Written by Andreas Babiolakis

What makes a great series finale?

We’ve had to explore this question for numerous decades. It was all fine and dandy when television first became a major source of entertainment with civilization welcoming series after series, but the next big task was learning how to say “goodbye” to these people and settings that would start gathering in our living rooms or around our dining tables on a weekly basis. Thus the concept of the series finale came to fruition. If a series was fortunate enough to determine when it would stop airing on its own terms (without premature cancellation), it could solidify its last impression left on audiences. As time went on, this quest became more than just a means to conclude a long-running show: it was slowly being finetuned to be a punctuation point in a myriad of ways. What final say did storytellers want to leave with audiences? Were there any loose ends that needed to be tended to? What big twist was being left for the end? Some series would chase these purposes and fail miserably. Others would play their series finale a little too safely, so as to not tarnish the show attached to it.

As television entered its New Golden Age in the late nineties, there were a handful of series that pulled off the concept of the series finale quite well (with a couple of standout examples provided below). This new era brought in provocative television, risk-takers, and refreshing methods of telling stories; sensational series finales came with the territory. As the big question remains hanging over our small screens and devices deep in the age of streaming (are we slowly exiting the New Golden Age of Television as we once knew it), it feels like an appropriate time to look back and pick out the greatest series finales of all time. This is a particularly subjective task because series tend to know how to best address their core fanbases when signing off. To try and make an objective list is tricky, but I certainly tried my best. I considered many factors, including what finales left the biggest impacts on me, which ones I still cannot shake off, which finales were influential for their time, and which final episodes rewrote the formula the best.

One major rule is that I will only be considering the final episode of a series, so if a series came back to television, the previous “series finale” no longer qualifies (like “Development Arrested” for Arrested Development from season 3 being replaced by “The Fallout” in the series’ fifth season after its return). I will also consider multi-part episodes if 1) they are meant to represent one long episode, and 2) if these multiple parts were aired together on television as one episode. Also, note that these aren’t just finales I personally love: they have to feel like they have earned their spot here, especially since I’m capping the list off at thirty entries. Some personal favourites of mine that didn’t make the list include Lost’s “The End” (which is polarizing and I will always defend it, but it just missed its placement), Orphan Black’s “To Right the Wrongs of Many”, and Seinfeld’s “The Finale” (I will also justify this episode, but is it truly one of the best finales?). Thirty entries may seem like a strange number, but cutting off the list at just ten or twenty titles felt limiting and expanding up to fifty (or, God forbid, one hundred) finales would allow far weaker candidates to populate this list. Thirty is a peculiar number to stop at, but it feels just right at the same time.

Without further ado, it’s time to face the end. Which series ended at their most shocking turn? What shows needed their final episode in order to be their very best version of themselves (or to be even worthwhile at all)? Which finales forced other series to try and catch up? As you will see, many of the following finales are from the twenty-first century (and even the last ten years), so television has been in a great place for quite some time. Maybe we will find some new episodes popping up on a future iteration of this list (you will definitely find a couple of episodes that aren’t even a year old by the time this list is published, but that’s indicative of the qualitative state of television as a whole these last few years). I will try and take note of these thirty fabulous finales and know when to wrap things up. Let’s get to it. Here are the thirty greatest series finales of all time.

Note: Every single entry here will contain spoilers from their respective shows and finales. Reader discretion is strongly advised.

30. “The Last Newhart”-Newhart

Of course Newhart wasn’t going to meet the expectations set by The Bob Newhart Show, and the title star most likely knew this. If anything, this series finale is likely the only trinket from the aforementioned sitcom that outshines Bob Newhart’s previous classic in any way, and it is all thanks to how much “The Last Newhart” owes to The Bob Newhart Show. Capping off a subpar season is a stance of admission: Newhart and company know Dick Loudon and his innkeeping escapades only got as good as they possibly could. “The Last Newhart” becomes a pseudo Twilight Zone episode once a Japanese tycoon buys the town and tries to turn the area around the Stratford Inn into a golf course. After Dick gets hit in the head by a golf ball, Bob Hartley (Bob Newhart in The Bob Newhart Show) wakes up and all of Newhart was a dream after eating too much Japanese food. It’s a hilarious way that a show admits that it wasn’t anything noteworthy, and yet it goes out in this shocking, hilarious, self-aware way; it couldn’t be more noteworthy now.

