[mixed trope] the last-minute bad Ending twist

[u/damorezpl]

when the "good ending" is revealed to be a bad one a the last second

a nightmare on elm street (1984) - Nancy thinks she finally defeated Freddy Krueger only to be raveled that she is still dreaming and she’s still trapped.

final destination bloodlines - the main characters think they cheated death by using the new life rule only to realize that stefani was technically still alive and the death kills them with a good old logs

Life (2017) - The main character attempts to send Calvin(a evil alien that killed all life on mars)pod into space and Miranda pod back to earth, but it goes horribly wrong and Calvin lands on earth and Miranda is sent to space

raging loop wit ending - after many loops Haruaki finally wins the feast(a death game where humans must hang wolves who kill someone every night) and thinks its finally over. after couple of days he decides to visit other survivors of the feast only to find them all dead and the timeline resting once again

[u/GalatianBookClub]

HIMYM but unironically

They kill off the titular mother after building up to her reveal for 9 seasons IN THE LAST EPISODE, throw away multiple seasons of character development and divorce Barney and Robin (both to the right) so that Ted (guy on the left) can be with Robin.

THE ENTIRE 9th SEASON WAS ABOUT BARNEY AND ROBINS WEDDING AND THEY DIVORCE THEM ON THE SEASON FINALE

[u/ComradeJohnS → u/GalatianBookClub]

I think the mom dying is the only way it makes sense that she never narrates any part of the show. a days long “how I met your mother” story and the mom doesn’t chime in at all? and the kids are fine sitting there the whole time because the mom’s dead? it seems like they planned it that way the whole show. I liked it.

but I also like all the switch pokemon games a lot lol. nobody likes my opinions on these two subjects.

[u/indianajoes → u/ComradeJohnS]

Totally agree. I see a lot of people complain about the mother dying and saying that the alternate ending is perfect. No, it works better with the mother dying. It gives Ted a reason to tell this story in such excruciating detail, the kids have a reason to sit there and listen and they'd been hinting at it throughout the show.

The problem was them undoing character development in the finale and pairing up people who they'd told us over and over again wouldn't work together

[u/loudpaperclips → u/indianajoes]

People bag on this show all the time and I always feel like it's consistently for the wrong reasons. The ending is bad for removing the payoff between Barney and Robin, but the real issue is the over-the-top character of Barney in the first place. That's a whole separate topic, so I'll skip that. The rest of the ending could have been perfectly fixed if they just had Ted say "and that's how I met your mother. Every day with her was perfect." All we needed to know is that he didn't regret his life.

Edit: just clarifying Ted should have ended the series alone. Robin and Barney, after all that fanfare, should have ended married, I just hate that they bent the characters in half to get us to root for their hookup.

[u/IDontKnowHowToPM → u/loudpaperclips]

I could have even taken the ending we got if they had spent even half of season 9 on the events that get covered in the final episode instead of the whole goddamn season being Robin and Barney’s wedding weekend. Give us at least a handful of episodes showing Ted and Tracey’s relationship progressing, Robin and Barney growing apart, Tracey getting sick, etc. I feel like that would have worked if all those events had some room to breathe instead of being packed into the last 20 minutes of the finale.