No Ending / Live-Action TV

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No Endings in Live-Action TV.

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• Spike Milligan's sketch shows often did the same thing. Often the characters would just pause in mid-action and then all sidle offstage chanting "What are we gonna do now? What are we gonna do now?"
• Brazil has an unusual version of it for its imported Tokusatsu shows. It's not that the shows themselves weren't finished; however, the company that was showing them had a 'no ending' rule set up, so that the final episode would never be shown, in order to keep the fans wanting to find out what happened. Sometimes the companies just didn't had the final episode because they ordered the tapes up to a certain quantity of episodes, so if the series had 41 episodes, they would get 40 and the last one would get stuck there.
  • The same thing happens in the Philippines with a similar manner- that's how Hikari Sentai Maskman, Kamen Rider BLACK, Kousoku Sentai Turboranger and Chikyuu Sentai Fiveman ended without getting to the finale- at the specific point in the show and then restarting the show again from episode one (And in the case of BLACK and Fiveman, They were near the end, only to start again). Lather, rinse and repeat, until the show gets replaced with another show. Thankfully fansubs are there so those who watched them in the childhood will see the end, but it will not be in Tagalog (nor have the Dub Name Change on them), and are only in English.
• Lampshaded in an episode of the British Comedy TV Series Mr Don & Mr George from Absolutely in which the titular characters comment on how neatly all the plot elements of the episode were wrapped up, which is immediately followed by an montage of all the other characters asking 'what about...?' with references to the many plot holes.
• A few episodes of Are You Being Served? have ended this way. One in particular is "The Hold-Up". A couple of burglars have broken into the store and taken Miss Brahms prisoner. Cpt. Peacock and Mr. Spooner pretend to be policemen to rescue her, but are taken prisoner themselves, and Mrs. Slocombe, Mr. Humphries, and Mr. Harman pretend to be gangsters to trick the burglars. At the end of the episode, Mr. Rumbold shows up with some policemen, pretends he doesn't recognize Mrs. Slocombe and Mr. Harman, and they are arrested. Then the burglars show up, and act threateningly towards Mr. Rumbold, and the episode ends there.
• The children's TV show Aquila ended on the second season. after introducing us to a brand new character, the boy's falling out over Jeff's new girlfriend and the last thing they show the viewer is the characters finding a cloaked battle-cruiser in orbit. It was based of a book series and 10 years later the author did release a new book but it just ignored the battle-cruiser cliffhanger.
• Saban's Beetleborgs ends with the heroes having possession of both Humongous Mecha and a Super Mode, while the villains lost their steady supply of Monsters of the Week. Unfortunately, the villains are still at large. This is due to Beetleborgs being an adaptation of the Japanese shows B-Fighter and B-Fighter Kabuto, of which there was no more footage left of to use on other episodes, resulting in the series being cancelled.
• The final episode of Benson cuts off just before the results of the climactic governor's election are announced. The makers had actually shot three different endings: one where Benson wins, one where Gatling wins, and one where the third candidate wins. However, test audiences didn't like any of them, so the show ends before the result is announced.
• The original gravedigger episode of Bones ends with the characters being re-united with their friends. Who the gravedigger is and whether he was ever caught is not addressed. This was eventually followed up, but not for another two seasons, making it seem like a classic No Ending for quite some time.
• In Boston Legal plenty of loose threads are unresolved, such as whether the experimental medicine Denny now had would even work on his Alzheimer's, or whether Alan would get fired from Chang, Poole, and Schmidt, or whether, indeed, the litigations department would even survive.
• The Bridge (US) had an episode where two cops get in serious trouble when they disregard protocol in order to save an injured boy. They are supposed to wait for the ambulances but in that neighbourhood ambulances can take hours to arrive so they take the boy to the hospital themselves. They are suspended, get sued and become a bargaining chip in the politics between the police department, city hall and the police union. At the end Frank Leo (the protagonist head of the union) saves them and they are in the clear. However, the episode ends with them back in the same apartment with the boy's mother ODing and the cops asking Frank what they should do
• Bunk'd: "Game of Totems" ends with Emma getting sprayed right in the mouth by a skunk offscreen with no resolution how she got rid of the smell out of her mouth.
