“F---ing outrageous. I was so pissed. I was absolutely livid.”

13 stars unhappy with the controversial endings of their TV shows

"F---ing outrageous. I was so pissed. I was absolutely livid."

By Brianna Zigler

June 9, 2026 4:24 p.m. ET

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Michael C. Hall; Emilia Clarke; Evangeline Lilly. Credit:

Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty; Dia Dipasupil/Getty; Phillip Faraone/GA/The Hollywood Reporter via Getty

A terrible ending to your favorite TV show can feel like a knife to the back. You spend years invested in a story, only to be left sorely disappointed with its conclusion.

In certain instances, fans aren't alone in their distaste for a show's finale. Sometimes, the stars themselves will speak out about what didn't work for them.

Even shows that end on a positive or satisfying note can receive scorn from actors when they feel disappointed by their characters' arcs. Take, for example, Sarah Hyland from *Modern Family, *who felt that her character Haley Dunphy was let down by being relegated to a wife and mother at the show's close.

This isn't true for everyone. Recently, Hugh Laurie vehemently defended the *House* finale 14 years after it aired. *Lost*'s Daniel Dae Kim, meanwhile, still considers the controversial final episode to be "really satisfying."

Still, it's natural for actors to get deeply invested in where their characters end up. Below, we take a look at the stars from nine popular TV shows who admitted that they wished things had gone down a bit differently. Fair warning: There are some spoilers ahead.

Chace Crawford and Penn Badgley, Gossip Girl

Penn Badgley and Chace Crawford at the W New York in 2011.

Michael N. Todaro/WireImage

*Gossip Girl*, the CW's hit show about New York City's young elite, ended on a shocking note: Penn Badgley's character, Dan Humphrey, is revealed to have been the eponymous, anonymous blogger terrorizing his classmates.

Many fans felt that Dan got off too easy, and that the reveal largely did not align with the character they'd come to know across six seasons. It turns out Badgley agrees, as he revealed in a 2021 interview alongside costar Chace Crawford, who played Nate Archibald.

Crawford reflected, "At the end of *Gossip Girl *the show, whatever your reaction is on whether it was smart to do that or not, that he's Gossip Girl — it didn't really line up with the character of Dan. Right?" Badgley agreed with that assessment.

In February 2026, on the final episode of his podcast *Podcrushed*, Badgley admitted to former *GG* costar Leighton Meester that he laughed while filming the moment where he discloses his identity, saying it was "the most, like, absurd thing that you could possibly say."

Michael C. Hall, Dexter

Michael C. Hall at CCPX Mexico 2025 for 'Dexter: Resurrection'.

Hector Vivas/Getty

The end of *Dexter* is so widely hated that it's considered by many to be among the worst TV show endings ever.

But fans can share in that letdown with star Michael C. Hall, whose titular serial killer ends the series experiencing zero consequences for killing and disposing of his own sister. He then goes off to live the rest of his days as a lumberjack.

In a Reddit AMA from 2014, when asked what his initial reaction to Dexter's fate was, Hall replied, "Probably sadness." He spoke about it again seven years later in an interview with *The Daily Beast**,* citing the finale as the reason for going forward with the revival series, *Dexter: New Blood* (later to be expanded upon with *Dexter: Resurrection*).

"Let's be real: people found the way that show left things pretty unsatisfying, and there's always been a hope that a story would emerge that would be worth telling," he said. "I include myself in the group of people that wondered, 'What the hell happened to that guy?'"

Sarah Hyland, Modern Family

Sarah Hyland at Variety's 2024 Power of Women event in Los Angeles.

Momodu Mansaray/FilmMagic

When *Modern Family*'s eldest daughter Haley Dunphy ditched who viewers felt was her soulmate (Andy, played by Adam Devine) and instead went with the handsome but goofy Dylan (Reid Ewing), the disappointment was real. The knife was twisted further by where she ended up in the show's final episode.

By the end of the long-running sitcom, Haley's screen time had been shortened, and her arc became centered around being a wife and mom. On X in January 2020, a fan asked why Haley had been missing from so many episodes that season.

Hyland's reply? "Apparently I've been busy with the twins," she wrote, punctuating her post with an emoji of a woman holding her hands up in confusion.

Speaking with with *Cosmopolitan* a few months later*, *Hyland articulated her disappointment with her character's ending. She wished that Haley had been able to "own her badassery in the fashion world — becoming a badass stylist or brand mogul or anything like that."

She continued, "No offense to moms, of course: There are so many amazing mothers who are also hard workers and excel at their jobs and kill it every day in both aspects. That would have been a really cool thing to see, especially from someone like Haley."

Emilia Clarke, Conleth Hill, and Kit Harington, Game of Thrones

Emilia Clarke at the 2026 Tribeca Film Festival; Kit Harington at a Fendi fashion show; Conleth Hill at the the season 7 premiere of 'Game Of Thrones' in 2017.

Dia Dipasupil/Getty; Daniele Venturelli/Getty; Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic

We've all seen the infamous table read.

Ahead of the final season, the *Game of Thrones* cast gathered to read through the series' last episodes, and some actors appeared either distraught or disapproving of how things ended.

In the video, Emilia Clarke, Conleth Hill, and Kit Harington appear the most visibly shaken. All three actors have since voiced their distaste with where season 8 left things.

Speaking with *The Times *in 2023, Hill said, "I just felt frustrated with the last couple of [seasons] because Varys wasn't the all-knowing character he had been. I think the writers wanted to do one thing to end it and the studio HBO wanted to do another. I felt that last [season] was a bit rushed."

