David Chase‘s game-changing HBO mob drama ushered in modern day’s golden age of television. It also delivered one of the most controversial finales ever with a simple smash cut to black just as something—maybe nefarious, maybe not—was about to happen to the show’s iconic antihero, Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini). Did he meet his maker while feasting on a bowl of onion rings with his family? And did Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler) ever finish parallel parking? We will never know.

Five simple words are all we need to explain why this iconic CW drama’s finale missed the mark: Dan Humphrey was Gossip Girl. In what world?!

Daenerys (Emilia Clark) suddenly a fascist villain? Bran (Isaac Hempstead-Wright) the king? The Iron Throne melted down?! By the time the iconic HBO series reached its denouement in May 2019, a lot of fans were left wondering how this could’ve possibly been the best ending after eight epic seasons. And more than a year later, many of them are still asking that very question.

If you hated the way Lena Dunham‘s HBO comedy ended, with a half-hour that focused merely on Hannah Horvath with a bit of Allison Williams‘ Marnie thrown in, helping to raise Hannah’s baby, may we suggest you think of it as merely an ill-advised epilogue and allow the penultimate episode—which saw Hannah saying goodbye to all of the titular girls in a truly emotionally effective half-hour—to act as the show’s true finale. That’s what we do, at least. 

Watching Showtime’s serial killer thriller, one got the impression that the titular murderer (played by Michael C. Hall) might eventually have to, you know, pay for his many, many sins by the time all was said and done. Instead, his poor sister Debra (Jennifer Carpenter) met her demise and he escaped Miami to restart as…a lumberjack in Oregon?! Never has a series finale more nakedly telegraphed the idea “We like this character and may want to do more with him some day” before.

When Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse decided to end the mind-bending ABC mystery by getting metaphysical rather than giving some, you know, concrete answers about what had been going on for the last six seasons, not everyone was exactly thrilled. So, the island was purgatory, right? Right?!

After nine seasons of listening to Ted Mosby (Josh Radnor) deliver one of the most long-winded stories in the world on the CBS sitcom, detailing how he met the mother of his children, fans were understandably horrified by the tossed-off way it was revealed that she’d been dead all along and Ted was, in fact, seeking his kid’s permission to pursue their aunt Robin Scherbatsky (Cobie Smulders). It was, uh, a choice.

When the iconic NBC comedy signed off in 1998 after nine seasons, original co-creator Larry David returned to really drive home how little the show’s core four characters had learned—and how kinda awful they’d been all along. A parade of returning guest stars testified about all the horrible things that had befallen them as a result of Jerry (Jerry Seinfeld), Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), George (Jason Alexander), and Kramer’s (Michael Richards) extreme selfishness and, in the end, a judge threw them in jail for a full year as a result of it. And fans were PISSED.

Lost is available to stream on Hulu and IMDbTV.