29. “#2.6”-Fleabag

Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s masterful Fleabag was over as soon as it began, but it’s clear that the sensational visionary knew when her creation was done for good. The series is merely twelve episodes, but it never hits a false note as Fleabag deals with her own personal demons. Previously in season 2, her connection with us viewers is spotted by the sexy priest she falls for: he sees her unlike anyone else does. He also knows that this cannot last, and Fleabag knows this too. Fleabag relied on us to hear her inner conflicts all series, and she finally shrugs us off for good in this series finale with a smile and a final glance. Fleabag can’t continue without this fourth wall breakage, and Fleabag as a person needs to continue to heal. Let’s allow her to do so and not wish for this brilliant sitcom to come back, no matter how great it is: it ends just right.

28. “All I’m Sayin’”-Rectify

We spend most of Rectify wondering if Daniel Holden is actually innocent as he aims to assimilate back into society after what is allegedly a wrongful conviction. As dark as the series was at first (with society’s hostility hounding Daniel continuously), it was always meant to head towards a place of hope. And it does just that with “All I’m Sayin’”. It starts off with a flashback to the day when Daniel was released from prison; this reminder serves as a necessary contrast so we can see just how much the story has changed since this preliminary moment. With Daniel trying to get his life back on track and his family and associates around him trying to get down to what really happened the night Hanna was murdered in mind, this series finale brings us to a place of closure and peace. Many series finales try to wrap plot points up in a bow in tremendous fashion. Rectify succumbs to the sound of silence. All Daniel ever wanted was serenity, and we get that with a peaceful send-off to a distressing series of perseverance.

27. “Flip”-The Larry Sanders Show

The titular late-night host Larry Sanders would always instruct “no flipping!” before his show would hit a commercial break. With the series finale appropriately titled “Flip”, The Larry Sanders Show saw us changing the channel to something else at the end of the show’s tenure (both the actual series and the show-within-a-show). We get a full-out celebration of a fictional host which hits quite differently given our knowledge of this famous figure seen throughout the behind-the-scenes antics throughout The Larry Sanders Show. It is a finale that carries much weight on its shoulders while taking the satirical angle of the series down a notch to succumb to why people like late-night talk shows: they provide an escape while we lay sleeplessly in bed. The Larry Sanders Show could finally rest; as the tentpole HBO series before they really took off, The Larry Sanders Show had done its job for good. It was time to show everyone how to wrap up a great run in style.

26. “Veep”-Veep

Despite being titled Veep, Seliner Meyer is hellbent on being the POTUS throughout most of this satirical series. We see her treating her team and those around her like shit, enough so that Jonah Ryan wants to run against her for the presidency (but, to be fair, he is insufferable too). “Veep” is titled after the series, perhaps indicating that Meyer will not win the election but that is not so; it is titled as such because it is indicative of the series as a whole in the confinements of just one episode. Meyer burns every bridge to ensure that she wins, and nobody cares; not her daughter whose wellbeing she creates legislature against just for power, not any member of her team that she has maligned; no one. Her own death is ignored years later, and that’s where Veep ends: a reminder that no one gives a damn about “legacy” when you’re a despicable human being, and there’s no joke behind this statement.

25. “Hogcock!”/“Last Lunch”-30 Rock

Many series tried to figure out how to end on a high note over the years, once showrunners knew the stranglehold television had on audiences that would live in unison glued to their screens at the same time every week. Some finales hit their mark, and some were a little… questionable (see St. Elsewhere). Tina Fey and 30 Rock knew this when ending their satirical sitcom. In typical writing room fashion (which is what the bulk of this series is about, truly), the 30 Rock team asked “Why not do all of the things?” with this two-part finale that wraps up Liz Lemon and company’s stories satisfactorily while also tossing every cliche and hail Mary at us in a hysterically hilarious way. It even has the St. Elsewhere ending (of course this is all Andromakennethamblesorton Ellen Parcell’s dream, and/or that he is immortal). Only 30 Rock can get away with a finale this nonsensical yet sincere: it’s indicative of the series as a whole.

