7 endings worse than Game of Thrones

Original image taken from Medium

Warning Spoilers for: Strange, Reaper, Demons, Farscape, Utopia, Beowolf Return to the Shieldlands, Jekyll and Hyde, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, The Shannara Chronicles

So Game of Thrones is over.

I thought the ending was OK. but only OK as far as season 8 had been going such that the ending could have been far worse. Taking into account the whole story across every season of the show the ending was a bit disappointing with only a couple of things paying off really.

However it's far from the worst ending to something I've ever been the unfortunate witness to.
So here are the worst series endings I've ever seen. And just to be clear I have to have actually seen them so the infamously bad endings to Lost, Heroes and the Sci-Fi show Defiance aren't on here because I got fed up and quit them long before the end. I'm also relegating shows that were adaptations of book series to honourable mentions because technically I could go read the books to get the rest of the story.

Honourable mentions

The Shannara Chronicles - Season 1 was enjoyable as a fantasy romp that could well have been considered a parody of other fantasy series. Season 2 seemed very toned down and poe faced in comparison but it's ending was very much done predicting it would be back for Season 3. Having defeated the big evil it's revealed the wellspring for the world is still poisoned. The hero discovers his blood undoes the corruption and but it's going to take a lot, so one stab wound later he's falling back into the wellspring having seemingly made the ultimate sacrifice. The series however ends with him waking up discovering he's not dead and has been transported somewhere strange. The End. No more, that's it.

The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - A series the BBC canned. A TV adaptation of the Hitch Hiker's Guide books . The series ends with Arthur Dent the main character of the book trapped in the stone age after a strange time travel accident with no idea how many of the other characters survived.

On to the main ones

Image from Alchetron

For those who don't know of this pretty obscure UK series it was an attempt by channel ITV to create their own supernatural monster show. It showed a lot of promise too with Philip Glenister in one of the main roles, hot off his success as DCI Jean Hunt in the UK version of Life on Mars no less. The show had a slightly rocky start but seemed to be finding its footing later in the series. The show didn't get renewed and how did it end? Well the series ended with the new Van Helsing killing his first Vampire (with help) and finding out that his father was actually considering trying to broker (foolishly) peace between monsters and humans and had planned to give him over to the monsters while he was a young child. The series just ended, the revelation now meaning nothing.

 For those who aren't familiar with this short lived series this was what BBC spent their Dr Who budget on before Dr Who came back. It followed the adventures of John Strange a former priest whose wife was murdered by the demon Asmoth and his pursuit of said Demon lead to him being implicated (but not charged with) a series of gruesome murders. Accompanying him was Jude a nurse whose Husband had turned out to be a Demon in the pilot episode. How did the series end?
Well the series ended with John Strange in a police cell being suspected of more murders as Jude went to meet someone in an old church. The episode ended with bloody writing appearing in the cell taunting John Strange and implying that Asmoth was now about to kill Jude as well and John was about to fail to protect someone he loved for a 2nd time. The BBC never renewed the series and while there is a written ending apparently floating round out there on the internet I don't know if it's even around anymore. The ending to the series as such was a giant cliff hanger implying the hero had failed entirely. A miserable ending that didn't even end up as the nihilistic ending like Blake 7.

Image from IMDB

So the show follows Samuel "Sam" Oliver as he discovers his parents promised their first born son to the Devil in a literal deal with the Devil and he is their only son. With his soul belonging to the Devil and he is given the choice, work as a bounty hunter recovering souls that have escaped from hell or the Devil will take his mother's soul instead.  Along the way Sam's best friends get involved in his Reaper duties, the girl he has a crush (Andi) on falls for him, he meets a pair of fallen angels and finds out he can play the Devil to try and win back his soul and has a way to stand a chance of winning by exploiting the Devil's weakness.

The reason the ending sucks? Well it's a cliff hanger as one of the fallen angels breaks Sam's dominant arm just before he challenges the devil and Andi whose put her own soul on the line to let Sam do the contest with the devil tells him to try anyway. Sam loses and mysteriously the fallen angel gets his wings back because Andi and Sam both having their souls belong to the devil is somehow part of god's plan. As the show ended there we never got a conclusion.