• An episode of Dad's Army begins with Pike getting his head stuck in a gate...and ends with his head still stuck in the gate.
• A number of the Doctor Who Unbound audio series end this way:
  • "Full Fathom Five" ends with the Doctor's companion standing over the Doctor, preparing to shoot him if he regenerates. Since there's no way out, the ending would be pretty obvious, except that this is more or less exactly the sort of situation the Doctor gets out of at least once a serial — and the TV series has since shown one way a Time Lord could laugh off that particular threat.
  • "Exile" ends with the Doctor under house arrest in the TARDIS, having been told that she'll die if she tries to dematerialize. Then she finds a note from the Time Lords, saying that, off the record, she'll be fine and they'll turn a blind eye on her "escape." But just as she's taking off, it occurs to her, and the audience, that they might have lied to get her out of the way. And then the audio ends. Just like that.
• The Department Store episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus ended with one character in the "End Of Show Department", trying out different endings. The salesman demos several endings, such as the "walking into the sunset" ending, before finally suggesting "what about the sudden ending?" Cut to black.
  • Monty Python was notorious for not ending their sketches or shows. Most of the time, the characters would simply walk off, or the Colonel character would show up and disrupt things, or the sketch would be invaded by another sketch, or things would simply trail off inconclusively as the characters just sort of
  • Lampshaded in the Abuse/Cannibalism sketch:
  Wife (Eric Idle): Oh I don't like that. I think it's silly. It's not a proper sketch without a proper punchline. I mean I don't know much about anything, I'm stupid. I'm muggins. Nobody cares what I think. I'm always the one that has to do everything. Nobody cares about me. Well I'm going to have a lot of bloody babies and they can bloody well care about me. Makes you sick half this television. They never stop talking, he'll be the ruination of her, rhythm method!
• Drake & Josh: Played with in nearly every episode. There can be no resolution, a bad ending, or a cliffhanger in some sorts.
• Rather than ending with the hospital closing and everyone moving away/getting new jobs/getting married, ER simply ended much in the way it began. A hectic day at work, first day on the job for a new doctor, and a mass trauma coming in and everyone rolling up their sleeves and getting to work.
• Everybody Hates Chris paid homage to The Sopranos in its last episode, except with Bon Jovi taking the place of Journey.
• Extracurricular: The whole series is left dangling. Ki-tae catches Ji-soo in his apartment, and stabs him in the gut a few times before Gyu-ri shows up and knocks Ki-tae unconscious. A gut-stabbed Ji-soo makes it to the stairwell, leaving a trail of blood, where Gyu-ri finds him. When Detective Lee makes it to the apartment complex, all three—Ki-tae, Gyu-ri, and Ji-soo—are gone. With that, the show ends. The fourth main character, Min-hee, has been whisked to the hospital after taking a Staircase Tumble, but the series doesn't reveal her fate either.
• Farscape had been axed by whichever money-people were in charge. The fans knew this, naturally. Imagine their horror when, at the end of the last episode of the series, which, while it hadn't tied up some of the really big Story Arcs of the show, had at least come to a fairly satisfactory finishing point, showed us the hero and his utterly badass love interest are sharing a passionate kiss in a boat after he'd proposed to her; when a random, unexplained alien starfighter comes tearing out of the sky and shoots them. They shatter into a multitude of tiny plasticy cubes as the words "TO BE CONTINUED..." appear on screen. Fan outcry was enough to convince the studio to greenlight a two-hour Wrap It Up miniseries which, while it had to drop some storylines was at least able to give the fans some degree of closure on the main characters and major arcs.
  • There was also a Post-Script Season in the form of a comic series, which further answered questions and expanded the universe. Given everything was planned and written by the actual series writers, it was well-received by fans.
• Half & Half ends with one of the sisters finally deciding between her two boyfriends. She calls him on the phone to tell him, and the scene ends before we ever learn who she chose.