24. “One for the Road”-Cheers

While there have been great series finales before “One for the Road”, the Cheers episode has to be brought up because it feels like one of the most archetypical finales as we have grown to know them in our lifetime. It is over an hour long (which is quite a big deal for a sitcom, but you will be seeing a similar instance further up on this list) and vows to wrap up as many storylines from these familiar faces as possible, with even Shelley Long returning for Sam Malone’s arc. It felt appropriate for a series where you came to join the gang and their relationships within the Cheers bar, so maybe saying goodbye couldn’t be done quickly. Series aimed to capture that recipe that Cheers pulled off for at least a decade afterwards to mixed results (some series were exhausting in their attempts to feel like Cheers). This is ironic because the initial response to “One for the Road” was that it was bloated and contradictory; time has told us that this Cheers finale hit the spot much better than we initially imagined.

23. “Always”-Friday Night Lights

Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose. After five seasons of getting to know these Dillon natives and their everyday lives, it was time to bring the series to a close before it overstays its welcome (lord knows it’s a miracle that it survived the Landry-murdering-in-self-defense storyline). At just the right moment, the fate of all of the families attached to East Dillon’s football program decides to close. The Lions, whom coach Eric Taylor has led since season 4, need one last push for greatness before the fold. The Panthers may want Eric Taylor back. As much as this matters, so do all of the outcomes of all of the players and their families on both squads. “Always” zeroes in on the futures of maturing young adults facing the real world that awaits them, and we know they will be just fine. If Friday Night Lights taught us anything, it’s to approach everything with passion and clarity. It resolves with a beautiful cut to the future from a photo finish pass, and it doesn’t get clearer than that.

22. “Das Paradies”-Dark

The end is the beginning is the end is the beginning. Dark was audacious with how it approached chronology (or the lack thereof), but it’s important to note how “Das Paradies” functions as a finale: not as the conclusion, but as the final missing piece of the puzzle. The series was finally complete but in such a refreshingly innovative way: we have all the information we need in order to make this time travel psychological thriller make sense. Where do we go from here? The start, of course: we have to revisit every clue of this mystery with fresh new eyes. Additionally, “Das Paradies” just feels like a finale by going all out with the series’ obsidian mythology, thus it feels like a triumphant, bittersweet sendoff through and through. “Das Paradies” is so great that I don’t think its impact has been truly felt quite just yet. Give Dark enough time to accumulate its even larger following and you will see this series and its finale being discussed more; you may find pale imitators will follow, too.

21. “The Real Folk Blues” Parts 1 & 2-Cowboy Bebop

Most of Cowboy Bebop is a checklist of things that Spike Spiegel and his posse do on a regular basis; each episode (forgive me: session) further establishes the size and deterioration of this reality more than anything. It is by the two-part finale “The Real Folk Blues” that Cowboy Bebop ascends into full-on neo-noir tragedy and solidifies the series as an all-time great. In it we see Spike acting lonelier than ever with existentialism at an all-time high as he Vicious once and for all. He faces his mortality and knows that he maybe played with fire one too many times. As tragic as “The Real Folk Blues” is, it remains as badass as Cowboy Bebop ever was with style meeting danger at every turn. Nonetheless, we could no longer see this space cowboy ever again unless we started the series from session one. It’s only twenty-six episodes, so why not?

20. “The Last Show”-The Mary Tyler Moore Show

In a show so heartwarming and comforting as The Mary Tyler Moore Show, what are the odds that it will end sadly? Apparently quite high: the series wraps up with all of our WJM-TV favourites getting canned (well, except for the loveable idiot Ted Baxter, who is somehow kept on board despite his ineptitude and being ratings poison). Everyone else finds their life up in the air, particularly Mary Richards who came all this way after starting her life from scratch in the pilot episode. With equal parts sadness and hilarity (that iconic huddle where every character has to shuffle sideways to grab a box of tissues collectively), “The Last Show” is everything that made The Mary Tyler Moore Show great (from its self-awareness to its feel-good approach to adversity); we even get the return of characters Rhoda and Phyllis to lift Mary’s spirits. It was at this point that we knew that these characters, especially Mary, were going to make it after all, no matter what happens.

