You know what really gets under my skin? Spending years of your life invested in a character’s journey, only to watch writers completely botch their ending. I mean, I get it – wrapping up complex storylines isn’t easy, but come on. Some of these conclusions feel like the writers just gave up halfway through and decided to wing it.
I’ve been teaching sci-fi to teenagers for over a decade now, and let me tell you, they’re brutal critics when it comes to unsatisfying endings. They’ll call out lazy writing faster than you can say “deus ex machina.” And honestly? They’re usually right. When a sixteen-year-old can point out plot holes and character inconsistencies that somehow escaped a room full of professional writers, something’s gone seriously wrong.
The thing about sci-fi is that we don’t just watch these shows or read these books – we inhabit these worlds. We spend ridiculous amounts of time theorizing about what’s going to happen next, analyzing character motivations, getting emotionally invested in relationships that exist only on screen. So when a character we’ve grown to love gets a crappy ending that doesn’t honor their journey, it feels personal.
I’ve lost count of how many late-night conversations I’ve had with other fans, dissecting what went wrong and imagining how things could’ve been different. My fellow teachers probably think I’m nuts for caring this much about fictional characters, but here’s the thing – these stories matter. They reflect our hopes, fears, and values. When they fail their own characters, they fail us too.
Take William Adama from Battlestar Galactica. God, what a character. Edward James Olmos brought such gravitas to that role – this weathered military leader trying to keep humanity alive while grappling with impossible moral choices. For four seasons, we watched him struggle with the weight of command, the loss of his sons, the constant threat of extinction. He wasn’t perfect, but he was real in a way that most TV commanders aren’t.
And then the finale happened. Don’t get me wrong – I actually liked a lot of “Daybreak,” but Adama’s ending felt off to me. After everything this man went through, after all the people he saved and sacrificed for, he ends up alone on some mountain building a cabin? I mean, I get the appeal of retirement, but it felt like they didn’t know what to do with him once the big space battles were over.
My students and I spent weeks discussing this when we covered BSG in my dystopian literature unit. Most of them felt the same way – that Adama deserved better than isolation. One particularly insightful kid suggested that Adama should’ve stayed involved in building the new society, maybe as an elder statesman helping establish laws and institutions. Not as a military leader, but as someone who understood the costs of survival and could help ensure those lessons weren’t forgotten.
Then there’s Rose Tyler from Doctor Who. Oh man, Rose. She was my introduction to the revived series back in 2005, and Billie Piper just nailed that role. Rose wasn’t just a companion – she was the heart of those early seasons. Her relationship with the Ninth Doctor, and later the Tenth, felt genuine and earned. She grew from a shop girl into someone capable of staring down Daleks and making impossible choices.
But “Doomsday” still makes me tear up, and not entirely in a good way. Yes, the beach scene is beautifully acted, and yes, the parallel universe solution is clever from a plot standpoint. But something about it never sat right with me. Maybe it’s because the meta-crisis Doctor in “Journey’s End” felt like a consolation prize – here’s a human version who can age and die with you, isn’t that nice?
I’ve actually used Rose’s arc as a teaching tool when we discuss character development and narrative satisfaction. My students are divided – some love the tragic romance angle, others feel like she got shortchanged. The ones who hate it usually argue that Rose deserved agency in her own ending, that she should’ve had more say in her fate than just getting trapped in another dimension.
Don’t even get me started on Finn from the sequel Star Wars trilogy. What a waste of potential. John Boyega brought such charisma and depth to that role in The Force Awakens – a stormtrooper who chooses compassion over conditioning? That’s brilliant! That’s the kind of fresh perspective Star Wars needed.
But then The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker happened, and Finn got increasingly sidelined. By the end, he’s mostly just running around shouting “Rey!” while the actual interesting parts of his character – his Force sensitivity, his connection to other ex-stormtroopers, his unique perspective on the First Order – get barely explored.
I showed The Force Awakens to my sci-fi film class two years ago, and afterwards we brainstormed what we thought Finn’s arc would be. Almost every student predicted he’d become a Jedi and help liberate other stormtroopers. When I told them how his story actually ended, they were genuinely disappointed. “That’s it?” one kid asked. “He just… exists?”
The Expanse’s Naomi Nagata is another character who deserved more resolution. Dominique Tipper’s performance throughout that series was incredible – she made Naomi complex and flawed and human. Her trauma from Marco and the Free Navy, her guilt over the protomolecule, her role as the heart of the Rocinante crew – all of it felt real and earned.
But the series ended before we could really see what came next for her. I know they were working with budget constraints and the actors’ availability, but Naomi’s story felt unfinished. She’d been through so much growth and pain, and then we just… leave her? My students who watched the show (and yes, I absolutely recommend it to juniors and seniors) wanted to know what she did next. How did she help rebuild Belter society? What was her role in the new order?
And John Crichton from Farscape – now there’s a character who almost got the ending he deserved. Almost. The Peacekeeper Wars miniseries had some great moments, and Ben Browder’s performance was as charismatic as ever. But four hours to wrap up all those storylines? It felt rushed, like they were checking boxes rather than honoring the characters’ journeys.
I actually assign Farscape episodes sometimes when we study character development and world-building. Crichton’s fish-out-of-water story could’ve been a tired cliché, but the show made it work by never letting him fully adapt. He remained recognizably human while changing in fundamental ways. He deserved an ending that acknowledged both sides of that transformation.
Here’s what I think happens – and I see this pattern over and over in the shows and books I teach. Writers get so focused on plot resolution that they forget about character resolution. They wrap up the big mysteries and the romantic subplots, but they don’t ask the crucial question: what does this character need to complete their emotional journey?
It’s not about happy endings – some of my favorite sci-fi stories have devastating conclusions. It’s about earned endings. Endings that feel like a natural culmination of everything the character has experienced and learned. When that doesn’t happen, when characters get shortchanged or forgotten or reduced to plot devices, it breaks the trust between storyteller and audience.
My students get this instinctively. They’ll defend characters they love with a passion that sometimes surprises me. They write fanfiction and create elaborate theories about what “really” happened after the cameras stopped rolling. They understand that these characters aren’t just entertainment – they’re vessels for exploring what it means to be human in impossible circumstances.
That’s why bad endings hurt so much. We invest in these characters because they represent parts of ourselves, our hopes and fears and dreams. When they get dismissed or diminished, it feels like dismissal of those parts of us that connected with them.
But here’s the beautiful thing about sci-fi fandom – the stories don’t end when the show gets cancelled or the book series concludes. Fans keep these characters alive through discussion and analysis and reimagining. Every time someone writes a better ending or argues about what should’ve happened, they’re participating in the ongoing life of the story.
Maybe that’s enough. Maybe the fact that we’re still talking about these characters, still caring about their fates, means they got the most important kind of immortality. But damn it, wouldn’t it be nice if the original creators had gotten it right the first time?
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