Every year, TV lovers are rewarded with tons of new shows on primetime networks, along with streaming platforms like Hulu and Netflix. Everyone obsessed over Stranger Things in 2016 was delighted yet again in 2017 when the second season premiered. While we are getting plenty of new TV material, that also means that some of our favorite shows have to come to an end.
Not every show gets a happy ending, as some shows are canceled spur of the moment to make room for new TV programs. Whatever the reason might be that our shows had to say goodbye, we will miss them greatly.
16. The Vampire Diaries
Last Episode: March 10, 2017
No one wanted to see Ian Somerhalder leave our TV screens, but after eight long seasons, it was time for The Vampire Diaries to come to a close. Fans had seen a lot going on in Mystic Falls and it was a great weekly taste of the supernatural. Nothing was better on the show than the love triangle between Elena and two brothers, Damon and Stefan Salvatore. Typically, love triangles are too dramatic and played out, but the chemistry between the characters made this love triangle electric. Fans were torn on who to root for, Damon or Stefan? Should Elena have just moved on to a human, rather than get tangled up in the supernatural world? Nina Dobrev left the show after season six, with rumors about her leaving due to her former relationship (and then breakup) with Ian. But she did her fans justice and returned during the eighth season, to close out Elena’s chapter.
15. Girl Meets World
Last Episode: January 20, 2017
When something is good, people really try to make the most out of it. In some instances, remakes and revamps come out terribly. But this follow-up to Boy Meets World was perfect for a Disney Channel audience (and BMW fans). A big group of the core Boy Meets World cast came back for this series, which followed Cory and Topanga’s teenage daughter, Riley, and her own misadventures in adolescence.
On GMW, Riley and her best friend Maya power through the ups and downs of life as a tween, from grades to crushes and morality issues. It was shocking when Disney Channel announced the show would be canceled, as views had dropped but not significantly enough for anyone to think a cancellation was coming. In fact, the show is one of Disney Channel’s most well-received shows and earned two consecutive Emmy nominations. The series finale brought back all of the Boy Meets World favorites, as the family decides if they’re going to stay in New York or move to London. Still kind of hoping Hulu will resurrect this one!
14. Switched at Birth
Last Episode: April 11, 2017
For a moment, fans feared that there would be no closure for Switched at Birth. There was an 18-month gap between seasons, but thankfully the show got to close how they wanted. In a stroke of soap opera genius, this show was as simple as two babies being switched at birth. Which, obviously isn’t simple, and when these babies grow up and find out they were switched as teenagers, their lives change forever.
After Bay gets a strange result in her biology blood test, she realizes she might have been switched at birth, and it leads to the discovery. Bay handles the news better than Daphne (the other baby) does at first, but over the course of the series, fans got to watch these two become close and former a sisterly relationship.
13. Bates Motel
Last Episode: April 24, 2017
Now, fans of Bates Motel kind of knew what they were getting into when they started watching the show. There are only so many ways the show, based on the movie Psycho, could have ended. This show gave us insight into who Norman Bates was, prior to that scene from Psycho with the big reveal. Freddie Highmore was so talented at portraying Norman, it is hard to even associate him with the cute little boy from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Bates Motel follows Norman’s unhealthy relationship and dependency on his mother, Norma, until he finally snaps.
12. The Strain
Last Episode: September 17, 2017
Unlike The Walking Dead, The Strain didn’t last too long. But then again, the disease running rampant on The Strain is far more aggressive than those simple walkers on TWD. When a disease breaks out, first on an airplane, a team from the CDC is on the case to figure out what caused it. Which leads them to discover it is a strain of ancient vampirism (yeah, who know it was a viral outbreak).
When the show was renewed for a fourth season, it came with the news that show would also end after that, though the show creators insisted that it wasn’t being canceled. The show started out slow, taking a while to actually get into what was causing the outbreak, but by season four, it had fans hooked. The vampire apocalypse began and the series finale found the humans taking their last stand to fight for their lives.
11. Orphan Black
Last Episode: August 12, 2017
Orphan Black is one of those shows that your best friend told you to watch, you didn’t right away, and then when you blinked, it had blown up. The success of the show had much to do with its star, Tatiana Maslany. This show raised the bar on the depiction of cloning in films and TV. After one of her clones commits suicide, the show’s main character, Sarah Manning, then assumes her identity. Tatiana plays all of her clones (obviously) and after watching scenes where the clones all interact, you’ll wonder why she hasn’t won 20 awards yet for her brilliant acting.
When the show started, Sarah thought she had just the one clone at the very beginning. The show follows her mission to get to the bottom of who created the clones and why. For those who haven’t watched yet, now’s the time to binge.
10. Girls
Last Episode: April 16, 2017
Girls is a show that really hit hard with millennial women because it was about a group of friends who didn’t know what they were doing with their lives. That’s not to say that Hannah, Marnie, Jessa, and Shoshanna were totally clueless about the inner workings of adult life. But they are a realistic friend group, with one friend having her stuff together, while her other friends are figuring things out on different levels, discovering what they really want in life. The show was like a younger version of Sex in the City, though not nearly as glitzy. Girls sort of ended at the perfect time, as some shows run their course and then keep airing episodes. The ending saw Hannah (Lena Dunham) in a new chapter in her life, one no one could have predicted at the beginning of the series: motherhood.