19. “Nice While it Lasted”-Bojack Horseman

Bojack Horseman technically has a more brutal finale with “The View from Halfway Down”, but we weren’t actually going to end there. Instead in this epilogue-like episode, Bojack Horseman survives his near-death experience and is left to face everything that preceded it (including a fourteen-month-long jail sentence for breaking and entering). Once released, he sees all of the lives he nearly destroyed thrive around him but he also takes note of how they missed him, albeit in typical Bojack Horseman fashion (with acknowledgement of how Diane cannot exist with Bojack despite this last connection). Before we see them go their separate ways for good, they stare off into the night sky and admire the peacefulness at the end of it all; Bojack glances over at Diane at one point but stops and looks back up at the stars again. He’s learning restraint and how to not ruin a good thing. We can only hope this time he sticks to the path of healing.

18. “Finding Frances”-Nathan For You

It was a riot going through all of Nathan Fielder’s hair-brained schemes to help struggling companies take off, from having birds defecate on cars to help a car wash business, to having a bar stage its customers as actors in a play to allow smoking indoors. No one was prepared for how beautiful the finale special, “Finding Frances”, would be. Fielder revisits “Bill Gates impersonator” Bill Heath and learns that his heart yearns for Frances Gaddy: a lover from his youth that he wishes to reconnect with. Fielder pulls strings in his own bizarre ways but this time for actual good: to help a friend. Meanwhile, Fielder himself begins to lose sight of what he and his series Nathan For You stand for as he chases his own romance with an escort (who may not actually love him back). “Finding Frances” has a question mark above everything you see as you inquire about what actually happened and what is staged for the series. Reality is what we make it, and if there’s anything we learned when Heath settles for calling Gaddy outside of her home and not actually coming up to see her, it’s that facing reality can also kill what we feel. There's a reason why Nathan For You is the only nonfiction series on this list: it defied what reality TV can be.

17. “Part 17”& “PART 18”-Twin Peaks

Twin Peaks already had a terrific finale with “Beyond Life and Death”: an episode that fucked around and found out just how much a network was willing to take (but good on David Lynch and Mark Frost for not compromising this time around). However, I consider The Return an extension of Twin Peaks, and so I must consider the finale of this miniseries/third season (of sorts) to now take on the role as the series finale. How do both “Part 17” and “18” hold up as the new ending (for now…?) for Twin Peaks? Even better. The true ending is “Part 17”: the conclusion of Agent Cooper’s return to the titular town to stop Bob once and for all, and Coop’s use of metaphysical space and time to return back to the date of Laura Palmer’s death to rescue her. It’s impossible not to cry during this rescue. However, in Lynchian fashion, we don’t stop there. Agent Cooper finds himself in a new reality where Laura isn’t Laura anymore: she’s Carrie Page, and Cooper is trapped where he doesn’t belong perhaps for good. Either that or he never left the Black Lodge. Either way, either Cooper comes back or Laura stays dead. Both realities cannot exist at once, and it is a horrific sendoff that haunts me to this day.

16. “Made in America”-The Sopranos

Of all the once-polarizing series finales to great shows that people have come around with, The Sopranos may be the strongest (Sorry Lost and Seinfeld). What makes “Made in America” so easy to forgive? The time between its release and now certainly helps. It was always going to be tough to wrap up the biggest television series of all time and David Chase was damned no matter what he chose to do. The fact that he prioritized boldness over anything else is important to the staying power of “Made in America”: one that wasn’t concluding a series as much as it was setting it up to go out with a bang. And it does, albeit a silent one: a black screen after Tony Soprano looks up at the diner door while enjoying dinner with his family (sans Meadow, who is trying her best to get there). Even though most of us already have our answer, does Tony see Meadow at the door or is he met with a loaded gun? Again, it’s obvious to many (despite what Chase says), but we’re still cued to “don’t stop believing” via the Journey song being played on the jukebox. Whether it’s by death or the credits, all things come to an end. The Sopranos concluded as idiosyncratically as it existed; despite the shows that tried to rip it off, no one’s coming close to that finale.

