Here are the worst TV endings

All’s well that end’s well — or not. 

It’s hard to stick the landing, and harder for some shows than others. The aughts serial-killer hit “Dexter” is back with a revival premiering Sunday, Nov. 7, on Showtime. It tries to make audiences forget that the original show ended with a bizarre lumberjack turn (more on that shortly). 

Although TV is mostly about the journey, the destination shouldn’t be to a sinking ship. The past two decades have produced some seriously game-changing series— and some horribly clunky endings, bad enough to rival the notorious “St. Elsewhere” finale, which wrapped up the Emmy-winning ’80s medical drama with a rendition of “it was all a dream.”

Now that “Dexter” is trying to dust itself off, The Post takes a look at the worst offenders for bad TV endings in recent years.

‘Dexter’

“Dexter” followed a serial killer who targeted other killers, all while working for the Miami police. There were numerous ways the Showtime hit could have ended that would have made sense. Instead, “Dexter” chose to give the character a bewildering conclusion in which he became a lumberjack. It was an out-of-the-blue conclusion with nothing from the previous seasons even remotely leading up to it. 

Are they trying to make us forget about it? 

Yes. The revival, “Dexter: New Blood,” picks up ten years later, ensuring that the botched ending is not, in fact, the show’s last word. 

‘Game of Thrones’

The watercooler fantasy hit changed the game for TV. But although it became beloved for its complex characters that anchored the big action set pieces, in the end, it threw those characters under the bus in favor of empty spectacle. From the laughable reveal that the most boring character, Bran, would be the King (Sansa was right there!) to Jamie forgetting four seasons of development and regressing on the spot — not to mention the Daenerys mess — “Game of Thrones” took eight years of character arcs and tossed them out the window. The problem wasn’t so much what happened (okay, some of it was, because, again: King Bran?!), but the rushed and nonsensical way that it was executed.

Are they trying to make us forget about it? 

Sort of. There’s more “Game of Thrones” coming in the form of the spin-off prequel show “House of the Dragon,” so that infamous ending won’t be the last taste we get of Westeros. 

‘Lost’

The show is aptly named: The characters were lost on the infamous Island — and the show itself lost its own plot. The ABC hit redefined the “puzzle box” genre and ushered in the now-ubiquitous presence of crowdsourced internet fan theories. But in the end, it collapsed under the weight of its own unmet expectations. Key enigmas remained frustratingly vague (the cork and the heart, anyone?). And the ending — which reunited every character, whether living or dead, in a church — led viewers to believe that “Lost” wrapped up with an “everyone was dead the whole time” conclusion. The creators have since clarified that’s not the case, but the answer (which has to do with parallel realities) is still deeply convoluted. If the finale needs to be explained and still confuses people, well, then … the show didn’t do a good job. 

Are they trying to make us forget about it? 

Nope, there’s no more “Lost” coming. In fact, over time the ending has become slightly less hated as more people have realized that it wasn’t a “They were dead the whole time” wrap-up, but it still goes down in infamy.

‘How I Met Your Mother’

It was legen … wait for it … dary. Only, not in a good way. For a show with a built-in concept and conclusion in its title, “How I Met Your Mother” sure dropped the ball. For eight seasons, Ted Mosby told his kids the story of how he met their mother, focusing on entertaining segues about his friend group, which included Robin, Barney, Lily and Marshall. The mother barely figured into the show, until the end … when the creators decided it would be a good idea wrap up a sitcom with a “shocking twist” and kill off the mother, leaving Ted to end up with Robin — a romantic relationship that the story had long moved on from. This show isn’t called, “How I Met Robin.” It had one job, and it whiffed it. 

Are they trying to make us forget about it? 

Sort of. There’s a spinoff in the works called “How I Met Your Father,” starring Hilary Duff, but it will have different characters. 

‘The Sopranos’

Don’t stop believin’. Tony Soprano went out to eat at Holsten’s with his family, and depending on who you ask, he was either murdered there, or life went on, with the audience unceremoniously kicked out. The screen abruptly cut to black, leaving many viewers at the time wondering if there was something wrong with their televisions. If a large portion of the audience thinks that they could be having a tech issue, the show isn’t doing it right! The seminal mob drama took the idea of “ambiguous” ending to the next level, making it so sudden that viewers were left reeling. 

Are they trying to make us forget about it? 

Sort of. The recent prequel movie “The Many Saints of Newark” gave viewers another glimpse into the Sopranos’ world.

‘Castle’

Crime writer Beckett and no-nonsense investigator Castle were a will-they-or-won’t-they for the ages … at least up until that muddled finish. Depending on who you ask, they either died and possibly ended up in heaven, wound up married with three kids, or it was all a dream. Or something. The ending sequence, in which they both get shot before jumping to the pair seemingly living a “happily ever after” that might be real or might be the afterlife, doesn’t make any sense. And there’s no explanation for what those scenes are doing back to back. 

Are they trying to make us forget about it?

No, there’s no more “Castle” planned. 

‘Supernatural’

After a whopping fifteen seasons following brothers Sam and Dean Winchester hunting monsters together, the series ended with Dean dying in an anticlimactic way on a routine expedition, a cheesy afterlife sequence and a truly heinous old-man wig and makeup for Sam as the episode flashed forward to show him dying of old age. Fifteen years of TV wrapped up with a sappy and ridiculous turn worthy of a soap opera.

Are they trying to make us forget about it?

Kind of. There’s a prequel about the brothers’ parents in the works, so Sam’s terrible wig and Dean’s embarrassing afterlife adventures won’t be the last we hear of the Winchester family.