Your opinion of Haruhi herself is your business and I won't insult you for it, even if I completely disagree with you.
However, I have to wonder if you were actually paying attention to the final two episodes.
1: Tamaki is marrying Eclair because his grandmother forced him to, and her only reason for doing it is that she hates him. Nothing is going to go wrong for his family if he doesn't marry her. 2: Tamaki very clearly doesn't want to marry her in the first place. He is deeply conflicted and unhappy about it the entire way through. 3: EVERYONE in the club is trying to get him back, not just Haruhi. She wouldn't have gotten anywhere without their help in the first place. They all want him to stay. All of them. 4: Hits him? I'm sorry, but that never happened. Unless you're confusing it with that time she slapped Hikaru for being a dick to her old friend. 5: Here is what she says to Tamaki to convince him not to go: "All of us would be lost without you." "We really love being in the Host Club, even me!" "I love being in the Host Club too." How is any of that verbal abuse? She's telling him how much everyone, not just her, loves him and wants him to stay with them.
Eclair was not in the original manga and it shows. She tries to off as malevolent yet sympathetic but fails in both regards seeming more like a clingy fangirl than a proper love rival.I have more respect for Renge than this caricature of a person. Which makes sense, anyone that has more brain cells than the gossiping hordes of fangirls and yet actually nice to Tamaki would beat Haruhi easily. The finale looks, acts, and feels like the third act of a bad romantic comedy movie. The absurd humor the show runs on makes what are supposed to be serious episodes so cheesy that I laughed harder than I did during the entire series. Tamaki leaves the Host Club thinking he is a burden to Haruhi and his friends. Haruhi confronts him and tells that they were joking. This coming from the girl who had rejected his advances since episode 1. From the girl who had to be forced by debt to listen to any of his ideas. The girl who has constantly said and thought him as an idiot. I think should have ended up with Eclair. Tamaki could have developed her character into something far more interesting than the the bland, porcelain doll-like audience surrogate main character he ended up choosing in the end.
Apologies to Marlee Cross, confused manga finale with anime finale, haven't seen either for a while.
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5 Things I Learned From Ouran Host Club
1. Good Characters Have Witty Lines. Haruhi is flat and I'm not talking about just her chest size. She is rude, annoying, and apathetic to whatever the club does and somehow they find this endearing. If I was to do crazy stuff with my friends would I want to drag around a wet blanket to criticize everything I did? Just once i would like one of the main characters to snap at her "I know what I did was stupid, that's why I did it". Haruhi is not entertaining and she is not funny. My greatest fear is that other series will copy and paste this formula, populating the shoujo with shallow, overly sarcastic prudes that are somehow considered to be good role models.
2. Men are Entertainers, Women are Commentators. The Host Club does a lot of crazy situations, however Haruhi barely does anything. Most of the time she just dragged into the comedy. I once mentally replaced her with a sandbag with a voice recorder taped on repeating the phrase "That is stupid." and it didn't change the format of the episode. There are only two points in the plot that she does anything noteworthy, when she helps the twins with a problem they should have resolved themselves and the grand finale which I will address later.
3.Parody Justifies Everything. Seriously, half the dialogue in this show is fanservice for teenage girls. A parody is not playing every cliche straight than pointing it out. A parody makes fun of situations by subverting viewers expectations for the norm. Haruhi's entire existence revolves around reminding the audience that this is a parody with all the subtly of a sledgehammer. Making a stupid plot and then pointing out the plot is stupid does not make a good story . It just points out that the author's ideas are uncreative. They say this show is original but it couldn't be more mainstream.
4. Parody Incest is Fine. Kaoru's and Hikaru's relationship is supposed to be a parody but how much is actually a joke? I mean they make incest comments all the time when their customers aren't around and Haruhi never buys their act in the first place. Girls are disgusted by shows like Koi no Kaze and Kissxsis but find this relationship to be endearing. Ugh!
5.Cliche Endings Need No Effort. Out of nowhere, a new character, Eclair, is introduced and somehow is more shallow than Haruhi. Review continued in comments.