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Post by thechase on Nov 3, 2022 5:50:39 GMT -5
Recently I've grown addicted to episodes of TV shows that could serve as series finales even if they ultimately prove to have a lot of life left in it. To that end, I've found myself visiting this TV Tropes article a lot and adding to it. So I thought I'd ask F.A.N if they can think of anything that warrants inclusion in the article, and you can include anything, novels, comics, movies etc. Here are a couple of personal selections: Captain Planet and the Planeteers: The season two two-parter "Summit To Save Earth" plays out a lot like an endgame for the series, with Gaia's rival Zarn teaming with all of the Planeteers eco-villains, traps Gaia and depletes her powers to the point she ages signficantly, and turns the world into a toxic pit. After the Planeteers and Captain Planet defeat their enemies and send Zarn packing, the titular 'Summit' goes off without a hitch and the goverments of the world all agree to do more to keep the planet cleaner, which evokes an emotional reaction from Gaia. Towards the end of the one and only season of Centurions there are several multi-part adventures that serve as functional series finales. There is the epic five-parter Man Or Machine which reveals the origins of the Centurions, Doc Terror and Hacker and involves a battle to liberate Skyvault from Terror and stop an alien machine from destroying humanity. Other candidates include' To Dare Dominion which appears to kill off Terror and Hacker completely and wipes out their base of operations after they unleash a near universe-consuming Lovecraftian nightmare, and The Better Half, where Terror and Hacker's robot halves combine to create an even more powerful and malevolent threat, forcing them to ally with the Centurions and destroy those parts of themselves. The story also resolves the Belligerent Sexual Tension between Centurion Ace and Crystal Kane, as the two finally kiss. For Doctor Who, while Survival is a fine story and does have a great call back to the actions of the First Doctor and how far he's come since then, over time I've come to believe Remembrance of the Daleks feels very much like it should have been the last story let alone the 'real' 25th anniversary adventure, what with The Doctor revealing his true motivations for travelling to Earth in the 60s and seeing off the Daleks and Davros in such a definitive manner that it's hard to keep looking forward to fresh comebacks, even if you don't mind them. I also think Death Comes To Time, now largely forgotten, ties up the saga of both the Time Lords and The Doctor pretty well in a manner that's difficult to come back from Forever Red would have been a worthy finale for Power Rangers if it had been commissioned as an anniversary post-script epilogue of Wild Force. For comics: X-Men: Either Chris Claremont's last regular 90s X-Men story or it's follow-up Fatal Attractions, would have been worthy jumping off points before the title's dignity was torpedoed by years of neglectful storytelling. Spider-Man has several 'fauxnales', from 2009's The Real Clone Saga to the Spider-Girl series, to most recently Dan Slott's Amazing Fantasy#1000 contribution and Nick Spencer's run, which tied up every loose thread of the last decade and revealed the true motivations behind OMD. Too bad it's all gone belly up again.
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Post by WoodStoner1 on Nov 3, 2022 8:41:28 GMT -5
Justice League Unlimited's Batman Beyond Epilogue could have been one. (EDIT: Was in the TV Tropes article, but I did this first before reading it)
The series three end to Coupling should have been one, barring perhaps a one-off special about Susan's birth maybe, that you know, could have been done when Richard Coyle was available.
The Return of Optimus Prime.
The Problem With Power (He-Man, Filmation).
Brittas Empire had a few...think the time Brittas was believed to be dead. Maybe another in the last Fegen/Norriss series? I haven't watched the show in forever, I forget.
Wrestling examples:
ECW, Fonzie gets 911'ed. Should have been the end of him, but TV chronology-wise he was back the next week.
JCP, the Four Horsemen at the first War Games somehow. Maybe Starrcade '87 (Rhodes wins US title, LOD should have got the tag titles..)
Movie examples:
Given what had happened since, can we count Return of the Jedi?
G.I. Joe: The Movie (it was intended as one for the TV series, or at least the end to the show's original storyline. Then DiC took over and...)
Transformers: The Movie could have been one for G1 as well.
Can probably be done several times over with horror franchises....
Halloween: original 2, and then the anthology series picks up. (See: the NOTE near JLU)
Nightmare on Elm Street: I'd probably go for 3 or 4 as a definite conclusion.