In a 2024 interview with *GQ*, Harington agreed that the series felt "rushed" at the end.

"I think there were mistakes made, story-wise, towards the end maybe. I think there were some interesting choices that didn't quite work," he said.

Most recently, Clarke was quite blunt when she told *Variety* how she felt about the fate of her character, Daenerys Targaryen: "F---ing outrageous. I was so pissed. I was absolutely livid."

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Bonnie Bartlett, St. Elsewhere

Bonnie Bartlett in 1989.

Ralph Dominguez/MediaPunch

The acclaimed '80s drama *St. Elsewhere, *which ran for six seasons from 1982 through 1988, helped define the medical drama for television and launched a little star by the name of Denzel Washington. It also has a controversial ending.

The show concludes by revealing the whole show was the daydream of Tommy, the autistic son of Dr. Donald Westphall (Ed Flanders). In reality, Westphall was a construction worker, and Tommy had been imagining the events of the show while staring at a snow globe with a tiny model of St. Eligius Hospital inside it.

In a cast reunion for ** in 2012, star William Daniels said, "I think a lot of the cast didn't care for [the finale] at all."

Bonnie Bartlett, who played Ellen Craig, didn't mince words. "[The writers] wanted to do an ending to the show in a way so that it could never be brought back again. They really wanted to kill the show," she said. "And they figured out a way: Okay, we won't have any reunions, nothing like that. And I was very upset. I thought it was terrible. A terrible ending!"

Ian Somerhalder, The Vampire Diaries

Ian Somerhalder at Spike TV's 'Scream 2010' at The Greek Theatre in 2010.

Christopher Polk/Getty

Ian Somerhalder, who played the sarcastic, brooding bloodsucker Damon Salvatore on *The Vampire Diaries, *didn't want his character to have a happy ending. On the contrary, he felt that Damon deserved to die.

In an interview with *Access Hollywood*, Somerhalder and his costar Paul Wesley revealed that they actually fought over how their characters' stories would end.

"We both wanted to die at the end of the show, we wanted the brothers to go out with a bang together," Wesley explained. "And we were fighting over who would die. And I ended up getting it and you were a little jealous. You have to admit, you were a little jealous."

"Well, here's the deal, define jealous," Somerhalder replied. "[What] Paul and I were discussing was ultimately these guys came into town, they destroyed everything. They met Elena, who is this 17-year-old kid, turned into a killer. She burned down her house." ******He concluded by expressing some disappointment over how things actually turned out. "It was more poetic for these two brothers to go away and to let these humans sort of resettle back into their town," he said. "But, whatever, I lost that battle. I lost a lot of battles."

Alexis Bledel, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life

Alexis Bledel at a WB upfront party in New York City.

KMazur/WireImage

While *Gilmore Girls* officially ended in 2007, the dramedy got a revival season almost a decade later with Netflix's *Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life.*

Viewers were thrilled to have their favorite characters back, but some were disappointed over the lack of growth seemingly afforded to Alexis Bledel's Rory.

The show ends with Rory telling her mother, Lorelai (Lauren Graham), that she's pregnant. It it wasn't the ending that Bledel was hoping for.

In a conversation on *Deadline*'s Emmy Contenders panel, Bledel was asked about whether she felt her character's ending was satisfying. She replied, "It certainly wasn't the ending I was expecting. I told Amy that I hoped Rory would end on a high note. After all her hard work, I wanted to see her succeed and be thriving. So it was a hard thing for me to digest."

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Jason Alexander and Jerry Seinfeld, Seinfeld

Jason Alexander in 2024; Jerry Seinfeld in 2025.

Tommaso Boddi/Getty; Jason Mendez/Gett

Many viewers agree that the iconic '90s sitcom *Seinfeld* ended in a way that wasn't entirely befitting of the show. The finale more or less plays like a "greatest hits" compilation that caps things off with a whimper.

Jason Alexander, who played George Costanza, called the finale "a good episode, not a great episode" in a 2013 chat with the Television Academy. In 2017, Jerry Seinfeld told an audience during a *New Yorker Festival* interview, "I sometimes think we really shouldn't have even done it."

He added, "There was a lot of pressure on us at that time to do one big last show, but big is always bad in comedy."

For his part, Larry David, the show's cantankerous co-creator, has remained one of the finale's staunch defenders, and he ultimately riffed on it in *Curb Your Enthusiasm*'s* *own series finale.

It was something of a middle finger to those who didn't like the way *Seinfeld* ended. "F--- you! You didn't like the first one? F--- you!" he quipped during an event at PaleyFest in 2024.

Evangeline Lilly, Lost

Evangeline Lilly on 'The Tonight Show with Jay Leno' in 2008.

Margaret Norton/NBCU/getty

The finale of *Lost* still has people talking over 15 years later. In 2018, one of its stars, Evangeline Lilly, got candid about how she felt regarding her character Kate Austen's fate.

In an interview for *The LOST Boys* podcast, Lilly said that some of the plot decisions in Kate's time towards the end of the show "irritated the shit out of [her]."

She was unhappy with how Kate had become overly concerned with her love interests, Jack (Matthew Fox) and Sawyer (Josh Holloway), which she felt removed her character of "agency." Lilly admitted that she "threw scripts across the room."

"There was an eventual lack of dimension to what was going on with her. I wanted her to be better, because she was an icon for strength and autonomy for women, and I thought we could have done better," she said.

Original Article on Source

Source: “EW TV”