Finale Season

Some series get cancelled and Cut Short. Other series last far longer than any fan had wanted and become a Franchise Zombie. But some series decide to end the show on their own terms, long before the network decides to cancel them and before the fans begin to tire of them.

This is not simply the last season of a series or a celebration of a series that ends before it can become a Franchise Zombie. The defining characteristic of the Final Season is that it is a planned final season and is announced as such from the very beginning. The Final Season will work to tie up any loose ends and answer any unanswered questions. During the Final Season, the writers may feel the freedom to tackle themes and stories they would otherwise not attempt for risk of Jumping the Shark by upsetting the Status Quo so much. Think of it as a Grand Finale, but stretched across an entire season.

This is an Ending Trope, so expect unmarked spoilers.

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Examples:

Live-Action TV

• 12 Monkeys ends with its fourth season, which ties up every loose end from the previous seasons, tying everything together into the overall Stable Time Loop, before setting the stage for the Final Battle with the Witness and allowing the heroes to earn their happy endings.
• Before its third season premiere, Netflix announced that the fourth season of 13 Reasons Why would be its last.
• 30 Rock's seventh season had been announced as its last.
• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. concludes with its seventh season, which takes place as the characters travel through time and witness major events in the history of S.H.I.E.L.D. (including picking up Agent Souza after the events of Agent Carter) before a final battle that sees the cast get their happy endings, parting ways but staying in contact with each other.
• Not long after Arrow was renewed for an eighth season, it was announced that it would be its final season. Said season is ten episodes long, with the first seven episodes wrapping up loose ends and paying homage to each season before (including each episode having the title card from that season). The final three episodes are the penultimate hour of Crisis on Infinite Earths (2019) (which features Oliver's Heroic Sacrifice to defeat the Anti-Monitor, a Poorly Disguised Pilot following Mia, Dina, and Laurel in 2040, and an epilogue where the rest of Team Arrow comes to terms with Oliver's death and the Cosmic Retcon he enacted.
• The last series of Ashes to Ashes was explicitly made out to be the last in pre-broadcast trailers, and functioned as both the final series of Ashes To Ashes and an epilogue to Life On Mars.
• Bones made it all the way to Season 12, with the final season providing closure for a lot of characters' personal plotlines. Including Zack's.
• The fifth season of Breaking Bad was announced as the final season—by the point it was renewed, the writers decided Walt's story needed to reach a definite end. To make sure they'd have enough time to do so, they split the season into two eight episodes halves completed a year apart.
  • Similarly, prior to the airing of the fifth season, the sixth season of the Spin-Off Better Call Saul was announced as the final one. As such, the season finally completed Jimmy McGill's transformation into Saul Goodman, saw him meeting Walter White from his point of view, and revealed his ultimate fate following the end of Breaking Bad.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer established pretty quickly that the seventh season's Big Bad was the First Evil, a being manifested from all evil in existence, and the season was then spent on Buffy getting an army together to fight the First Evil when it finally entered the physical realm.
  Joss Whedon (7.01 DVD commentary): Anybody who didn't get that this is the last season after this scene was missing the point.
• The announcement of Chuck's fifth season renewal was swiftly followed two days later by the announcement it would be the final season, after two seasons which received 13 episode renewals which were written as the Grand Finale before NBC ordered more episodes to extend the seasons, which subsequently ended on cliffhangers instead.
• The sixth season of Cobra Kai was announced to be the final season, though the showrunners stated that other stories in the The Karate Kid universe are still a possibility.
• Crazy Ex-Girlfriend was specifically designed to run for exactly four seasons, so the fourth (and final) one spends much of its time resolving character arcs and plot threads, i.e. Rebecca's unfinished business with Greg, who was Put on a Bus in season two.
• Season eight was announced as the final season of Desperate Housewives.
• The final season of ER resolved several storylines, and brought back many members of the show's original cast.
• The Flash (2014) had its ninth season announced after every other Arrowverse show had been cancelled or announced as not being in the Arrowverse, making that not just the finale season of the Flash but of the entire Arrowverse.
• The fifth season of Flashpoint was also planned as the finale from the start.
• The tenth season of Friends was known to be the final season, so once the fallout of season 9 had been dealt with, the series immediately started building towards the Grand Finale & gave everyone closure. Except Joey, who not only didn't get an ending to his character arc, but also had absolutely no set-up for his spin-off series.
• The fifth season of Fringe was announced as its final season.
• Glee was renewed for a fifth and sixth season before the end of it's fourth, but when star Cory Monteith died just before the fifth season was to start filming the show delayed things to hastily re-write things. While the fifth season was mostly business as usual aside from Finn's death, the sixth season was announced as the final one early on. It featured the cast returning to Lima to mentor a new batch of glee kids, finally secure the glee club as a permanent part of the school, and give a majority of the couples a conclusive end.
• The fourth season of The Good Place was announced in advance to be the show's last. Michael Schur mentioned that the creative team considered going beyond that, but decided not to "tread water".