I am going to excuse Friday the 13th, as somehow the way Jason kept coming back made sense in a fantasy world way.
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Post by thechase on Nov 3, 2022 9:23:25 GMT -5
If it weren't for 'Status Quo Is God' resets at the end, either 'Eyes of the Skull', ''Assault on Liberty'', or ''For One Shining Moment'' could have been this for MASK.
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Post by BlackoutCreature on Nov 3, 2022 9:25:52 GMT -5
For the 90's X-Men cartoon, the "Beyond Good and Evil" four-parter was definitely written as a series finale, with the shows biggest of big bads, Apocalypse, killed off at the end, not to mention them hitting all the stops to give it an epic feel. They even had a Morph cameo. Then it got renewed for another season which, honestly, wasn't as good and also had to deal with a serious downgrade in the quality of animation when they changed animation studios to save money.
The Gotham season one finale really feels like the type of episode you'd make if you were told your show was going to be canceled at the last minute. Just a very rushed story that attempts to wrap up as many dangling plot threads as it can before it calls it a day. What makes it even weirder was that the show was told it would be renewed for a second season months earlier, so it's questionable why they felt they needed to do that.
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Celexa Bliss
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Post by Celexa Bliss on Nov 3, 2022 10:26:34 GMT -5
Superhuman Samurai Syber Squad was meant to end with the Christmas two-parter. The episode adapted the Gridman finale, killed off all four protagonists and the villain, while turning the Dragon to the villain good. Then at the end, it was all a dream and then they filmed more episodes, reusing the same old stock footage.
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Bobeddy
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Post by Bobeddy on Nov 3, 2022 11:26:14 GMT -5
For Supernatural, if you remove like the last 20 seconds of the Season 5 finale 'Swan Song', that could've made for an overall ending to the show that I say most people would've been happy with.
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FinalGwen
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Post by FinalGwen on Nov 3, 2022 11:31:05 GMT -5
Red Dwarf's "The Beginning". Even though I'm happy they can keep going and series 11 and 12 had good stuff, it does feel like the epic finale and full circle kind of episode, right down to the name echoing the first episode 'The End', and ending on 'the slime's coming home'.
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Post by thechase on Nov 3, 2022 12:47:19 GMT -5
Red Dwarf's "The Beginning". Even though I'm happy they can keep going and series 11 and 12 had good stuff, it does feel like the epic finale and full circle kind of episode, right down to the name echoing the first episode 'The End', and ending on 'the slime's coming home'. M-Corp is another candidate, even if you could consider it something of a bittersweet one, and has a callback to Lister and Rimmer's earliest interactions. The last special they did, The Promised Land, also calls back to the early seasons and ties up the long forgotten Frankenstien plotline, and completes Rimmer's character arc.
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Post by Lance Uppercut on Nov 3, 2022 13:19:00 GMT -5
Not really my favorite episodes but I was quite amused the amount of time that show Bones thought they were ending only to be renewed that they had 3 different series finales.
The first two were satisfying on their own, so when the real one came they had to start killing off a bunch of regular characters to make it affective, resulting in kind of a bummer season.
If they just ended it the first time, we wouldn’t have to deal with them killing Sweets, crippling hodgins, killing boothe’s brother and Bones’ dad
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Post by darbus alan on Nov 3, 2022 13:30:32 GMT -5
The season finale of Scrubs Season 8 is a great example. Because it was originally meant as the series finale and even advertised as such. Then ABC renewed the show for one more season and it was basically a spinoff masquerading as a new season. Then it was pretty bad so it got cancelled.
Even now, a lot of Scrubs fans tend to consider the S8 finale the true season finale.
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Post by jimmyjackezekiel on Nov 3, 2022 13:35:01 GMT -5
For as many plot threads and abikities that were unrevealed Bleach still really should have ended with the defeat of Aizen.
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Post by King Boo on Nov 3, 2022 14:46:28 GMT -5
For Supernatural, if you remove like the last 20 seconds of the Season 5 finale 'Swan Song', that could've made for an overall ending to the show that I say most people would've been happy with. Eh, horses for courses but I never really liked how Swan Song panned out. I realize you said most, not all, but still lol
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legendkiller1985
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Post by legendkiller1985 on Nov 3, 2022 14:49:07 GMT -5
There are quite a few I can think of Community could have ended after season four since the season finale was Jeff finally graduating from Greendale and Pierce also graduating. It was brought back when they rehired Dan Harmon and fired Chevy Chase.
