By 
There’s been a lot of chatter in recent years about great TV shows delivering underwhelming final seasons, but realistically, these seasons tend to inspire mixed reactions rather than outright disgust. Beyond the bubble of the relentless social media dunking they got, many people loved how Stranger Things and The Boys concluded. Game of Thrones, though? We don’t talk about it.
Still, lackluster final seasons certainly aren’t a new TV phenomenon; we’re old enough to remember the absurd plotting of late Dynasty! But it got us thinking about the very best final seasons that live-action television has given us over the years. Not the best finales—there are plenty of those—but whole, terrific last seasons.
As such, you might see some notable absences here. The Wire was a great show, but its last season was arguably the worst of the bunch, even though it was still pretty good. Then there are shows like Justified, Breaking Bad, Blackadder, and Deadwood. They should be on the list, but, following our own (entirely made-up) rules, shows with brilliant final seasons that then went on to have revival series, specials, and movies that were simply just okay were struck from the list. That’s the way the cookie crumbled on this one, folks!
With all that said, and some spoilers ahead, here’s where we landed…
Angel
After four seasons of tumultuous storytelling that took us through the highs and lows of the titular vampire’s new life in L.A. (and the lows were really low) the final season of Joss Whedon’s supernatural drama show shouldn’t have been great, but it was. Without Buffy and Firefly to juggle, creative focus was suddenly on keeping Angel afloat, and it was all change at Angel Investigations as the core team took over law firm Wolfram & Hart in an effort to fight evil from within, only for everything to go massively pear-shaped. Gunn got his mind altered to become a legal expert and took an enormous amount of psychic damage. Fred was killed and her mind taken over by the powerful ancient being Illyria. Angel became a puppet, literally and figuratively. Meanwhile, Spike (James Marsters) was added to the cast, reviving the excellent chemistry between the two clashing vampires of the mothership show.
The season was consistently jolted with these fresh sparks and built to a fantastic but bittersweet conclusion, as Angel and the gang realized they weren’t fighting evil from the inside, but were actually being absorbed by it, triggering a final stand where each character accepted their doom because they understood that the fight would never end, and “winning” was an impossible concept. Yes, the story continued in the (also good) Angel: After the Fall comics, but the show itself went out on a brilliantly philosophical high note. – Kirsten Howard
Better Call Saul
It may be hard to remember now, but it took a minute for Breaking Bad prequel Better Call Saul to really find itself. Originally conceived as a half-joke in the Breaking Bad writers’ room, the mere notion of a spinoff following the travails of Walter White’s colorful criminal lawyer didn’t come out of the gates fully formed. Midway through its run, however, Better Call Saul would blossom into its own special, tonally unique thing.
By the time its final episodes rolled around, Better Call Saul was truly on a roll. The first half of the season 6 meticulously and entertainingly works towards the execution of Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) and Kim’s (Rhea Seehorn) plan to do “something unforgivable” to well-meaning rival Howard Hamlin. After that “something unforgivable” proves to be, like, really unforgivable, the back half of the season spends much of its time on one of the most satisfying extended flash-forwards in television history. – Alec Bojalad
The Good Place
The last season of The Good Place finally saw the main characters actually get to the Good Place, after designing an experiment to prove that flawed people in a simulated Good Place can become better people. But inevitably, they found that once humans reached a place where they could have everything they wanted, there was nothing left to strive for, and their lives became boring and kind of meaningless. This all led to the creation of what was effectively a suicide door, where people could end their existence once they felt their lives were complete. One by one, we saw the characters we’d come to know and love enter the door. That’s when the sobbing started.
Yet The Good Place’s great finale was bolstered by the fascinating moral and ethical questions at work throughout the rest of the season, with the characters proving, bit by bit, that the entire structure of eternal reward and punishment was fundamentally broken, earning them a real chance at happiness. It’s a wonderful batch of episodes; just don’t make us think about anyone’s final speech unless there’s at least one box of tissues nearby. – KH
Twin Peaks: The Return
25 years after the show apparently concluded with a wildly uneven second season (and a terrific finale) Twin Peaks returned for a third one that completely nuked fan predictions and instead presented the notion that fan nostalgia for the series was inherently destructive.
Overseen by creators David Lynch and Mark Frost, The Return was less a third season of Twin Peaks and more a long, experimental movie. Gone were the kooky cherry pie shenanigans and the soapy narrative fans remembered, replaced by unsettling, seemingly disconnected threads and surreal passages, one of which traced back to the detonation of the first atomic bomb.