• Hancock's Half Hour used a similar plot over a decade earlier. Hancock becomes obsessed with a murder mystery where the final page is torn out of the book. He tries tracking down the author at home only to find that he's been dead for several years, he can't find another copy of the book, and every attempt to solve the mystery on his own ends up failing. Eventually he hits upon the idea of looking up the British Library's file copy...whereupon he learns that the author died before finishing the book, so it was published with no ending.
• The Henry Danger episode "Christmas Danger" ends with most of the main characters in jail for breaking Swellview's Loony Laws without any explanation to how they got out of jail.
• iCarly: Used a couple of times.
  • One being the end of "iBelieve In Bigfoot" where the gang and some other guys are left stranded when their RV gets stolen... by the said Bigfoot they were trying to find.
  • The end of "iThink They Kissed". The trio have been tied up by escaped convicts, and Carly ends up asking if they liked the kiss. Freddie and Sam look at each other for a bit, then Spencer busts in with his banjo, plays a few chords and the episode ends without Carly knowing if they did.
  • "iSam's Mom" ends with Sam and Pam reconciling in the Therapy Box and hugging. It ends there, without showing them exiting afterwards, and a claustrophobic Carly is still flipping out.
• Kamen Rider Zero-One had the bad luck of starting shortly prior to the pandemic of 2020. So after rewrites and general uncertainty destroyed most of the plot's coherence, it was also cut short by five episodes with only the immediate conflict resolved. The main plot, the subplots, the consequences of everything - nothing was cleared up. The movie sequels pick up the pieces to some extent.
• The L Word had an ending, it just never happened. Infamously viewership hated Jenny is found dead at Bette and Tina's house during a party, which kicks off the season after an inexplicable scene-for-scene rewind of the last few minutes of the previous season. The remainder of the season ostensibly pivots around the Jenny's murder whodunnit, with slightly larger-than-average arcs for most of the other characters. The show ends with an insanely stylized walk of the cast to the police station to give their statements about Jenny's death. As far as show-only content, THAT'S where the series ends! The whole season's overarching plotline (and to which most every plotline was party to) never even slightly resolved. Showtime released character testimonies weekly to drum up interest, but most of them were a little sparse in terms of details. Series creator Ilene Chaiken planned a spin-off called The Farm where Alice was found guilty of murdering Jenny (with no word on her actual guilt or innocence) and would revolve around Alice serving time. She pitched it to Showtime initially and then other distributors, but no one picked it up, so the end will forever be oddly abrupt, even assuming that Alice either did murder Jenny.
  • However, the sequel series The L Word: Generation Q has Bette revealing that Jenny committed suicide, thus negating the whole arc.
• Law & Order: "Vaya Con Dios," the tenth-season finale, focuses on the prosecution of a Chilean national which for a number of reasons escalates until McCoy is arguing in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. The episode ends with a court clerk approaching the characters, presumably with a ruling in hand, leaving the matter unresolved. ^note (There's obviously dramatic license taken, as most SCOTUS decisions come months after oral arguments.)
• Law & Order: Special Victims Unit:
  • The episode "Doubt," which was Ripped from the Headlines of the Kobe Bryant rape case, ended with a fadeout before the jury's verdict. On the first airing, viewers were invited to vote on the outcome, but the show has not revisited the subject. (For the record, the poll results showed 20% believed it was rape, 60% believed it was consensual, and 20% felt more information was needed.)
  • Another from the season eleven episode "Savior." A young prostitute goes into premature labor and her baby is put on life support. The mother then runs away, giving power of attorney to Olivia, effectively giving Olivia the choice of whether the baby lives or dies. The episode ends with the baby needing immediate brain surgery and the doctors hammering Olivia for a decision that she never gives. Neither the mother nor the baby are ever mentioned again.
  • In "Infiltrated", a side plot deals with a rape case that it looks like the victim is going to lose because Olivia, the arresting officer, is busy working on an undercover investigation for the FBI. Once Olivia finds out about the trial and makes it to the courtroom ready to testify, the episode ends with no conclusion to how the trial turned out.