Futurama did this a fee times with the few movies and the 2013 reboot finale. Since there’s a reboot on Hulu coming out in 2023, that’s gonna undo the 2013 ending.
You could argue The Simpsons with Behind The Laughter because most of the original writers and animators had left for other things by then and Says of Christmas Past was done in case Fox cancelled the show for budget reasons
Wrestling wise the NWO angle could have ended when Hogan lost to either Sting or Goldberg but I think it just ended when Bischoff and Russo rebooted wcw in 2000
Arrested Development had season 3s finale be the end until Netflix rebooted it
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Ben Wyatt
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Post by Ben Wyatt on Nov 3, 2022 14:50:12 GMT -5
The Unity Concert episode of Parks and Rec was damn near perfect. It could have worked as the series finale. In fact, I believe it was written as it was to serve as the finale in the event that the series wasn't renewed for what was their 7th and final season
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Post by wildojinx on Nov 3, 2022 14:53:30 GMT -5
Phineas and Ferb: Act Your Age. Yeah, kind of "fan fictiony" but it did show the future of the characters and really should have ended the show.
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Post by Feyrhausen on Nov 3, 2022 15:10:05 GMT -5
The Unity Concert episode of Parks and Rec was damn near perfect. It could have worked as the series finale. In fact, I believe it was written as it was to serve as the finale in the event that the series wasn't renewed for what was their 7th and final season They knew they were renewed well in advance. But they still had the season planned to build to that episode and they saw no reason to change it up. The main reason for the time jump was that Amy Poehler did not want to work with babies.
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Ben Wyatt
Crow T. Robot
Are You Gonna Go My Way?
I don't get it. At all. It's kind of a small horse, I mean what am I missing? Am I crazy?
Posts: 41,816
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Post by Ben Wyatt on Nov 3, 2022 15:15:13 GMT -5
The Unity Concert episode of Parks and Rec was damn near perfect. It could have worked as the series finale. In fact, I believe it was written as it was to serve as the finale in the event that the series wasn't renewed for what was their 7th and final season They knew they were renewed well in advance. But they still had the season planned to build to that episode and they saw no reason to change it up. The main reason for the time jump was that Amy Poehler did not want to work with babies. Ah. It *felt* like a finale. Yeah, I'd read the part about her not wanting to work with babies. I assumed the time jump I assumed was done to lure her back for the 7th season. Either way, I thought it worked out well
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SneakMan
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Post by SneakMan on Nov 3, 2022 15:19:58 GMT -5
"Ozymandias" could've easily been the final episode of Breaking Bad and it would've worked perfectly. Ditto for "Fun and Games" for Better Call Saul.
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Post by Feyrhausen on Nov 3, 2022 15:25:41 GMT -5
They knew they were renewed well in advance. But they still had the season planned to build to that episode and they saw no reason to change it up. The main reason for the time jump was that Amy Poehler did not want to work with babies. Ah. It *felt* like a finale. Yeah, I'd read the part about her not wanting to work with babies. I assumed the time jump I assumed was done to lure her back for the 7th season. Either way, I thought it worked out well It did. In some ways it was a better finale than the actual one. Along those lines Babylon 5. They were basically cancelled after S4 so they shoved everything essential from S5 in and filmed the series finale. Then they were picked up by another network so they put aside the series finale and filmed a new S4 finale. Both the new S4 finale and the actual finale work as a series finale.
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Celexa Bliss
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Post by Celexa Bliss on Nov 3, 2022 15:47:10 GMT -5
The Gotham season one finale really feels like the type of episode you'd make if you were told your show was going to be canceled at the last minute. Just a very rushed story that attempts to wrap up as many dangling plot threads as it can before it calls it a day. What makes it even weirder was that the show was told it would be renewed for a second season months earlier, so it's questionable why they felt they needed to do that. I mean, the season three finale felt the same way. Obviously, there were a few cliffhangers, but with all the season long threads that were wrapped up, as well as the mythology gags they threw in, if you didn't know any better, you'd have thought that was it.
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