• The final season of Hannah Montana is so special, they changed the name to Hannah Montana Forever. This season brings us a change of residence for Miley, a change in the romantic pairings, as well as Miley revealing her secret to the entire world.
• The ninth season of How I Met Your Mother was the final season, and while the mother was first shown in the finale of the previous season, season 9 was all about Barney's wedding to Robin and the entire gang meeting the mother. Though never advertised as such, season 8 was also expected to possibly be the last season and so was written as such before the season 9 renewal.
• The third season of Jessica Jones was advertised as "The Final Season". The show had been cancelled along with the rest of the The Defenders lineup, but unlike the others it happened early enough for the creators know about it going in. Thus they avoided adding Sequel Hooks and the series ends with all loose ends more or less tied up.
• The final season of Lost distinguished itself from the other seasons by attempting to answer the big questions concerning the island, instead of posing more. As such, the characters found themselves involved in a massive centuries-old power struggle, a new plot device was introduced revealing the existence of a possible alternate Universe, and the purpose of the island was finally revealed.
• After its move from Fox to Netflix, Lucifer secured a fourth season, with no mention of a followup until a month after it aired, when a fifth season was announced. It was initially reported to be the last and subsequently its ten-episode order was extended to sixteen, likely to anticipate the Grand Finale. But then the show managed to secure a sixth season, which was reported to be the "final final season". It lived up to it, however, definitively concluding the cast's arcs.
• It was pretty much known from the beginning that season eight would be the final season of Magnum, P.I..
• All the commercials for the episodes of the last season of Monk always had the tagline of it being the final season.
• For the final season of Murphy Brown, show creator Diane English returned and gave the show an almost complete overhaul. The biggest change was a season arc in which Murphy is diagnosed with cancer, thus giving the show more gravitas. Also, Miles Silverberg was written out and replaced by a new executive producer played by Lily Tomlin, and Phil, who was killed off a few seasons back, was brought back, his death retconned as going into hiding because of all the secrets he knew about Washington.
• The fifteenth season of Mythbusters was explicitly advertised as such, as well as being called so in the remaining episodes.
• Nikita was renewed for a fourth season which was also confirmed to be its final one.
• The ninth season of The Office (US) has been announced and planned as the final season. It was even advertised with the words "farewell season". It is also the season where the Elephant in the Living Room (the series being a documentary) is finally not only lampshaded, but also addressed and becomes a plot point.
• After One Tree Hill was renewed for a ninth season, it was confirmed as the final season. Season 8 was also written as a Finale Season & wrapped up most of the character arcs over the season, but was never advertised as such, before a surprise renewal.
• The sixth and final season of Oz marked the occasions by having past dead characters such as Dino Ortilani, Antonio Nappa, the Schillinger brothers, Shirley Bellinger, Jefferson Keane and Eugene Dobbins return to co-narrate
• The final season of Parks and Recreation was planned as a final season and features all the cast in a different setting, three years after the events of the previous season.
• Power Rangers in Space was written as the final season of the show, but was so well received that the show continued for another season (And continues to this day). It did more or less wrap up the "Zordon Era", ending with a battle royale featuring heroes and villains on different planets from the past five seasons.
• The Red Green Show was intended to be this by star and writer Steve Smith to prevent Seasonal Rot. Its main focus was setting up the Wedding Finale between Harold and Bonnie while quietly resolving the stories of several background characters.
• For the final season of Roseanne Roseanne won the lottery and had lots of OOC adventures; it turned out in the end to be all just a book she was writing to get over the fact that Dan had died of a heart attack.
• Season 9 of Scrubs is an example of what happens when this isn't pulled off right. The writers and everyone else were sure Scrubs wouldn't be renewed, so the eighth season wrapped everything up nicely with a bow. And then they got renewed. Oops.
• Smallville put the words "The Final Season" above the title in the commercials for its tenth season. In fact, the "previously on" sequence at the beginning of the season premiere ends with Tom Welling's (Clark's actor) voice saying "And now, the final season of Smallville".
• The last season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine closed out the Dominion War arc with a bang, switching to a fully serialized format for the final ten episodes, showing massive space battles and finishing up every character's development and personal arcs.
• Supernatural: After a very long run, it was finally announced that season 15 would be the show's last, and the final Big Bad was God Himself.
  • Season 5 was written to be the final season. Creator and first showrunner Eric Kripke had wanted to do a five-season run since the very beginning and wrote the lore around it, hence why the first five seasons have a single Greater-Scope Villain (Lucifer) whom every Big Bads work towards. However, the show was a big money maker for The CW, which decided to greenlight another season. Since Kripke left afterwards and his story was finished, the show ended up having to make things up as it went on, as the showrunners changed every few seasons and there was no singular vision.
• The Fifth season of Warehouse 13 was announced as its last.
• The Wire saw cameos for nearly living character that had previously been Put on a Bus as well as the resolution of numerous story arcs and fairly definitive endings for numerous lead characters with things more or less coming full circle in the finale.