Lynch and Frost weren’t interested in simply bringing back the Twin Peaks people knew and loved. As such, Kyle MacLachlan’s Dale Cooper was removed from the equation until the final episodes, replaced by a childlike version, Dougie, and Cooper’s evil doppelganger. Even when he finally did come back, Cooper’s efforts to defeat evil and save Laura Palmer ultimately failed.
There is no meaning in a neat ending, the minds behind Twin Peaks told us. On a long enough timeline, certainty collapses. It’s a hell of a message, but we’d be remiss not to note that some fans weren’t happy with what they got in season 3, finding it slow and annoying. Could never be us! – KH
The Sopranos
Every now and then, someone will remember that The Sopranos is basically all I ever want to talk about and ask me what the best season of HBO’s crime classic is. My answer is always the same: Every single passing minute of The Sopranos is better than the minute preceding it. From the first millisecond of the pilot to the sharp cut-to-black in the finale, the saga of Tony Soprano only gets darker, richer, and better.
Nowhere is that more apparent than in the series’s frankly astonishing final season (which HBO refers to as “Season 6 Part II but we’ll just view as “Season 7” for simplicity’s sake). Each and every one of these final nine episodes would be the best episode ever for 99% of all other television shows. Things start at a ludicrous high with the impactful “family vacation” episode “Soprano Home Movies” and only get better from there in episodes like “Stage 5,” “Kennedy and Heidi,” and “The Blue Comet.”
Naturally, The Sopranos’ bold ending choice takes up a lot of oxygen in the cultural consciousness. But don’t forget that the episodes preceding that moment are equally nasty, heartbreaking, thrilling, and brilliant.– AB
Six Feet Under
Fans of Six Feet Under will always remember its finale, “Everyone’s Waiting”, as it included a devastating montage that nixed any hopes for a continuation of its main characters’ lives by showing each of their deaths. But the episodes leading up to that iconic montage had been incredibly strong, so the show’s fifth season remains very special overall.
Typically for the world of Six Feet Under, there’s no smooth ride to the finish line. Nate and a pregnant Brenda are finally supposed to be getting married, but Nate is still so fundamentally flawed that he sleeps with Maggie, suffering a massive stroke and leaving Brenda to raise their child alone, while Claire moves to New York and David and Keith embrace parenthood.
Sounds simple enough, yet it’s all absolutely gutting and thought-provoking stuff. The series had always struck a delicate balance between sadness and hope at the Fisher family funeral home, but the final season was one last reminder that everything is temporary and that death is what gives life meaning. After giving us five seasons of such poignant drama, it’s easy to understand why creator Alan Ball moved on to the fresh and entirely ludicrous guilty pleasures of True Blood. As the final season of Six Feet Under indicates, a change can be as good as a rest. – KH
Spaced
Spaced only had two seasons, and it’s not the only show on this list to wrap things up that quickly. However, there’s something to be said for a series that doesn’t drag its story and characters out until they’re exhausted. Simon Pegg, Jessica Stevenson, and Edgar Wright’s British sitcom produced just 14 episodes over two seasons, but every one is an absolute banger, with dialogue that immediately entered the U.K.’s cultural lexicon and a unique style that Wright found enduring success with in his ensuing movie career.
The final season of Spaced starts with Pegg’s character Tim Bisley struggling to process how bad the Star Wars prequels were (fun to rewatch given Pegg’s later involvement with the franchise’s reboot) and ends with everybody getting really mad at each other until Tim and Daisy choose to stay together at Marsha’s house.
Though a planned third season reportedly would have had Tim and Daisy finally hooking up, it’s not the worst thing in the world that it didn’t happen. Instead, this show about occasionally odd but hilarious and ultimately relatable characters got a truly heartwarming conclusion that suggested not every big opportunity has to be followed in life if you’re happier just where you are, surrounded by the people you love. – KH
Mad Men
The best part about Mad Men’s final season* is that it begins where most other series would end. It’s the ‘70s now. Don Draper works on the biggest accounts in the world at elite agency McCann Erickson. The moon has been landed upon. Roger Sterling has a mustache. Give or take a few in-office hangings and lawnmower incidents, the Sterling Cooper folks have not only survived the ‘60s, but they’ve also “won.” So why doesn’t it feel that way?
*As is the case with many “final” seasons on this list. Mad Men’s seventh and final season was split into two parts. We will be referring only to the seven-episode season 7 part 2.