  • In "Info Wars", a conservative speaker is beaten and raped at a campus rally after an angry mob chases her off the stage, and the detectives narrow it down to two suspects on opposite sides of the political spectrum; an Antifa member who was carrying the sign she was sexually assaulted with and whose DNA was under her fingernails, and a Neo-Nazi who she rejected the night before. Barba dismisses the indictment against the Antifa member due to the jurors' political biases making a fair trial impossible, and the episode ends without anyone knowing for sure which one really did it.
• The Lodge ended abruptly after two seasons, with the second ending with the titular hotel on fire with no resolution afterward.
• A MacGyver episode featured Mac unveiling a massive Neo-Nazi conspiracy to infiltrate the government and institutions of five West Coast states to create the "New Aryan Nation". The episode ends with Mac looking at the map featuring the many infiltrated institutions all across the region and the issue is never mentioned again.
• Parodied and played straight on M*A*S*H (in the same scene, even): The entire camp shares a murder mystery chapter by chapter. Once they reach the ending, the murderer is revealed to be— nothing, the last page is missing. They go so far as to hunt down and contact the author at her home across the globe to get the answer, with some difficulty (she's so old she has trouble even remembering which novel it is). Then, the kicker: later on Colonel Potter notices and announces that her answer couldn't possibly have been the murderer due to several in-story scenes that contradict that. The episode then ends with Hawkeye humorously declaring himself to be the murderer so that the M*A*S*H unit crew wouldn't think they did all that reading for nothing.
• The Series Goal of Merlin was to see Arthur reinstate magic back into the kingdom. He dies before this ever happens, and though the episode (sans coda) ends with the image of Guinevere taking the throne after having realized that Merlin has magic, we're given no indication whatsoever about how her reign went, whether Merlin returns to Camelot, or how the magic issue is resolved.
• Moesha never revealed whose positive pregnancy test was found in the trash at Moesha's dorm, nor did it reveal what happened to Myles after he was kidnapped by a rival gang that was after Dorian.
• Mystery Hunters has had episodes where the mysteries discussed end up still being unresolved.
• The Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nóg, another one of Saban's creations, ended with Queen Maeve, one of the two Big Bads, defeated, but the other one, the dark faerie Midar, joining forces with the evil witch Nemain. There was a second season in the makings, called Mystic Knights Battle Thunder, in which these plot points would be addressed, but since Power Rangers was starting to regain popularity, all budget that would be used for the new Mystic Knights season was transferred to Power Rangers Lost Galaxy, essentially cancelling Mystic Knights.
• In The Nine Lives of Chloe King, the titular character still has seven of her nine lives and has failed to even remotely attempt to fulfill her prophecy. In addition, her love interest is dying in her arms, and we are left without knowing his ultimate fate.
• Novoland: Eagle Flag: Asule and Ji Ye lead their combined armies into battle, they charge at the enemy, the scene fades out before the armies collide, cut to a shot of the city... and that's it.
• In NYPD Blue the series ended with a No Ending: rather than some sort of redemption storyline wrap-up or some kind of resolution for all the characters, it was just one more day of solving crimes. The final episode ended with Sipowicz alone in his office, not because everyone had abandoned him, but because he was still working. The creator did this deliberately to show that no matter how far you grow as a person, there's always tomorrow, and today is just another day. About the only probable conclusion it has is Sipowicz serving as a better boss than what would have been his hardass replacement.
• Person of Interest "Cura Te Ipsum" ends with Reese staring down a serial rapist, debating whether to let him go with the knowledge that he'll be watched or to just kill him and be done with it.
• Princess Agents infamously ends with a cliff-hanger.
• The Prisoner (1967) ended the series with Number 6 getting home, flash of lightning, wait... it's the opening credits!
• Retro Game Master:
  • Dig Dug II is an Endless Game which loops after level 72. The staff apologizes for making Arino play a game that doesn't end and then draw two endings: Taizo eating a banana and Taizo standing over an enemy, sword-drill in hand. Arino prefers the first one.
