Every good story has an ending. Sometimes, all of the characters you've come to know and love
get happy endings, but other times, our heroes are left to the worst possible fate. Here are a few of
the bleakest finales in TV history.
Fans either loved or hated Seinfeld's final episode. Whichever side you're on,
you have to admit that it was a pretty bold way to end a lighthearted sitcom.
What makes Seinfeld's ending so dark isn't just that it throws Jerry, Elaine, George, and Kramer
behind bars. Co-creator Larry David clearly wanted to put viewers in the uncomfortable position
of acknowledging that these characters, as funny as they might be from a distance,
simply weren't good people. And just in case you think the show is being way too easy on the gang,
the final episode makes sure to bring back just about every single side character who
ever got humiliated or harmed over the course of Seinfeld to ensure that the protagonists face
actual consequences. There's no mistake : they belong in jail.
For the most part, fans disliked Seinfeld's finale at the time,
but maybe that's the point. It's a punishing hour of television,
and while it's probably not the finale anyone wanted, it's definitely the one they deserved.
Quantum Leap was an entertaining blend of science fiction,
drama, and comedy. The premise of Dr. Sam Beckett leaping through time with only the
holographic image of his buddy Al for support is pure sci-fi. And the idea that he could
presumably only move forward by repairing the past meant that, from week to week,
he could jump from crime thrillers to feel-good romances to straight up just being a monkey.
"And so, Doctor Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, striving to
put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next leap will be the leap home."
The series finale begins with Sam realizing that he's leapt into his own body,
but in an unfamiliar reality. Finding himself in a coal mining town in 1953,
at the same moment of his birth, Sam chats with a mysterious bar owner, who tells him that he's
been in control of his own fate the whole time. Sam's need to help people has kept him from making
the leap home. The divine bartender asks Sam if he's ready to finally have a normal life again,
but Sam wants to take one final leap, to prevent his friend Al's heartbreaking divorce.
Successfully changing the course of Al's life, Sam leaps again, and the screen fades to black.
A hastily mis-spelled caption proclaims that Sam never returned home. Despite Sam's goodwill,
he's still out there. Forever… thanks to the show being cancelled at the last moment.
"Felina," the last episode of Breaking Bad, might be the most satisfying TV finale of all time.
Every question gets answered. Almost every loose thread is tied up. Still,
Jesse's big rescue aside, "Felina" is every bit as dark as the rest of the series.
Ultimately, the finale proves that, despite Walt's good intentions,
his secret life as a drug dealer fractured the lives of every single person he knew and loved.
Yes, poor Walt Jr. is going to inherit a hefty sum of money eventually,
but it's still blood money, and that certainly won't undo the trauma of finding out his beloved
father was such a rotten guy. Although Walt manages to find it in himself to mount a big
rescue mission for his partner, Jesse, this hardly redeems his past actions.
One of the darkest moments of "Felina," is Walt's final conversation with Skyler,
when he admits that building his meth empire was never about his family:
"I did it for me. I liked it."
Luke Cage was an honorable figure in Netflix's dark corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Although he'd claim that he wasn't heroic, his actions spoke louder than words.
Whether Luke was bouncing bullets off his chest or facing down bad guys with
his intimidating swagger, it's no wonder that he quickly became "Harlem's hero."
Yet, as the show's finale demonstrates, even Luke Cage is vulnerable to the dangers of power.
When Luke's archenemy Mariah Dillard finally dies, poisoned by her estranged daughter Tilda,
she has one last trick up her sleeve. She leaves her nightclub, Harlem's Paradise, in Luke's name,
making the hero a de facto crime boss. Although Luke hopes he can stay true to his morals,
his cold stare into the camera in the episode's final moments reveal an emerging dark side.
Unfortunately, Netflix pulled the plug,
leaving this culturally important series with a serious bummer of an ending.
Dinosaurs was a cheerful ABC sitcom featuring a working-class family of prehistoric lizards
dealing with the ups and down of life, and if you grew up in the '90s, you probably
expected it to appear here. Why? Because, while plenty of sitcoms end on a bittersweet note,
there's only one where the doofus dad helps cause the apocalypse.
The show's finale,"Changing Nature," is a subtle, but powerful, climate change allegory. Although
the show doesn't beat its audience over the head with its message, it's nonetheless some incredibly
depressing viewing. When series co-creator Michael Jacobs first proposed killing everybody off, ABC
balked, but after some consideration, everyone saw that it was the right choice. Jacobs told Vulture,
"I said [. . .] 'it's not the cast that we are trying to destroy,
it's the entire world.' My source for doing this is history!"