Through seven increasingly brilliant episodes, we delve deep into Don Draper’s sense of ennui as he vainly searches for something real. The journey eventually culminates in a finale in which Don doesn’t achieve self-actualization but does identify the next best thing: an idea for a really good ad. – AB
Schitt’s Creek
There are no major last-minute changes to Schitt’s Creek, unlike some of the other shows on this list. Rather, the beloved Canadian sitcom is quite content to show you just how much the Rose family has changed since we first met them. Johnny is now a really great father, Moira is finally connected to the people around her, David has learned to trust people and accept the possibility of a stable life, and Alexis has become independent after years of being self-centered, spoiled, and pinning all her hopes on the ideal relationship.
As such, there’s no unnecessary drama or conflict getting in the way of creating a satisfying conclusion to the show, just a ton of payoff on an emotional level, all while keeping the comedy just as delightful as it’s always been. It was never about the Roses clawing back their wealth; it was always about how they found real wealth in the weirdest of places.
Saying a proper, satisfying goodbye to the town of Schitt’s Creek was a tall order, but the show’s creators really stuck the landing in the final season and made the whole series endlessly rewatchable as a result. – KH
Andor
Proving that it might take someone who doesn’t give much of a shit about Star Wars to do something new and great within the troubled franchise, Michael Clayton director Tony Gilroy followed up the work he did to fix Lucasfilm’s standalone feature film Rogue One by expanding the story of its thief-turned-rebel spy Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) into a prequel series for Disney+.
Initially, very little of that sounded good. Prequels are notoriously peril-free (we know Cassian makes it out alive to the events of Rogue One) and Star Wars fans weren’t convinced that the character was really that interesting in the first place. How good could a Disney series about the guy be after we’d just seen them launch the adventures of their latest kid-friendly toy in the making?
Well, we were soon eating crow, weren’t we? Andor turned out to be absolutely fantastic. A gritty, slow-burn political thriller that showed us exactly how the Rebel Alliance formed under the crippling might of the Galactic Empire, Andor detailed the sacrifice, radicalization, and violence on the ground that greased the wheels for those iconic battles in the stars, with its final season creeping toward the manifestation of the Death Star and following the fates of both the people in charge and those who would do anything to stop them, even if they had to burn their lives to make a sunrise they knew they’d never see. Phenomenal TV. – KH
Succession
At times, Succession can make you forget that Logan Roy (Brian Cox) is mortal. While the HBO drama’s first season begins with the powerful right-wing media exec in questionable health, he quickly recovers and spends the better part of three seasons as an unstoppable malevolent force…both for his children and the country at large. By the time the fourth and final outing rolls around, the very name of the series seems like a vestigial relic of another show entirely. Succession? What are you talking about? The king is going to live forever.
And then “Connor’s Wedding” happens.
Both unassuming in name and episode order (as the third of 10 chapters), “Connor’s Wedding” is a masterpiece of television and a creative atom bomb tossed into a thrilling final season. Suddenly everything great about Succession (the satire, the cynicism, the characterization, the jokes) is cranked to 11 as the Roy children confront the ticking clock of a GoJo acquisition that threatens their family legacy. An insider trading scandal, a Norwegian company retreat, a Waystar Royco Investor Day, and a whole-ass presidential election – all events that the Roys must conquer before their father’s body is even cold. – AB
Lost
Real ones know that Lost knocked it out of the park in its final season, which used a “flash sideways” approach to create a place where the survivors of Oceanic 815 could reunite one final time in the afterlife and remember what happened to them on the island before moving on. No! They weren’t dead the whole time, and when the audience truly understood that, everything made a lot more sense.
Ultimately, the season was less about the island’s lingering mysteries and more about the characters’ emotional journeys, highlighting the show’s philosophical and spiritual side. Though many fans wanted a detailed explanation of why everything happened the way it did on the island, Lost wanted to show us why those events really mattered, choosing to emphasize thematic closure and underscoring the importance of the relationships and connections that the people on the island formed over the years.
Admittedly, it ended up being a divisive direction for the sci-fi series to go in, but sometimes it serves a show to ignore what the fans want and deliver what the creators intend instead. In that respect, time has been much kinder to the final season of Lost than many people anticipated when it first aired. – KH
Fringe
Fringe had a lot more ups than downs over its five-season run, but the final season was determined to bring a satisfying conclusion to the wild world that J. J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman, and Roberto Orci had created on Fox.
Once considered a weak X-Files wannabe, Fringe had evolved from a vaguely fascinating mystery-of-the-week show into some of the best sci-fi and fantasy storytelling on TV by season 5, having taken the FBI’s Fringe Division through a parallel universe and timeline and a final jump forward in time to 2036, where the dastardly Observers had taken over the Earth and the central characters needed to work together to undo the horrors that had been thrust upon humanity.
