Quotes / Audience-Alienating Ending

"If you're watching the show because you're waiting for the big answers to come, you have to understand that by the nature of what it is – it’s not a movie, it’s not a series of movies, it’s not a trilogy, it’s not a miniseries – it's going to be on air for as long as ABC wants to keep it on the air. How can you ever possibly think that Lost will end in a satisfying way? Carlton and I can almost guarantee you that it will not."

— Damon Lindelof, co-creator of Lost on his own show, four years before its polarizing finale

Reeves: This book was perfect. Such a beautiful story... Incredible prose! Tight pacing! Amazing characters!
Leif: ...And it's a bad book?
Reeves: IT WAS ALL A DREAM! AND THEN A ROCK CRUSHES THE MAIN CHARACTER!!!

— Reeves commenting on the "Axis Invert" bad book, Bug Fables

"Ultimately, "The Iron Throne" is the final, humiliating nail in the coffin of a season that's simply run out of creative steam. It destroys whatever's left of the show's integrity; it cheapens and dumbs down every character it touches, and in a very real sense, it tarnishes what should have been a glowing legacy as one of the greatest shows in TV history. People don't always remember how a story begins, but they remember how it ends - especially if it ends badly."

— The Critical Drinker on the ending of Game Of Thrones

"I cannot watch the new season of The Devil is a Part-Timer! bc I know the shit ending to the entire series now
Sad bc season 1 is legit one of my fav comedy animes of all time
But I don’t wanna be emotionally invested in everything only to get slapped at the end out of nowhere again"

— Tumblr user Sidsinning

This makes me wonder if Ohba was pissed that Platinum End wasn't popular, so he gave up and wrote a quick "everyone dies" ending so that he could move on to another project. But, we just got confirmation of an anime adaptation! Why abruptly give your manga a depressing, unsatisfying ending while an anime is in production? Who is going to be enthusiastic about the anime, knowing that all of the characters are doomed to vanish because of Shuji's choice in the final chapter? Why get invested or care about any of the characters when you know that all life on Earth gets exterminated at the end?

— This Reddit thread

"The cultural endurance of any story has much to do with the desire to retell it, despite knowing how it ends. Breaking Bad is not devalued by knowing the ending. The Sopranos is not devalued by knowing the ending. Romeo and Juliet tells you the ending at the beginning of the play. Making case just not for this tragedy but for the endurance of tragic stories in general. Romeo and Juliet, Orpheus and Eurydice. We tell and retell these stories despite knowing how it going to end. I bring this up because... knowing how the show ends, are you going to begin to watch it again? What is the legacy of Game of Thrones going to be? Because there are endings that ruin a story in hindsight. I used to watch and rewatch the earlier seasons of the show. But now, knowing the end, knowing what they're building towards, knowing how nihilistic and stupid and mean it ends up being, there's just no enjoyment in the journey even anymore. Even in the very long process of making these two episodes, rewatching old Game of Thrones was just an exercise in frustration because you know now that the build-up that they were going towards has little or no payoff. The enjoyment of experiencing a story should not be ruined by knowing how it ends. I think that after the dust settles and the hot takes are taken— and I recognize that I'm probably at the end of this train— the answer is going to be no. It's not going to be remembered for the journey we all undertook. It's going to be remembered as a thing that was ruined by its ending. One of the greatest examples of that... Maybe ever."

— Lindsay Ellis, The Last of the Game of Thrones Hot Takes

"Because if you try something fancy and screw up, readers are probably going to remember the botched ending more than the well run marathon."

— Terrible Writing Advice, Ending a Story

"The trouble with these rankings is the lack of nuance. Is it really fair to call Twelve Minutes the fifth worst game of 2021 if I was somewhat liking it right up until the end? In this case, yes, because that ending undermines everything leading up to it; if you get dragged into an alley by an angry chef and disemboweled with a broken bottle, your subsequent Yelp review probably isn't going to focus on the restaurant's lovely filet mignon."

— Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw

"I’ve danced around this issue long enough. At long last, let’s talk about the worst thing to ever happen to Madoka Magica. Let’s talk about the last twenty minutes. Let’s talk about how Homura steals a portion of Madokami’s power and uses it to rewrite the universe yet again (thereby becoming a completely different character whom I will refer to from here on out as “Homucifer”, because she sure as hell doesn’t remind me of the Homura Akemi I’m familiar with).
Now, I’ve tried my best to maintain an image of myself as level-headed and fair throughout this essay, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to start being blunt here. This is where I begin getting angry.
I hate this ending. Hate-hate-haaaaate it."

—Novasylum, "Rebel With A Misguided Cause", on the ending of Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion

"Still a better ending than Mass Effect 3."

—The Internet

"Nothing keeps a story alive more than an ending no one likes. When a big story ends with a thud, people will always wonder how it could have been done better."

—Glenn Greenburg, Life of Reilly part 17 about The Clone Saga

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