15. “Saul Gone”-Better Call Saul

Once Better Call Saul caught up with Jimmy McGill’s transformation to Saul Goodman, it cuts to the future: the grey-scaled years of Gene Takavix (Jimmy’s escape to Omaha under a new identity after the Breaking Bad years). The “Gene” era is a dismal one, as we see Jimmy succumb to his ways of old and Kim Wexler have her life as a superstar lawyer thrown away after Howard Hamlin’s death. In “Saul Gone”, the law finally catches up to Jimmy who finally connects with Kim again (this time in court). It is obvious that he will throw her under the bus, except he does anything but: he finally accepts his fate in prison in order to cleanse his soul and start fresh. Gene never was, and Saul — as stated — is now gone: Jimmy is back. It’s a poetic, beautiful ending that contrasts Breaking Bad’s explosively cathartic “Felina”: one final way that the former series deviates itself from the latter. It makes the slow burn of Better Call Saul all worth it via bittersweet bliss.

14. “Person to Person”-Mad Men

Don Draper lost who he was well before “Person to Person” or even the latter half of the final season of Mad Men. He’s been trying to sell a new version of himself to society for many years and he convinced most people but himself; he would lose himself to his personal vices time and time again. After exiling himself from all things marketing (especially McCann Erickson), he finds himself at a retreat at the crossroads of his life between death and healing. Meanwhile, while everyone else — from Pete Campbell and especially Peggy Olson — has grown around him, Draper has remained the exact same: an advertised version of a functioning person instead of an actual being. As he finally tends to himself, it appears that he finds inner peace at the end of “Person to Person”. This isn’t quite the case. This extraordinary finale leads up to what Mad Men was all along: the journey to the greatest commercial idea of all time. Society is once again sold on the notion of happiness (via a Coca-Cola advertisement) so much so that even the creator of this campaign briefly believes that he is finally reaching serenity.

13. “Sozin’s Comet” Parts 1-4-Avatar: The Last Airbender

Every season finale of Avatar: The Last Airbender is overwhelmingly powerful. Once you finish the water and earth “books”, you know season 3 is going to be “fire” (please forgive me). The fire chapter is shorter because so much of it is set up in the previous seasons, so this third season can devote four episodes towards making the biggest finale in animation history: Aang having to save all of civilization or die trying. Aang refuses to outright kill the Fire Lord Ozai, and much of this final battle is spent on this hero trying to find an alternative way to stop the progress of evil (how can we stop slaughter if I keep the cycle of murder going?). It is this soul-searching that builds “Sozin’s Comet” up for its jaw-dropping climax: some of the most mature storytelling you will ever find associated with children’s programming. Not only does Avatar compare with the “adult” live-action series around it, it outright surpasses quite a few of them.

12. “It Was All a Dream”-Atlanta

Most series finales try to connect every episode of a series together in some fitting way, and “It Was All a Dream” kind of does that with Atlanta. At the same time, it blows the entire show wide open and forces you to reexamine every episode with a fresh pair of eyes. There's a reason why Atlanta always felt like it came from another reality: it could have all been conjured up in Darius’ head. Unlike the shockingly questionable ending to St. Elsewhere, something profound is being said in “It Was All a Dream”: all of the success of Earn, Paper Boi and company didn’t actually happen and there will always be imbalances in society for persons of colour to thrive. Either that or just this episode is a part of Darius’ sensory deprivation hallucination, and even that is quite telling (the final union of all four friends not being real is quite sad in its own right). Finally, this episode could be real and just a part of Atlanta’s bizarre universe. We’ll never know for sure, but his strange, beautiful, hilarious finale cements Atlanta as one of the most daring satires on the small screen.