Web Original

• Red vs. Blue had its nineteenth season, Restoration, marked as the final season in its initial trailer.
• Sonic for Hire's seventh season is specifically advertised as the last season. Then it cot Un-Canceled a few years later.

Western Animation

• Avatar: The Last Airbender was planned as a three-season series from the start, though they briefly tossed around the idea of fourth season that would act as an epilogue. Book 3 was announced from the start as being their Finale Season, with the characters traveling across the country of the Big Bad in order to take the fight to the villain, the story arcs for several characters getting wrapped up, and many bits of foreshadowing finally getting paid off. There's only one significant question left unanswered (the whereabouts of Zuko's mother), which would get addressed in a follow-up comic.
• Amphibia was always planned as a three-part series according to its creator, Matt Braly.
• BoJack Horseman's sixth season was announced as its last shortly before the release of its first half. During the season, we see Bojack finally conquer his demons and find himself on good-standing with all his friends... only to lose everything and end up in a worse spot than he has ever been before, thanks to the consequences of events from earlier in the show coming back with a vengeance. However, the series as a whole would still manage to end on a bittersweet Hope Spot that he could achieve that happiness again.
• The Legend of Korra has Book 4, "Balance", advertised as the final season, and living up to it with both the world and Korra in a broken, chaotic state after the events of the previous season, featuring both a villain presented as an Evil Counterpart to Korra with an extremely powerful new weapon, and the culmination of Korra's character development.
• Masters of the Universe: Revelation was envisioned as the final season and the ending to the original He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.
• The ninth season of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic was announced as its last. As such the major plot arc is the princesses of Equestria moving towards retirement, leaving Twilight Sparkle and her friends as the ruling council of the land by the end, and dealing with a Big Bad Ensemble of villains from previous seasons.
• The last season of Regular Show has the setting moved into space (literally; the whole previous season led up to the park being moved into space), and follows a previously hinted-at Story Arc about Pops' role as The Chosen One preventing the end of the universe.
• Samurai Jack's fifth season revival was specifically produced as a definitive conclusion to the series' overall conflict and storyline, after it was previously left unresolved when the show was canceled at its fourth season more than a dozen years before.
• The second season of Star Wars Resistance was advertised as the last one, as it was set between the events of The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker, as well as the approaching release of the latter film meaning the end of the Sequel Trilogy-era stories in the Star Wars franchise for the time being.
• Star vs. the Forces of Evil's fourth season was announced to be its last. The season dealt with the fallout from the previous season's finale that had Star give up the throne to Eclipsa, resolved the "mewmans vs. monsters" racism plot, and concluded the long-standing romance subplot.
• Steven Universe: Future is marketed as the epilogue season to Steven Universe, taking place a little after they've defeated the final villain and dealing with most of the lingering subplots. It also finally seeks to explore Steven as he processes everything that's happened to him since he first started fighting along the Gems.
• The first four seasons of Teen Titans were Half Arc Seasons focusing on a specific member of the team. The final season (which came after a surprise renewal) focused on Beast Boy, but also shifted the format to be about a large number of teenage superheroes and villains, establishing an international Teen Titan network. The very last episode, "Things Change", also (sort of) resolves Terra's arc from the second season.

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