Image from the ITV fandom Wiki

ITV are back in this list again with yet another show that managed a 1 series run and ended on an annoying cliff hanger. Beowulf Return to the Shieldlands re-imagined the classic poem / piece of literature to bring far more complexity to the world and expand it far more. Lots of political conflict between the different kingdoms Beowulf tried to help unite them to face the threat of the mudborn, a species that evolved separate from humanity but now is in conflict due to humanity encroaching upon their lands.

The finale saw Evlina having being exposed as an intelligent mudborn able to change her appearance to blend in with humanity as she fled along with a mudborn she'd rescued and had named Grendl as war was declared on the Mudborn as a whole after they attacked the main settlement. The reimagining brought new complexity to this world as the Mudborn were no longer the mindless creatures they initially appear to be. With Beowulf even at one point having a fling with Evlina only to push her away when he discovers she's Mudborn (Mudborn having killed Beowulf's Wife and child in this version). Being pushed away by Beowulf lead her back to the arms of  Slean, the ruler Herot (where Beowulf lives), whom she previously had a romance with. Slean knew of Evlina's Mudborn lineage and still loved her so this brought one hell of a set of plot elements for a second season with the head of the alliance at war with the Mudborn now also being in love with one. Alas the show was cancelled with no new conclusion meaning the closest thing to one is just to go with the Beowulf movie from before or the original poem.

Image from IMDB

Jim Henson's (yes the Muppet guy) Sci-Fi space adventure that was once described as "As close to R rating as the network would let us get" was great. A wacky varied cast of characters each with their own personality and a Sci-Fi universe that was one of the most imaginative at the time on tv and so different to many others. Through trials and tribulations, the literal death of a second version of the main character John Crichton we finally get Aeryn Sun and Circhton finally getting together as a couple. After surviving a major series of incidents they decide to set down the living ship Moya on an ocean moon where the ocean's have healing properties or something to help heal her. Crichton and Aeryn go out on a two person row boat and Aeryn tells Circhton she's pregnant with his child. And then a bounty hunter ship flys over the horizon and blasts the pair of them into little cubes which fall out of their boat and into the ocean.

Yes we did get this resolved with the Peacekeeper wars mini series but before that point and with news of the show being not renewed for a new series the ending was the both of the series leads having been killed by a random bounty hunter we'd never met before this point.

Yes ITV manage a hat trick with another 1 series run show that ended badly.  Jekyll and Hyde followed the adventures of Dr. Robert Jekyll the grandson of the original Dr Jekyll whose formula is implied to have changed his genetics and allowed the manifestations a Hyde persona to be passed on to his offsping. The Hyde persona coming with enhanced strength durability and speed when a person ended up changing however it's implied Dr Robert Jekyll father found a way to suppress the Hyde persona emerging, something Robert uses but fears are becoming less effective. The main conflict of the show is between the mysterious IMO government division tasked with fighting and controlling the strange and paranormal and Tenebrae a paranormal terrorist organisation whose goal is to bring over / resurrect the body of an otherworldly demon king  called Lord Trash.

The series ended with the leader of Tenebrae Captain Dance opening a sealed jar containing the heart of Lord Trash. Hyde then proceeds to punch the heart sending out a huge shockwave that knocks everyone unconscious. However we'd been told such actions could put anyone close in real danger. The series ended with almost the entire cast unconscious or worse including all the villains and that was how it all ended.

Ah Utopia the show about government conspiracies that showed the power of deep fakes to be used for ill even before there was even a term for it. Utopia season 2 saw Wilson Wilson work for and eventually take over the network becoming the new Mr Rabbit. The series ends with the network now in possession of a canister of Russian Flu virus and ready more than ever to enact their plan of sterilising a large portion of the world's population using the vaccine to Russian flu as a Trojan horse to also administer the sterilising agent called Janus, all in the name of stopping overpopulation.

So that was the list. For those of you eager to tell everyone else your most hated ending there is a comments section below if you feel you want to tell people. Otherwise hope you enjoyed this list