11. “Hello, Elliot”-Mr. Robot

It’s astonishing how Mr. Robot was able to get away without showing all of its cards until the very bitter end. You’re still learning about who Elliot Alderson is as a person and what his traumas are by the final minutes of the entire series. By “Hello, Elliot” (the first episode to actually be titled after a coherent phrase and/or set of words not affiliated with programming), the titular hero is questioning his own reality far more than the existence of Mr. Robot and the series begins to cave in on itself in Neon Genesis Evangelion fashion: pure postmodernism that destroys the fabric of how a series can take place. It is this fracture that finally brings Elliot to a place of comfort once we finally learn the truth: Elliot is a master hacker because he hacked his own mind to protect him from his agonizing past. It is a rare time when Mr. Robot actually becomes gorgeous: a euphoric severance from historical anguish.

10. “The Judgement” Parts 1 & 2-The Fugitive

Even before the concept of the perfect series finale was concocted, you’d find occasional examples that were well ahead of their time. Enter The Fugitive’s two-part opus “The Judgement” which is so good that it transcends the majority of this thriller series in its entirety. This is the time when Dr. Richard Kimble either rids himself of his inaccurate legacy (the murderer of his wife) or dies trying, and it all comes down to the clearing of his name. We finally tie all the threads of The Fugitive together — including that One-armed Man (who we finally find out is Fred Johnson). Of course, it felt obvious that The Fugitive would end with hope and the good guy winning, but much of “The Judgement” actually feels dicey: there’s still a margin where everything can go wrong. Maybe in a different era Dr. Kimble’s story would have been more tragic. For its time, “The Judgement” was one of the most triumphant hours (or two) of television, and this would only be the start of where series finales could go from here.

9. “Start”-The Americans

There aren’t many slow burns as effective as The Americans, and this is proven by the series’ reliance on its final episode, “START” to make or break the entire story (don’t forget how long it took agent Stan Beeman to finally discover that his neighbours Philip and Elizabeth Jennings are Soviet spies in hiding (and also how swiftly he went into action). The Americans wasn’t just about playing with fire for too long before one gets burned: it was also about the idea of living a double life. Sure, the Jennings parents were spies that assimilated in the United States, but they subscribed enough to the American Dream. Once forced to go back to USSR (sans Paige, who bails on the trip back to her parents’ motherland at the last second), Philip and Elizabeth return “home” without really recognizing it as such anymore. They can start their new lives anew yet again, but this time hurts. They may have had fake identities, sure, but the Jennings were more of a family than they ever realized. “START” actually represents the finality of one of television’s most complex families.

8. “Discos and Dragons”-Freaks and Geeks

Can a show that was prematurely cancelled have a great finale? Yes, and it looks like “Discos and Dragons.” Clearly we’re not done watching any of these teens — from hard-edged misfits to misunderstood nerds and everyone in between — figure out their lives yet, but summer break brings a sense of finality to all school years. Lindsay Weir decides she cannot be compartmentalized in any box anymore (no matter by whom) and decides to go touring with Kim, new friends, and The Grateful Dead. Nick Andopolis was once decrying that “disco sucks”, and yet now he finds admiration in the dying genre. Daniel Desario has pulled one stunt too many and is now banished to the Audio/Visual club with all of our favourite “geeks”, and he has never fit in more than he does here as Carlos the Dwarf during a Dungeons & Dragons campaign. Et cetera. We’ll never know where they actually go from here, but even these large leaps prove that so much story was left to tell and that Freaks and Geeks was one of the best series to handle the grey area of maturation. For a show that was forced to end early, Freaks and Geeks couldn’t have wrapped up any better and with more purpose.

7. “Felina”-Breaking Bad

While not as safely handled as “Saul Gone” in Better Call Saul, Breaking Bad’s finale, “Felina”, is appropriately explosive and tragic. In my opinion, the actual finale of the series is “Ozymandias” and both episodes afterward serve as Breaking Bad’s epilogue, but what an epilogue we get: a destroyed empire and a sick man who no one loves in return anymore (argue against this all you want). Walter White eventually returns to the scenes of the crime after exiling himself from authorities and his opposition and gets back to that whole “setting everyone up for when I’m dead” plan: only this time he makes sure that he actually dies and rids his loved ones of his dangers forevermore. He finally comes back for Jesse Pinkman, who is held against his will at Jack Welker’s lab site. Jesse tearfully escapes his curse while Walter accepts his: he’s better off dead. And thus concludes the arc of television’s most tragic antihero: once an identifiable citizen struggling against the economic makeup of the United States who winds up being a monstrous tyrant in search of clemency.

