The series finales that divided fanbases

This article features lots of spoilers about how major tv shows ended

If you’ve read anything online about Stranger Things in the aftermath of its final ever episode, you’ll know that not everybody was thrilled with the series conclusion.

The final-ever episode was released on 1 January 2026 and was hit with fan complaints about plot holes and an unsatisfying conclusion – sparking false conspiracy theories that the real final episode was going to be released in secret, although it's worth saying that not everybody disliked the way Stranger Things bowed out.

As the old saying goes, ‘you can’t please all of the people all of the time’ – and that’s particularly true for the endings of blockbuster tv shows.

BBC Bitesize explores five times the final episode of a show split the audience.

Lost

Lost exploded onto our screens in 2004 – quite literally in the case of Oceanic Airlines Flight 815.

The series told the story of a group of survivors of a plane crash on a mysterious island – and their attempts to discover its secrets and find a way back home.

Lost used flashbacks and flashforwards throughout its episodes – but introduced a new device in its sixth and final season.

We were shown flash-sideways with audiences initially believing it was an alternate reality created by events on the island.

The final episode revealed these sideways flashes to be a purgatory-like afterlife – and that everything that happened on the island was real, but in this afterlife, the characters were able to meet up with each other, only once they had died in the real world.

And here’s where the audience division comes in – because many viewers simply didn’t get it. To this day, there are still debates online over the series’ ending, with some insisting all the characters were dead all along and others following the afterlife route.

It didn’t help that a number of mysteries set up in the show never actually played out – leaving several plot holes to add to the dissatisfaction.

The show’s creators have remained unapologetic for the slight ambiguity of the show’s conclusion insisting they’re happy with how it played out. But for fans of Lost, the debate rages on over what actually happened.

Scrubs

The US hospital sitcom that launched Zach Braff into the mainstream proved incredibly popular throughout its broadcast.

The show ran from 2001 to 2010, showing the journey of newly qualified doctors at the teaching hospital Sacred Heart.

But it wasn’t so much the final episode that some fans weren't sure about – it was the final series that split the fanbase.

The team behind Scrubs planned to end the show after its eighth season – and its final episode of that run was deemed to be a huge success.

The end of series eight saw Braff’s JD leave Sacred Heart for a new job, with resolutions for major characters and a touching flashforward to their future as friends.

Then, unexpectedly, the show was renewed for a ninth series.

Not all of the cast returned and new characters, deemed to be less interesting, were introduced. Braff only appeared in half of the episodes, which now took place in a medical school instead of a hospital. Ratings-wise, it was not a success as fans switched off from the new episodes.

In the end, the series just ends. No conclusion, no resolutions, Scrubs just finished and then was cancelled by network ABC shortly afterwards.

The series creator considered season eight to be the true ending and even wanted the ninth series to have a different name, as a spin-off. Scrubs will get a chance to write a fresh ending when it returns for a brand new tenth season, 15 years on, in 2026.

Quantum Leap

Another victim of a late decision to renew or not, Quantum Leap ended its five-series run on a particularly flat note for fans.

The premise of the show saw Dr Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) travelling through time, thanks to Project Quantum Leap – but with a slight drawback. He keeps leaping into the bodies of existing people and can only leap again once he’s righted a wrong.

Each time Sam leaps, he hopes it’s the leap home, but throughout the seasons, he’s seemingly lost in time – his only support coming from friend Al Calavicci (Dean Stockwell), who appears to him as a hologram to assist his efforts, aided by supercomputer Ziggy.

Unsure as to whether the show would return for a sixth series, writers were told to create an episode that could either act as simply the final episode of the fifth season, or the last one overall.

Sam leaps to a mysterious mining town on the day of his birth and is shocked to see that he has arrived there as himself. It’s explained to him that he has been in control of his leaps the whole time, and could return home whenever he wants.

Instead, he chooses to leap to attempt to save Al’s marriage. At the conclusion of the episode, we’re told via an onscreen graphic that Al and his wife stayed together and had four daughter and that Sam – albeit with a misspelled surname – never leaped home for a particularly unsatisfying conclusion.

How I Met Your Mother

Known as HIMYM by its fans, How I Met Your Mother ran for over 200 episodes – first hitting screens in 2005.

The award-winning sitcom told the story, unsurprisingly, of how Ted (Josh Radnor) met his children’s mother – told through Ted’s narration of flashbacks as he explained all to his then-teenage children in the future in 2030.

HIMYM picked up fans around the world as across nine seasons, we joined Ted in his search for his true love but it was the final ever episode that broke audiences’ hearts.

It had been established back in the first-ever episode after Ted went on an unsuccessful date with Robin (Cobie Smulders), that she was not the children’s mother – she was known as their Aunt Robin.

Ted only actually meets Tracy (Cristin Milioti) in the final episode, before it’s later revealed that she died of an undisclosed illness, six years before Ted started telling the story. The kids then encourage Ted to ask out their Aunt Robin.

Fans hated it – and the last episode remains the lowest rated in the show’s history on IMDB. The show had been built up for nine years to reveal the mother – only to then undo that work within the final minutes. The series creators had always planned it that way – recording clips of the children reacting to it during season two. An alternate ending, where Tracy didn’t die was included on the DVD release.

Dinosaur

The premise of ABC’s Dinosaur was fairly simple, even if the concept wasn’t. It was a regular family sitcom, in the style of The Simpsons – but the entire cast was made up of dinosaur puppets.

The show, which ran from 1991 to 1994, lasted 65 episodes – but its final one ever has been described as one of the bleakest scripted television moments in history.

Earl Sinclair, patriarch of Dinosaur’s main family, the Sinclairs, inadvertently brings about the start of the Ice Age through a series of missteps and miscalculations in his job at the WESAYSO Corporation.

As snow falls around their home, Earl explains to his children that he may have accidentally brought about the end of the world as they know it, but attempts some gallows humour by saying that dinosaurs have been around for 150 million years and aren’t likely to disappear any time soon.

The scene then transitions from shots of the increasing volume of snow to a news report, where the forecast calls for more snowfall – and the news anchor signs off with not just a ‘goodnight’ but a very sombre ‘goodbye’.

So, if you didn’t like the way Stranger Things ended – be grateful that they didn’t go down the extinction of an entire species route like Dinosaur did. Although, in a way, maybe they did…

This article was published in January 2026