  • After finishing Umihara Kawase and finding out it only has a credits roll, Arino is told that the game forces an end-level after 30 minutes of play. If he quickly takes the fastest possible route to the last end-level, would he see a real ending? He fails this (it is considered a draw), the staff eventually beats the route, only to find out the game really doesn't have an ending at all.
• Sam & Cat ended abruptly after its 36th episode due to Executive Meddling and the stars wanting to move on from the show. This meant that unless it's resolved with a Reunion Show, Cat went to jail for assaulting a hair model and her grandmother doesn't know because of Sam lying about Cat's whereabouts for two weeks to get free food and someone doing her chores. For all anyone knows, Cat will be in jail indefinitely. Also, Dice has nobody to take him home since his mom is still sick, his babysitter (Cat) is in jail, Sam apparently has taken a level in jerkass and doesn't care about her friends anymore and where the hell did Goomer (who usually picked him up and drove him around for the rest of the series) go anyway? So, in short, it ends with Cat in jail, Sam being totally Out of Character, Dice (a 12- to 13-year-old kid, may we remind you) stuck alone in a city around 400 miles away from his home and Goomer completely missing. The episode that aired before that one would have been a better ending, as in, at least it resolves all plotlines from the episode, unlike this one.
• Sanctuary has a season two episode in which Magnus and Will crashed the helicopter down a borehole, and when not fighting the monster of the week, exhausted every possible method of escape and communication. At the end, the camera zooms away, with Will saying "Seriously, how are we going to get out of here?" The next episode implies they got out, but the event is not explained or even mentioned.
• Seinfeld would occasionally end episodes when they'd reached a comedic peak, even if the story hadn't been resolved. One of the most famous of these was actually an accident. The episode "The Parking Garage" focuses on the Main Characters wandering around a parking garage, trying to find their car so they can go home. In the original script, the episode ends with them finding the car and just driving away. However, during shooting, the car being used for the scene wouldn't start, so the episode ends with the characters trying and failing to start the engine, still stuck in the parking garage. You can actually see Seinfeld, Alexander, and Dreyfuss Corpsing trying to cover their laughter.
• Happens in-universe in an episode of Small Wonder. Jamie has to do a book report, and ends up doing his report in the form of a short film. The book is a murder mystery, but Jamie decides to end the movie right before the culprit is announced, telling the class that if they want to know who did it, they should read the book themselves.
• The Sopranos infamously ended with a simple Smash to Black mid-scene, which was met with extreme backlash at the time. A common defense is that the whole point is that whatever happens, it no longer matters: Tony is either literally dead from a hitman, or figuratively dead from the wreck of his life, and both are equally awful hells for him to encounter.
• In Star Trek: The Original Series, instead of a Grand Finale, the series ends with a very awkward episode ("Turnabout Intruder") about female captains not being allowed in Starfleet. Of course there are followups to the adventures of the Enterprise crew, beginning with Star Trek: The Animated Series.
• Star Trek: Voyager: Downplayed. There IS an ending.... sort of. Voyager reaches Earth......and that's it. No epilogue, no reunions with their loved ones, no parting of the ways, no "Where are they now?", NOTHING. Seven years of trying to get home and that's all we get.
• Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad, much like Beetleborgs and VR Troopers, just suddenly ended with a normal episode because the creators ran out of footage from Denkō Chōjin Gridman to adapt. The series did attempt to have a proper ending midway through, at a time when the producers thought the show was getting cancelled. When they found out that the series had been picked up and they suddenly had to make more episodes, they simply tacked on a Reset Button Ending onto the intended finale that undid all the events of the episode, hurriedly restored the status quo, and erased everybody's memories of the whole thing. Unfortunately, with that footage already used up, the producers were left with no way to actually end the series when the time really did come.
