What makes a good TV show finale? Shows like Breaking Bad and How I met Your Mother ended abruptly and fans were all too familiar with their questionable endings. Not only were fans discomfited, but critics also weren’t happy about the finales. Many claimed that the writers were lazy or just looking for a cheap copout. So what does shape a good TV show finale? An impressive TV show finale delivers the viewers a sense of closure and is memorable and clever.

Closure is extremely important in a TV show finale. Afterall, it is the last episode of the whole TV series. No one wants to wrap up a TV show with loads of unanswered questions and loose ends. It’s also satisfying for viewers to have closure. Without closure, viewers may feel restless and robbed of their time. They didn’t spend hours,weeks, or even months of their lives to end up with lingering questions.

A TV show finale that is memorable leaves a lasting impression on its viewers. If the finale isn’t eventful, it can give the impression that the writers didn’t succeed. For example,when the TV show How I met Your mother ended in 2014, it revealed to the viewers that most of the major events in all nine seasons had been a red herring for the question everyone had been asking, how did Ted meet the mother of his children? But the question was answered in a rather lazy way. It revealed that Ted had met his wife at a train station. This event only took five minutes out of 208 episodes. But what the viewers didn’t know was that during the entire retelling of the story, which lasted nine seasons, the mother had passed away, which was only revealed in the last episode.  The writers decided to end the show by tying everything back to the first episode, when Ted meets Robin. The kids then suggest that Ted invite Robin over making the whole story redundant and pointless. It wasn’t well received by viewers because it took many episodes for Ted to realize that he and Robin weren’t a compatible couple, which cause viewers to become a little frustrated.

When a TV show finale is clever, it amazes the viewers and ends the show on a positive note. What makes a finale clever is when every last detail included is carefully thought through. In the TV show Breaking Bad, many viewers were angry that the writers decided to kill off the main character to end the show. The ending actually depended on the audience’s knowledge of science. The main character Walter’s death was implied, with the screen zooming out after he collapsed from a gunshot wound. But when theorists analyzed the last episode, they researched the type of gun, the area of the gunshot wound, and the location where Walter was standing, and concluded that it was almost impossible for Walter to have died, and decided it was up to the viewer’s interpretation. The ending was clever, but it was frustrating for the viewers to have to go through all that work to reach a verdict.  

When TV show finales give a sense of closure and is memorable and clever, it creates a lasting impression on its viewers. It’s difficult to wrap-up many seasons of content in around an hour or less. It’s even more difficult to make the finale both memorable and clever. But when writers go the extra mile to produce a finale that is unique, it’s impressive.