The 10 Most Controversial Series Finales

Persons Unknown, “Shadows In The Cave”

Starring nobody you’ve ever heard of (except perhaps Ferris Bueller‘s Alan Ruck), this short-lived series from 2010 may have escaped your attention – but it deserves a mention here, mainly for having one of the worst, can’t-be-bothered finales we’ve ever had the misfortune to see.

Airing on big-hitter NBC, Persons Unknown was a mystery-thriller which featured a group of disparate individuals waking up to find themselves trapped inside a peculiar, ’50s-style town. They can’t leave and their every movement is followed by cameras; think Big Brother, but with a far more sinister intent. The Program – the name of the organisation jailing them – sets traps and tests for them at every turn: everything from filling their escape tunnel with poison gas to “reprogramming” them so they don’t remember what’s going on. It’s all very Prisoner-esque and fascinating… until the end.

The show had a good pedigree, written by The Usual Suspects‘ Christopher McQuarrie, and the showrunners promised that there’d be answers for everybody’s questions. But those few fans who did see it through to the end were banjaxed by a finale which saw our trapped heroes finally escaping from their prison (woohoo!)… only to wake up in another one, this time built inside the hull of a giant ship named Almas Perdidas (‘Lost Souls’). Then a caretaker tells them: “Welcome to level two!”

Er… hello? Weren’t we supposed to have some answers? So are they in a massive computer game? Are they dead and in limbo? Was it worth watching the entire 13 episodes to find out? NO. And it’s rather amusing that this show is more famous for its load-of-bollocks ending than for anything that came before it…

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