• The first season the NBC sci-fi series Surface ended with a scientist and a deep-sea diver who found out that a secret government agency was orchestrating a new world order by releasing giant sea monsters, and flooding the world to make that happen. There was also a plot where a nerdy teenager, and his popular girlfriend found and adopted a baby sea monster, and were raising it as their pet. In the final episode, the four of them ended up together as the sea levels rose dramatically, separated from their respective families. As they managed to find safety on the top floor of a building, they watch a news reporter get swallowed whole by a sea monster. How they managed to ultimately survive, how the world would react to the planet being ruled by giant monsters, and what would become of the pet was supposed to be covered beginning in the second season. Despite leaving those issues unresolved, the series was canceled shortly thereafter.
• The Twilight Zone (1985): In "The Storyteller", Dorothy Livingston and her niece Heather follow a man believed to be Micah Front, whom she taught in 1933, to a hotel room in order to determine if he has managed to keep his great-great-great-grandfather alive by telling him stories and not finishing them until the next night. If he has done so, the old man would be almost 200 years old in 1986. As Dorothy is about to open the door, it is revealed that it is part of a story that she is telling her mother. The episode ends with Dorothy saying that she will have to wait until the next night to hear the resolution.
• Veronica Mars:
  • It never reveals what happens to Grace Manning.
  • Also the show itself because it was cancelled. It ends with Veronica standing in the rain after her father has been arrested covering for her. It did up end getting a continuation in a Veronica Mars movie, and a much later new series of the show, though.
• Victorious does it a lot:
  • "Rex Dies" ends with Cat being kept in the mental ward at the hospital. Cat still is in the next episodes, and it's never mentioned again.
  • The last episode to air ends with Cat and Robbie sitting in a trashcan in their underwear and Tori, Jade and Trina being chased by giant mice...
• VR Troopers, also created by Saban, just abruptly ends with a simple villainous plot of the week episode, with the troopers not being any closer to finding out who the Big Bad is and how to defeat him, which were the main plot points in the second season. The reason is the same as the aforementioned Beetleborgs: The creators ran out of action footage, the source of it being the Japanese shows Space Sheriff Shaider, Jikuu Senshi Spielban and Chōjinki Metalder.
• The episode "The Deadliest Man Alive" of Walker, Texas Ranger falls under this category in the greatest manner possible. Walker has just sent an international assassin nicknamed "The Viper" tumbling out of a stadium, keeping him from trying to kill the president attending a football game in Dallas. Walker is about to question his involvement in the J.F.K. assassination, but the Viper immediately tells him that if the truth were revealed, Walker wouldn't live to see Monday. Out of spite, he finally agrees- but gets only two words out when a bullet rockets into his chest and kills him instantly, shot by another sniper in some unknown area of the vast stadium. Walker has no idea where the shot came from, as he heard only a sharp echo resonate through the walls, and it was drowned out by sounds of cheering crowds, meaning Trivette, the security guards, and Secret Service alike couldn't hear the gun go off, letting the culprit slip away virtually unnoticed. Walker never finds the second assassin, as the episode closes out respectively to the way we see Kennedy's murder in real life - riddled with conspiracy theories, and the actual truth behind it never made clear.
• Without a Trace:
  • In the episode, "Two Families", the protagonists were fighting to save the life of someone on death row with new-found evidence (somehow missed in the previous 10 years). The characters spend time talking about the morality of Death Row, while doing their best to uncover what really happened. They find evidence that exonerates the character, and now must race against the clock to work the legal system. Show ends with the clock saying 11:57, and a closeup on a non-ringing phone. Cut to credits.
  • Done again with the Missing White Woman Syndrome episode, "White Balance." The team investigates the unrelated disappearances of two teenagers, a white female and an African-American male. They are both found: "One alive, one dead." Roll credits.
• The X-Files:
  • An awful lot of episodes ended inconclusively, with The Conspiracy covering their tracks or the Monster of the Week slipping away into the shadows. If they had had conclusive endings, Scully would have become a believer by the end of Season 2.
  • A far more frustrating example is the series finale. After nine years, not only is the series' Myth Arc not tied up by any stretch of the imagination, we are given a last minute Sequel Hook about an alien invasion coming in ten years. Six years later the second movie comes out and being a Monster of the Week episode, of the series' many supporting characters only Skinner appears. Furthermore, not a single passing reference is made of the impending alien invasion!