The absolute worst endings to Ryan Murphy shows, ranked by how dreadful they are

Ban this man from final episodes

2 years ago

Look, I love me some Ryan Murphy telly nonsense. I have watched nearly every show he’s ever done with morbid fascination and avid commitment. And as any Murphy maniac knows, watching his projects results in endings that leave you more often than not a bit bloody miffed. I’ve whittled down Ryan Murphy projects to the four most truly infuriatingly crap endings in his repertoire, and ranked them from bad to abysmal.

4. The Watcher

Oh dear, oh dear. I honestly thought The Watcher started out as a genuinely intriguing romp. I was a viewer with no knowledge of the real case or what actually happened, and with every fork in the road that Ryan Murphy shoved onto us I found myself in disbelief that any of this stuff, or certainly in no way all of it, actually happened. Googling the case, I saw it was unresolved – and in crept the fear of what on earth Ryan Murphy was going to wrap it all up with. Who is letting a man not known for good endings try and end a story with no ending? May I ask?

Netflix, apparently. And the result? A convoluted waste of time with no answers, no satisfaction and an absolute dragging from online viewers who wished they’d spent eight hours of their lives just rereading the case on Wikipedia.

3. American Horror Story: Red Tide

This one really, really, REALLY hurts. It hurts like the brutal death of Tuberculosis Karen. It hurts like the wasting of potential. It harts like shitting away the best story American Horror Story had told in eons. Because after Red Tide, the first half of the aptly named 10th season Double Feature, opened with a run of genuinely thrilling and edge of your seat horror that felt original and cool – Ryan Murphy pushed it off the cliff with a rushed ending that undid all his hard work. What an absolute shame.

Plot points that have ran on for episodes are written away with speedy deaths and resolution that feels completely and utterly dissatisfying. Made even worse by the fact the episode is inexplicably short? Why would you use your rushed finale to minimise an episode’s run time? To make life harder for yourself?

Oh Red Tide. We mourn what we lost. Leslie Grossman did her damnedest and gave us one of the most iconic characters in AHS, ever. Sarah Paulson gave it her all. Frances Conroy let rip with some of the sharpest line readings in the history of the anthology. The only reason this ain’t at number one is because I hate the two to come even more.

2. American Horror Story: Death Valley

The less we say the better. A series low. The final episode of the dreadful second half of has a dismal 3.7/10 on IMDb. That’s the worst of any episode of American Horror Story and of any Ryan Murphy show in general. Death Valley should be tried at The Hague.

What he put her royal highness Sarah Paulson through is beyond belief. It is JUST beyond belief.

1. Scream Queens

You know how some things just should be left alone? Scream Queens season one is a prime example. A fun and stupid campy blast with a great cast that moderately entertained and kept twins on Twitter tweeting away. And then we got season two. Buckle the hell up.

Season two of Scream Queens I am SURE is a fever dream. I do not know a person on this earth who finished it. Why was it in a hospital? Why were the frat girls nurses? Why did we accept this? Did a final episode even air? Did anyone live to tell the tale? An ending so bad it’s lost to the ether, and the rock bottom of Ryan Murphy endings ranked.

The Watcher is available on Netflix now. For all the latest Netflix news, drops, quizzes and memes like The Holy Church of Netflix on Facebook.