6. “-30-”-The Wire

Like everything else The Wire, “-30-” doesn’t really aim for tradition. It acknowledges that the series exists and paces itself on its own terms, and it will conclude in exactly the same way. It feels like business is unusual in “-30-” until the very last montage of the series that all boils down to one conclusion: everything will continue once we turn away. All of these characters will keep on living and getting into the same messes that they cannot stay away from. Baltimore will continue to cycle through different sectors of crime (as will every place on Earth). The game will never stop and it doesn’t care for which players are still around. This is punctuated with Jimmy McNulty’s retort to return home, acknowledging that things will never change (even if the people do). Show creator David Simon took on his biggest assignment when pitching The Wire, and with “-30-“ he signs off in journalistic fashion: the articles are complete but the story never will be.

5. “With Open Eyes”-Succession

The most recent episode to make this list is also worthy of appearing (yes, even this high). Jesse Armstrong acknowledged that he didn’t know season 4 of Succession would be the last one until he was in the crux of working on it. Technically the series could have easily kept going, but aren’t you glad it didn’t? “With Open Eyes” shows restraint, timing, and self-acknowledgement of what was necessary. Kendall Roy — like always — will stop at nothing to try and become CEO of Waystar Royco (this time part of the appeal is to strip the company away from Lukas Matsson’s greedy hands), and much of “With Open Eyes” feels like a family of spoiled brats finally banding together like actual siblings in order to overcome evil. However, these aren’t the eyes that open. Those would be ours in the blistering, shocking final minutes of Succession lore. Terrible people will always be terrible. It doesn’t matter who is in charge when everyone available is imperious. Roman Roy said it best: “It’s all bullshit”. The cycles of tyranny will continue in life while money rules everything. Each Roy kid has their own new course, whether it’s permanent, self-inflicted entrapment (Siobhan) or an existential limbo (Kendall). Succession could have ticked off the right boxes. It instead made its own (it was never a series that played by the rules).

**4. “Goodbye, Farewell and Amen”-MAS*H**

The first series finale to truly make the blueprint for other series finales is from M*A*S*H: still one of the most daring comedic series in the history of television. After eleven seasons of quality programming, M*A*S*H signed off with the feature-length-long “Goodbye, Farewell and Amen” which reintroduces each character in their own way and paves a revealing storyline for each (over the course of two full hours). Whether it’s Major Charles Winchester trying to get a group of musicians to bring life to the 4077th MASH (in borderline Fellini fashion) or Hawkeye Pierce combatting a traumatic experience that destroys him in what appears to be for good, this finale is much more than a send off to a beloved series (although the final act most certainly serves as such). It is a re-contextualization of all of these characters we thought we knew inside and out by the two-hundred-and-fiftieth episode. War always has time to change people and circumstances, and you’re not out until you're out. This finale is as magnificent as it is epic and bittersweet: the final risk M*A*S*H pulled off. It resulted in the first series finale to truly understand the assignment and set the tone for all that would follow.

3. “Family Meeting”-The Shield

The Shield is a widely celebrated series and it deserves to be. It is bold, gritty, and rooted in frightening reality. I also feel like part of this adoration comes from the strength of the final episode “Family Meeting”: one of the most jaw-dropping hours of television. At one point it felt like The Shield was going to keep going and that it wasn’t leading towards anything in particular. “Family Meeting” proves that this couldn't have been more untrue. The inevitable bites Vic Mackey and company in their respective asses, with Shane Vendrell deciding that he and his family can never escape this web of endangerment. Vic similarly is concerned about his family’s well-being, and they cut him off for good; effectively, so does his department as he is banished to desk work for his crimes. Sadly this is the better outcome, as Shane conducts the titular event and “saves” him and his family via murder-suicide: a horrific twist that cements The Shield as a masterpiece of television. It was already a strong show without it, but “Family Meeting” elevates The Shield immensely (just when you thought you had the show all figured out).