While Superman: The Animated Series was a quality cartoon,
it never quite escaped the shadow of its predecessor, Batman: The Animated Series.
However, while the Man of Steel's adventures often seemed lighthearted compared to the
exploits of the Caped Crusader, Superman's finale left him hanging in a dark place.
The two-part final episode "Legacy" features a mysteriously brainwashed Kal-El,
who believes he's the adopted son of Darkseid. This evil Superman is waging war on Earth in his
villainous father's name. Of course, Superman soon recovers and delivers an unholy smack-down
to Darkseid. But the people of Earth aren't about to just forgive and forget. Thanks to Darkseid,
Superman's reputation on Earth is shot. Aside from Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen,
no one will move to help the disgraced Man of Steel.
"If you ask me, the bum oughta go back where he came from."
That's how it ends. When the animated Superman returned in Justice League,
this plot thread was never revisited.
Now that Mark Ruffalo's Hulk is recognized as an honored member of the Avengers, it's easy
to forget that the original, onscreen depiction of the green goliath was a true tragedy. 1977's
The Incredible Hulk was a tale of true superhero tragedy. The sight of David Banner hitchhiking
off to an uncertain fate as the famous "Lonely Man" theme plays remains a touching TV moment.
The series itself took great pains to depict Banner as a decent man facing
horrible circumstances. The Hulk wasn't a superhero but a big, green disease,
and from week to week, Banner's goal was to find a cure, clear his name, and return to a normal life.
Sadly, David Banner never gets a happy ending. The original show ended in an anticlimax,
but thankfully, the story continued in a series of TV movies.
The last of those was titled The Death of the Incredible Hulk. In the film's climax,
Banner's kindness toward so many others goes unrewarded, he's never cured, and he dies in the
body of the Hulk after falling out of an airplane. Suddenly, "The Lonely Man" is even sadder.
A medical drama set in a run-down Boston Hospital, St. Elsewhere was known for its gritty,
realistic storylines. Often cited as one of the most influential shows of all time,
St. Elsewhere also ends with the weirdest twist in television history.
In the show's final moments, the camera pulls back from St. Eligius Hospital to reveal the building
inside a snowglobe. A young autistic boy named Tommy Westphall is staring into the globe,
while his construction worker dad whom viewers will recognize as Dr. Donald Westphall,
one of the show's main characters, discusses the boy's condition.
The entire show has apparently taken place within Tommy Westphall's mind.
Here's where it gets stranger. As postulated by the late comic book writer Dwayne McDuffie,
if St. Elsewhere was a figment of Tommy's imagination,
then so are a shocking number of fictional characters and settings.
St. Elsewhere boasted a surprising number of crossovers. If you connect the dots, other shows
that happened in Tommy Wesphall's imagination include Frasier, Homicide: Life on the Street,
and The X-Files. Even the Marvel Cinematic Universe is subject to the Westphall theory.
The animated series Ed, Edd n Eddy always had a bit of a dark side. Despite the show's light tone,
the trio of Eds still seem isolated from their peers. Eddy, a boastful loser who's
always trying to scam others and worships an older brother who looks down on him,
is an especially sad character. That depressing subtext hit the foreground in
the show's original finale, "Take This Ed and Shove It." The episode begins like any other,
but, during the second part, Eddy gets hit on the head and awakens as a bitter old man. The
entire series has been Eddy remembering his lost youth. Old Eddy spends the rest of the
episode trying to escape his fate, but in the end, all he can do is accept it.
For a cartoon, that's a pretty depressing way to go out. However, the show proved
popular enough to spark a revival, and an additional two seasons followed. Nonetheless,
the fact that this episode was intended to be the last we saw of the Eds is definitely a shocker.
No list of dark TV finales is complete without the final episode of The Sopranos.
What's darker than leading the audience to believe something
horrible is about to befall the main character and then cutting to black?
In the decade since The Sopranos ended, creator David Chase has expressed no regrets about being
so cruel to his audience, and continues to be ambiguous about Tony Soprano's fate
while admitting that the finale was more controversial than he expected.
In a 2019 interview with the Director's Guild of America, Chase stated,
"I thought the ending would be somewhat jarring, sure.
But not to the extent it was, and not a subject of such discussion."
Nonetheless, you have to give Chase credit. There's a reason
people still debate this ending today.
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