While this time jump pulled us out of the world we knew, the season sprinkled its dystopian future with callbacks to earlier seasons that felt incredibly earned. They weren’t just there for fan nostalgia; they served the conclusion to the story, and, unlike many sci-fi shows cancelled before their time, Fringe also had the benefit of being able to complete its arc, so this shortened final season didn’t feel rushed, just totally focused on giving fans the ending they deserved. – KH
Fleabag
Though British shows occasionally feel so short compared to those Stateside, Fleabag’s two seasons connected with pretty much everyone, and you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who watched the final season who wasn’t emotionally shattered by it.
In a nutshell, Fleabag (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) meets a hot priest played by Andrew Scott in season 2 and falls in love with him, but it turns into one of the most doomed romances ever put on screen, and Scott and Waller-Bridge play its inevitability out with a kind of crushing, raw honesty that you so rarely see on TV, with Waller-Bridge anchoring her performance amidst a tidal wave of grief, guilt and lonliness.
Her messy character gets her heart broken because she finally opens herself up to the possibility of being truly loved. With the worst having now happened, she realizes that she is indeed capable of emotional change instead of constantly seeking ways to avoid it, thus leaving her fourth-wall-breaking coping mechanism behind. Devastating and essential. – KH
Dark
Dark managed the impossible in its swansong: it resolved multiple timelines, parallel worlds, and interwoven family loops, narrowly avoiding collapse under the weight of its extremely complex story.
Recontextualizing its already head-scratching twists rather than muddying them further and threading the needle of its resolution through the families that seemed trapped in its cycles, Netflix’s German science-fiction mystery thriller committed to its themes of determinism vs free will all the way to the end of the line, somehow feeling coherent and planned, despite the intensive puzzle box that it created for its audience. – KH
Friday Night Lights
The fifth and final season of Friday Night Lights represents the end of not only one show, but two. That’s because NBC’s brilliant football drama underwent something of a soft reboot following its third season. Pushed out of his job as the head coach at Dillon High School, Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler) takes the reins of the newly created East Dillon football program and tries to elevate the squad of ne’er-do-wells to the same heights as their richer West Dillon neighbors.
Season 5 follows the improbable underdog ascension of the East Dillon Lions (led by future Oscar-winner Michael B. Jordan at quarterback) while still taking time to keep up with Coach Taylor’s former students as they take cautious steps into adulthood. Throughout it all, the two storylines continually comment on each other, serving as a reminder that after the glories of big-time Texas high school football, there’s only just Texas… forever. – AB
Halt and Catch Fire
Four seasons of Christopher Cantwell and Christopher C. Rogers’s period drama Halt and Catch Fire weren’t enough, but we were certainly lucky to have them, and the final season received the strongest critical acclaim of the series, putting a more optimistic spin on the internet’s early era.
In the last season, the show shifts some of its focus away from the business world to explore what Joe MacMillan, Cameron Howe, and Gordon and Donna Clark have gained and lost through their work. Creating the next big thing is no longer the goal because the show knows that, as time goes on, innovation fades and the humans behind it will have to learn what their lives truly mean in a world where they’ll eventually become irrelevant. As Joe says in the pilot episode, “Computers aren’t the thing. They’re the thing that gets us to the thing,” and the final season of the show ties a satisfying ribbon around that line of dialogue, ending with a hopeful bit of feminism for tech’s future. – KH
Atlanta
Every season of Atlanta could safely be described as “experimental.” As created and led by multihyphenate Donald Glover, the FX comedy leans into magical realism, crafting a North Georgia storytelling universe where anything can happen. Even with those expectations in place, however, the third and penultimate season of the show was, like, really experimental. We’re talking “a season-long European tour that culminates in Alexander Skarsgård eating human hands” levels of artistic exploration.
Atlanta’s fourth and final season takes things back to basics…even if “basic for Atlanta” is anything but. While the series-long plot does inch towards a conclusion here, each episode is a self-contained delight of creative absurdism. From Earn (Glover) venturing to a pocket universe in a Rally’s bathroom in search of reclusive R&B artist D’Angelo to a documentary examination of A Goofy Movie as a seminal text in Black cinema, Atlanta season 4 goes out on top. – AB
Any glaring omissions on this list? As always, let us know in the comments!
The post The Best Final Seasons of TV appeared first on Den of Geek.