2. “Everybody’s Waiting”-Six Feet Under

Everybody dies, and Six Feet Under made no secret of this (it is a series about a family that owns a funeral home, after all). We already got the biggest blow shortly before this finale when Nate Fisher suddenly died (mirroring his father’s abrupt demise, and whose funeral brings the series full circle). Alan Ball and company got this twist out of the way, and “Everybody’s Waiting” encourages us to keep going. It already is unlike most television finales in this way, but it saves its biggest move for last. In the same way you watch someone pass at the start of every episode, you now see how every main character dies during the heart-shredding final montage that is unlike any moment committed to the small screen. The show’s mantra is that death has to be approached, and it makes perfect sense that we have the ultimate closure of every single character (even the darkly comedic little details, like Brenda dying of boredom while brother Billy won’t stop hounding her). There is no coming back after a finale like this, and it’s only natural that Six Feet Under knew how to say goodbye in the best way possible.

1. “The Book of Nora”-The Leftovers

For years, Six Feet Under was untouchable with its series finale. It embodied its entire purpose in a masterful episode. Only a show with a similar fascination with terminality could compete, because it takes this kind of philosophy to understand what importance can be found at the end of life, a story, and a series. After a similar attempt with Lost, Damon Lindelof was given more control over The Leftovers, having adapted Tom Perrotta’s novel of the same name and then allowed to extend the story into a lore of his own. By season 3, The Leftovers is creating its own bible, kicking off with “The Book of Kevin” (a character that is becoming his own Christ-like figure). We conclude with “The Book of Nora” once these two title characters have split apart for good post a terrible fight. Nora Durst is finding purpose in her own life by volunteering herself to be a part of a science experiment that will attempt to bring her to a reality where she meets the 2% of the world that vanished (she will finally be reunited with her departed family). Her brother, Matt, has lost his faith and is battling cancer. He acknowledges that either way (should Nora reach this other reality, or if she dies in the process) that they will never connect again and he proceeds to remind her that he always thought she was the “bravest girl in the world.”

We never find out if Nora actually goes through with the experiment (although many signs point to “no”), but we see an older Nora being visited by Kevin Garvey in Australia; he doesn’t seem to remember his relationship with her at all (maybe he lost his memory during the events in “The Most Powerful Man in the World (and His Identical Twin Brother)”). After a dreamlike night on the town, Kevin finally confesses he faked his memory loss. If other people can create his story for him, why can’t he rewrite his own? After years of punishing himself after their fight, he finally has a way to right his wrongs; he is given a second chance and comes clean. Nora then details her experience during the experiment and her decision to come back as she didn’t belong with the departed (also a world with 98% of its population decreasing is far worse). We never see any evidence that Nora actually went over, but Kevin accepts this story as truth (Nora is also welcome to dictate her own fate, be it through experience or by revisionism). Whether Nora travelled or not isn’t relevant: they’re both here, and this matters the most.

The Leftovers examined how devastation rips apart society and individual lives so expertly that it needed to punctuate its thesis with one final remark: that we’ll always be grateful for those that are still with us. “The Book of Nora” is incredibly hopeful for a series this bleak and it is also an incredibly powerful hour of television: it also has its own revisionism going on, as it changes The Leftovers from a series about a hypothesis to being one of the great tales of romance in the history of the medium. This was always a story about how Kevin and Nora created their own paradise, not like Adam and Eve at the start of humanity but towards the end of it and instilling lives anew. It is mysterious and hypnotic and will guarantee tears streaming down your face through its beauty and heartbreak. This post-apocalyptic fable is a hint of tenderness when everything else is desolate, and it is an exquisite sendoff in an otherwise pulverizing series. “The Book of Nora” is singular, memorable, commanding, and harrowing, all via visual poetry. There’s no episode of TV like it, and it is the greatest series finale of all time.

Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Toronto Metropolitan University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.

The Thirty Greatest Series Finales of All Time