9. The Mindy Project
Last Episode: November 14, 2017
Thank god for Hulu! When one door closes, another opens. After Fox wrongfully canceled The Mindy Project, Hulu swooped in to save the day. And thank goodness for that, or else we’d never have gotten to see Mindy have the true happy ending she deserved. The Mindy Project follows Dr. Mindy Lahiri, a woman with the real work-hard and play-hard mentality. She loves romantic comedies, is obsessed with men, and is very caring for the people in her life. She goes through a lot of romantic woes during the show’s sixth season and fans are completely split on whether she ended up with the right guy.
8. Bones
Last Episode: March 28, 2017
Bones is one of those shows that you might have thought ended already, but in fact, it kept going. By the end, the series had run for 12 years and just as many seasons. At the heart of the show was Forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance “Bones” Brennan and F.B.I. Special Agent Seeley Booth. Over the course of the series, we saw Bones and Booth fall in love, have a child together, get married, and then have another baby. All the while, each episode followed them and Bones team at the Jeffersonian Institute in Washington D.C., while they tried to solve that murder of the week.
The ending was — spoiler alert — a happy one, after a dramatic previous episode in which Bones and Booth are almost killed. But in the end, Booth gets justice for his wife, as well as his late father, and everything is wrapped up nicely with a bow.
7. 2 Broke Girls
Last Episode: April 17, 2017
2 Broke Girls was just one of many victims of the cancellation list of 2017. Despite having Kat Dennings and her fast as a whip, hilarious lines to steer the show, they couldn’t stay afloat. 2 Broke Girls was a great sitcom for anyone who feels like they’re constantly working toward their dreams, but never getting very close to them. Despite the successful ratings the show had, the fact that the audience for the show was much younger than other shows on CBS made it hard to keep it on the air, and ultimately it was canceled.
6. Grimm
Last Episode: March 31, 2017
Another surprise cancellation this season was the NBC hit Grimm. In 2016, it was revealed that the show would end after its sixth season. Grimm follows homicide investigator Nick Burkhardt of the Portland Police Department when he finds out that he is descended from a line of guardians known as Grimms. He is then charged with keeping the balance between humanity and the Wesen, or mythological creatures of the world. Touching on Brothers Grimm stories, we learned the darker side of many stories we’ve been told by Disney. To close the series, Nick is forced to close the book, but not before dabbling in more fairy tales and mythology.
5. Last Man Standing
Last Episode: March 31, 2017
Fans of Tim Allen didn’t even need to know what this show was about, they were going to watch it. We’ve loved him since his days as Tim “The Toolman” Taylor and we loved him as Mike Baxter on Last Man Standing. The show followed Mike’s life as a senior employee at a sporting goods store in Denver and a loving husband and father of three girls. The show had a few great intentional parallels to Home Improvement that made fans happy.
Even though the show had found success on Friday nights (a night notorious for killing shows), it was canceled suddenly. Apparently, the show wasn’t given the boot because of low performance, but as a whole, ABC decided to cut comedies from their Friday night lineup, and Last Man Standing just got caught in the middle of that decision.
4. Workaholics
Last Episode: March 15, 2017
Even though the name would imply these men work their fingers to the bone, the series is far from that. In fact, these guys will do just about anything to get out of work. Best friends Blake, Adam, and Anders met in college and pretty much kept up the lifestyle, even after dropping out and getting jobs together at TelAmeriCorp, a telemarketing company in California.
Rumors came out before the official news that the show would end after season seven so the cast could pursue other projects. Adam DeVine had already starred in Pitch Perfect and Pitch Perfect 2, plus he had a decent sized role on Modern Family, all during his time on Workaholics. It makes sense they wanted to move on and make it easier on their schedules, but fans were sad to see this one go.
3. Bloodline
Last Episode: May 26. 2017
In this day and age, cancellations of good shows should come as no surprise, and yet this still was one that didn’t make sense when it was announced. Bloodline was critically acclaimed, ever since season one debuted in 2015. It had strong leads in Kyle Chandler (formerly of Friday Night Lights) and Linda Cardellini (from Scooby Doo and Freaks and Geeks). The series follows the Rayburn family, after their black sheep brother returns and pulls up their family’s dark secrets. Apparently, the cancellation came thanks to feuds over money between Netflix and Sony Pictures Television. The final season was even cut down from 13 episodes to ten.
2. Teen Wolf
Last Episode: September 24, 2017
Have you ever noticed that most teen shows start when everyone’s in high school, and they somehow manage to remain in high school for six of seven seasons? The teens of Teen Wolf only went to college in the final half of season six, and even then, the drama in Beacon Hills was so intense, no one but Stiles actually wound up going to school!
The great thing about the final season of Teen Wolf was they did what fans wanted and brought back some old favorites from the first few seasons. Colton Haynes returned to play the guy we all love to hate, Jackson, while Tyler Hoechlin reprised his role as former-alpha Derek Hale. Even though Dylan O’Brien wasn’t a series regular for the last twelve episodes, he still made it back for the finale to give fans some last moments of the Scott and Stiles bromance. And what more could fans have asked for? Besides, obviously, more episodes?
1. Pretty Little Liars
Last Episode: June 27, 2017
If you made it through the entirety of Pretty Little Liars, you deserve a medal. There were so many twists and turns, time jumps, and “A” reveals, it was hard to stay on the wagon. Despite the never-ending drama, PLL maintained a very loyal fan base, because honestly, we all just needed to find out who the hell A really was. Over the course of seven seasons, there were so many people who we thought were A, then Uber A, then A.D. it made you question if you might be A. You could never put it past the minds behind PLL to do something totally insane. The finale revealed that Spencer had a twin who was pure evil. Some fans claimed they knew it all along, but it still came as a huge shocker when the show finally ended for most of us. And fans still had questions, even after the finale!