Why TV Show Finales are Never Satisfying.

By this point, I’m sure you’ve experienced a disappointing end to a television series… or a few. Maybe the big reveal was a letdown? Or the final climax of the story was more of a whimper than a bang. In this renaissance in television, this phenomenon is seeming more and more common, but why? Why do series finales never seem to stick the landing? Well, let’s look into a few reasons. 

Narrative

The first reason is narrative-based. Now, I’m going to take you back to year 3 literacy, and remind you of the traditional structure of a story: Every story needs a beginning, middle and end. This may seem obvious and easily done when telling a simple contained story, but when it comes to a series, this structure can become incredibly complicated. During a long-form series, you might find that this three-act structure isn’t just contained to each episode, but may simultaneously run alongside an overarching narrative to connect the episodes together and move the story along. Furthermore, the function of this structure is not only to organise a story (Although it definitely helps) but ultimately it can be used to create and maintain tension for the audience. But let’s break it down a little bit more.

 Looking at this diagram, you can see that through the narrative, on the cusp of the second and third act is the climax of the story. This serves as the reward and the peak of the narrative tension that had been building through the first and second act. However, imagine tension as a rubber band; You stretch it gradually until it becomes taught and eventually breaks. When the rubber band breaks, the tension is broken. This rubber band snap occurs at the climax. However, imagine you stretch the band over and over again. When it does eventually snap, the integrity of the band is weakened and the snap is unsatisfying. Tension works in the exact same way. If you try and stretch the tension out too much and too often, the final result, the climax, the snap, is destined to be weak. 

Think of Line of Duty (Sorry if this is too soon), although it isn’t confirmed that this was the final season, the ultimate reveal of ‘H’ was generally… underwhelming. Although I have my personal opinions of the series finale, because of the build-up of ‘H’ over 6 series, it was always destined to be disappointing. The ‘H’ rubber band had been stretched over and over again, particularly during season 5’s suspicion of Hastings, that the final reveal wasn’t able to snap, just kind of… split. Even if Line of Duty returns for a 7th series, unless the story is entirely shifted, it has already overstretched its elastic band to maximum tension. Now, imagine if the show had instead finished at season 3, at the reveal and death of Dot the Caddy. I personally feel that if this had been the end of the show, it would have had a perfect elastic band snap, but it wasn’t. Instead, they used this snap as the springboard to restart the tension. Line of Duty, as great a show as it has been, glued its elastic band back together and attempted to maintain the tension for 3 more seasons, leading to the disappointment of the season 6 finale. Although tension can be essential to a satisfying climax of a story, it is by no means the only reason. 

The Impact of Fan Theories

Another key reason for an unsatisfying ending of a series is because of the fans. Now don’t grab your pitchforks, I’m not attacking fandoms because I’m not into attacking myself, but the rise of fandom has certainly had an impact on the structure of the series. 

Think back to Game of Thrones (Once again, might still be too soon, so sorry again), when the show reached the finale, fans were just about ready to stick the writers with the pointy end for “ruining” their favourite show. But I pose a question: What were the writers supposed to do? Yes, the ending was unsatisfying at best and objectively terrible at worst, but with such a huge spectacle running over ten years with double the lore of the show in books alongside it, nobody was going to be happy with how the ends were tied up. This is because the fans were too loyal. Now, this isn’t exclusive to GoT, it’s been seen time and time again when a long-form piece of media gains a huge and enthusiastic fan base. Think Sherlock, Hannibal, How I Met Your Mother, and even Star Wars, what do all these things have in common? Fan theories. Fan theories are a huge part of these fandoms, as the audience is often actively encouraged to theorise and participate by the media they are consuming themselves. Although fan theories can appear ridiculous and outlandish, they are such an essential activity bringing fandoms together and building hype for a series climax. But when fans are creating these theories of how the narrative will play out, the official climax will never reach the level of enthusiasm as the endless possibilities of fan theories. It is undeniable that fan theories are fun and exciting, but in the end, the fans are opening themselves to be hurt by the writers (No, I have never forgiven you Moffat, but that’s another article). 

Maybe the Real ‘H’/King of Westeros/Sherlock’s Survival was the Friends we Made Along the Way?

So this was a very brief discussion of how both narrative and fans can act to create an unsatisfying ending, and it’s not looking like this will end anytime soon. After all, with series generally lasting much longer than before, and fan theories being enabled across social media and writers trying to fight against these *cough* Moffat *cough*, we may never get a satisfying ending to television series ever again. Don't forget, as fans you are allowed to feel disappointed, upset, frustrated if something doesn't end the way that you think it should. But remember that no matter how you are feeling, there is NEVER a justification to attack writers for not meeting your needs. You can be disappointed without being disrespectful.