Season Finale

The last episode or episodes of a season, consisting of a story which ties up most of that season's loose ends and aims to be as dramatic as possible. They may be The Climax of an ongoing Story Arc, or simply a new story, the most dramatic yet. They may kill off main characters, bring back villains from earlier in the series, and set up the next season. Cliff Hanger endings are common.

Season finales are pretty much guaranteed to draw in large audience figures.

While this is by no means universal, it's still very common.

Of course, when the show is ending for good, they really pull out all the stops.

See "What Now?" Ending, Series Fauxnale, Cliff Hanger and Denouement Episode for specific varieties of Season Finale.

Live-Action TV

 * The new Doctor Who has so far ended every series up until 2010 with multi-episode arc-ending stories. The first series had "Bad Wolf"/"The Parting of the Ways", the second had "Army of Ghosts"/"Doomsday", the third had "Utopia"/"The Sound of Drums"/"Last of the Time Lords", and the fourth had "The Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End".
 * Despite being specials, the 2009 episodes were filmed as a continuation of series 4, and thus the The End of Time was treated as a series finale, rather than just a two part Christmas/New Year's special...
 * The 2010 series finale, "The Pandorica Opens"/"The Big Bang" in contrast to the previous post-revival finales, does not solve every mystery from within the series. Most of these are resolved in series 6, which broke form and had a single-part finale, "The Wedding of River Song".
 * Each series of Torchwood ends on something game-changing, like a departure or even a death. In Torchwood: Miracle Day's "The Blood Line", the finale ended on.
 * The first and second series finales of The Sarah Jane Adventures featured returning villains set to give Sarah Jane a rematch.
 * While Heroes is more of a continuous story, "How To Stop an Exploding Man" probably qualifies as this.
 * House season finales usually show something going wrong with the titular character. How he became a cripple (actually the episode before the series finale, much more memorable than the real one), when he got shot, losing all his team, being in an accident, possible brain damage and losing his best friend are some of these.
 * Primeval series one ended with the dramatic "Episode 6", and series 2's "Episode 12"/"Episode 13" was even more dramatic.
 * Each season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer ended with a huge fight against the Big Bad.
 * Season 1:
 * Season 2:
 * Season 3:
 * Season 4:
 * Season 5:
 * Season 6:
 * Season 7:
 * Season 8
 * Stargate SG-1 often has a huge, dramatic season finale, ending on a Cliff Hanger.
 * In fact, of the ten seasons only season 5 and 7 aren't cliffhangers if we don't count the series finale. Stargate Atlantis had every single season finale being a cliffhanger:
 * Season 1, The Siege: Atlantis coming under siege from two Hives... until the Daedalus fights them off
 * Season 2, Allies: two Hives are on the way to Earth... until the Daedalus and the Orion stop them
 * Season 3, First Strike:
 * Season 4, The Last Man:
 * Season 5, Enemy at the Gate:
 * Life On Mars came to a head in the first series, but it wasn't the conclusion Sam Tyler thought it would be. Similarly with his spiritual successor, Alex Drake, in Ashes to Ashes.
 * The second-season finale of Desperate Housewives was padded out to two hours with Mary-Alice Flash Back scenes.
 * Lost has ended each of its five seasons with a two-hour (in season 1 and 5, this is a two-parter with three hours total) finale. Each has featured simultaneous action on multiple parts of the island, involving all regular characters (in contrast to weekly episodes, which often have multiple characters who do not appear.) Each finale has partially wrapped up that season's focus, setting up the focus of the following season. Each has also featured a "secret scene," referred to by a code word. Only the actors who appear in the scene know its contents:
 * Season 1's "Exodus": "The Bagel": Walt is
 * Season 2's "Live Together, Die Alone": "The Challah": the island is listening station and reported to  the first non- scene in the series.
 * Season 3's "Through the Looking Glass": "The Rattlesnake in the Mailbox": the flashback is ; Jack and Kate, and possibly others, have
 * Season 4's "There's No Place Like Home": "The Frozen Donkey Wheel": is finally revealed to be the person inside the coffin.
 * Season 5's "The Incident": "The Fork in the Outlet":.
 * The Grand Finale also had one, but not codenamed:
 * Supernatural always has huge season finales where all the events and issues in the season come to a head.
 * The first had Devil's Trap - Meg . We meet for the first time. All but one of the  get used., pins them both to the wall and . And the Impala gets  unconscious and bloody.
 * The second had All Hell Breaks Loose - Sam and the other and then he  arms at the end of the first half. Dean, driven over the edge of emotional endurance, makes a, doesn't actually want to tell him and has a .  Dean to a grave, Sam to a tree (sensing a pattern here?) and Sam learns that he . With a little help from  him but are told by
 * And the third had shout-outs all over the place, Fan Service with the, pure Nightmare Fuel with and a massive  while Sam watches, Sam sobbing while he  and Dean  to help him. They have been known to produce many Tear Jerker scenes and Crowning Moments of Awesome for all characters.
 * Serial Escalation means nothing when it comes to season finales here. Season Four's finale reveals  The only problem is,
 * And then, in Season Five's finale:
 * And in the Season Six finale:.
 * Season Seven ends with:
 * Firefly, which only ran for one season, arguably had what qualifies as a true Season Finale in its fourteenth episode, "Objects in Space." By the end of this episode, most of the immediate loose ends in the plot have been tied up. The romantic tension between Mal and Inara is more or less resolved. Simon and River have settled into fairly solid positions as part of the crew. There were plenty of hooks to hang a second season off of, some of which were used in the subsequent movie, but most of those hooks would require a new story arc to develop fully.
 * The Secret Life of the American Teenager is usually just 90% dialogue, but something significant/show-altering always happens in the season finale.
 * Season 1: Amy gives birth to John, and her father and sister move out of the family home.
 * Season 2: Leo and Betty get married, Cindy and Reuben get married, and . They try to play the last one off as a maybe/maybe not Cliff Hanger, but practically every viewer could tell.
 * Season 3:  and  . Well, technically,
 * One of the most famous season finales is the third season finale of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which is also a Cliff Hanger. Riker.
 * Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Star Trek: Voyager had a stardate system that corresponded to the season, meaning that many of the important events in the season finales (and season premieres) tended to happen right around the same time of the year: Wolf 359, the Klingon Civil War, first contact with the Jem'Hadar, the Klingon invasion of Cardassia, the Dominion taking control of Deep Space Nine, the invasion of Species 8472, the first invasion of the Chin'toka system, the final battle of the Dominion War, and so forth. (Not to mention all of the other major personal events that tend to go on right around this time too!) Rule #1 of the Star Trek universe: celebrate New Year's Eve in a isolated, quiet part of the galaxy, well away from everyone!
 * Each season finales in Prison Break not only left the audience on a cliffhanger, but effectively wrapped up the then-current premise of the show and introduced the new one: the season one finale has them, the second season finale has the protagonist , and so on, so forth.
 * Battlestar Galactica (the 2004 revival) loved Cliff Hangers, Mind Screws, and HSQ for its finales.
 * Season 1 ended with a two part epic that revealed
 * Season 2 closed with Karma Houdini / Jerkass President Gaius Baltar
 * In one of the greatest Mind Screws of all time, the Season 3 closer revealed that not only is
 * The writer's-strike-induced halfway finale of the final season ended with
 * The actual finale to the series blew previous Mind Screws out of the water. Non- Mind Screw, but still big:
 * Half of the Friends season finales involved a Cliff Hanger: Ross is coming from China with a new girlfriend; Ross says the wrong name in the altar; Ross and Rachel got married in Vegas; Rachel is pregnant; and Joey enters Rachel's hotel room and kisses her.
 * Blue Heelers, in its later seasons, went the cliffhanger route.
 * 2000 had Jack being taken into surgery for a riskyoperation for his back.
 * 2001 had Hayley reveal to Tess her real mother was going to take her away.
 * 2002 ended with Tess revealing she was married, with it being hinted it was to Evan.
 * 2003 had Ben shoot Susie's husband, in self defense.
 * 2004 portrayed Tom murder the girl who killed his dog in cold blood.
 * Smallville also tends to use cliffhangers in its season finales (and in the later seasons, battles with the Big Bad of the season):
 * Season One: "Tempest" -
 * Season Two: "Exodus" -
 * Season Three: "Covenant" -
 * Season Four: "Commencement" -
 * Season Five: "Vessel" -
 * Season Six: "Phantom" -
 * Season Seven: "Arctic" -
 * Season Eight: "Doomsday" -
 * Season Nine: "Salvation" -
 * Season Ten: "Finale" - Clark confronts Darkseid and embraces his destiny.
 * Castle season 3, episode 24.
 * Community, The first season really has three Season Finale episodes, while the second season ends in a two part Season Finale.
 * "Modern Warfare": This episode focuses on the cultural referencing aspect of the show, by having a paintball battle break out with many Shout-Out to various action movie film franchises.
 * "English as a Second Language": This episode focuses on the academic setting aspect of the show and what is keeping the study group together going forward.
 * "Pascal's Triangle Revisited": This episode focuses on the emotional aspect of the show. With someone contemplating moving away, another moving in with a classmate, a Betty and Veronica descision being forced to the surface, all ending in a Big Damn Kiss.
 * "A Fistful Of Paintballs": Sees a return to paintball in the second Season Finale, but this time with many Shout-Out to Spaghetti Western and The Western. It is revealed that the study group has voted out one of their members.
 * "For A Few Paintballs More": Reveals the continued existence of Greendale College is at stake, and everyone must work together to save it.
 * All season finales of How I Met Your Mother featured major shakeups to the status quo:
 * Season 1:
 * Season 2: Marshall and Lily get married, while
 * Season 3:
 * Season 4:
 * Season 5: Marshall and Lily decide to try for a baby, Robin breaks up with Don.
 * Season 6:
 * Season 7:
 * The West Wing always rained down the shock and awe for their season finales:
 * Season 1: "who's been hit".
 * Season 2:
 * Season 3:
 * Season 4:
 * NCIS:
 * Season 1:
 * Season 2:
 * Season 3:
 * Season 4:
 * Season 5:
 * Season 6:
 * Season 7:
 * Queer as Folk:
 * Season 1:
 * Season 2:
 * Season 3:
 * Season 4:
 * Season 5: Also the Grand Finale.

Video Games

 * A rare video game example: Both seasons of Telltale Games' episodic Sam and Max games have ended with a big reveal of the mastermind behind the season's events.

Web Comics

 * Homestuck always ends an Act spectacularly.
 * Act 1: The main character's neighborhood is hit by a meteor, with him escaping just in the nick of time.
 * Act 2: It's revealed that the desert a secondary character is wandering around on is post-apocalypse Earth. Meanwhile, Rose's mother opens a secret doorway that leads to a nearby laboratory, and Dave prepares to fight his brother.
 * Act 3: Rose finally enters the Medium. Jade gets her hands on the SBURB discs, which turn out to somehow be Dave's copy, hidden in a time capsule, and John finally goes through his first gate.
 * Intermission: The Midnight Crew Intermission is canon, and it turns out Slick is Karkat's exile.
 * Act 4:  And that's not even getting into what happens in between acts 4 and 5.
 * Act 5 Act 1:
 * Act 5: The big one.
 * Act 6 Act 1:
 * Act 6 Intermission 1:
 * Act 6 Act 2:
 * Act 6 Act 1:
 * Act 6 Intermission 1:
 * Act 6 Act 2:
 * Act 6 Intermission 1:
 * Act 6 Act 2:

Web Original

 * Lonelygirl15 ended two series with multiple episode dramatic stories. The first ended with the 12 episode epic "lonelygirl15 Season Finale", the second with the four-part story "Bloodlines".
 * RWBY ended its third volume with the deaths of two beloved characters, the disruption of the Vytal Festival, an attack on Vale that's been made to look like Atlesian aggression, the destruction of Beacon Academy and the tower there that's vital to international communication, Blake critically wounded, Yang having lost an arm, Team RWBY scattered to the four winds, and the true Big Bad finally revealed.

Western Animation

 * After the epic "Siege of the North" and the Wham! Episode that was "Crossroads of Destiny", the incredible Grand Finale of Avatar: The Last Airbender managed to blow both out of the water completely.
 * The season Two finale of Danny Phantom ends one of the biggest ongoing Story Arc in the show: Vlad's quest to obtain Danny as his protege and son. It ends with him throwing off a huge Villainous Breakdown and the next season has the two in completely different circles.
 * Beast Wars:
 * "Other Voices" -.
 * "The Agenda" - Megatron delivers one of the biggest TF cliffhangers of all time by
 * "The Nemesis" - Grand Finale.
 * Transformers Animated:
 * "Megatron Rising" - after eleven episodes as a scheming head, Megatron regains his body and makes his move for the Allspark,
 * "A Bridge Too Close" - Megatron's space bridge plot comes to a head, and two big reveals set up since the first season are made:.
 * "Endgame" - the Grand Finale.
 * Teen Titans ended every season with an epic two (or in one case, three) parter:
 * Season One: "Apprentice" I and II -
 * Season Two: "Aftershock" I and II -
 * Season Three: "Titans East" I and II -
 * Season Four: "The End" I, II, and III -
 * Season Five: "Calling All Titans"/"Titans Together" (with one more episode, "Things Change", as a sort of epilogue) -
 * Episode 26 of Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated is the season finale and it ends in a cliffhanger. The gang has been fragmented by the revelation that Fred's dad, the Mayor of Crystal Cove was the Big Bad all along and isn't his real dad, so he's broken the gang up to find who he really is. Meanwhile, his engagement to Daphne is now in indefinite abeyance, Shaggy is being sent to military school, Scooby is being sent to a farm, Daphne is taken home to wallow in misery and Velma is taken home to stew about not coming clean to her friends about who Angel Dynamite really is.
 * My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
 * The first season finale, "The Best Night Ever", features the main characters attending the Grand Galloping Gala, which has been built up in several previous episodes as the biggest social event in Equestria, only to be disappointed in various ways.
 * The second season finale, "A Canterlot Wedding", blows the first season finale out of the water in terms of excitement. It's a two-parter that revolves around central character Twilight Sparkle's brother getting married to royalty, and features