3 Series Finales That Make A Reboot Feel Impossible
When a beloved series ends, fans of the show have high hopes for the episode that will end it all. Not all series finales are created equally, though. While some writing teams opt to leave endings open for the potential of a revival, other production teams believe in closing the door, for good, on a show. We’ve collected three series that had season finales that truly felt final.
‘Six Feet Under’ took out the entire Fisher family in its series finale
HBO has spent the last couple of years rebooting some of its most successful shows. While HBO could easily reboot many of its properties, Six Feet Under, which aired for five seasons, is not one of them. The series finale showed the death of each member of the Fisher family, flashing forward into the future. Sure, the series technically could pick up at any point before 2025, when Ruth dies, but the finale essentially shared the Fisher family’s entire story.
Interestingly enough, rumors of Six Feet Under reboot were kicked around the internet recently. The chatter ramped up when the streaming service provider, HBO Max, revived several other popular shows in their catalog. Casey Bloys, HBO’s chief content officer, later revealed that Six Feet Under was not under consideration for a reboot. He told the Hollywood Reporter that it’s one show he felt was better left “dead.”
‘Friends’ could theoretically come back, but it wouldn’t make much sense
Technically, nothing about the finale would prevent Friends from returning for a reboot. A production team could pick up with the group of six pals now, 20 years later. Still, the finale, complete with Monica Geller and Chandler Bing moving out of Manhattan, feels like a true ending. If the series were to pick back up, it wouldn’t have the same feel, and it seems pretty unlikely that all six pals would end up living in the same neighborhood again.
The cast of Friends did reconnect for a reunion special, but all agreed they didn’t want to return to reprise their roles. Instead, they sat down to discuss the 10 years on Friends. Lisa Kudrow has made it clear that she has no desire to reprise her role as Phoebe Buffay again, but she’s not against the idea of a reboot that uses brand new characters. While it’s an interesting idea, it wouldn’t be a true reboot unless the gang’s now-adult children were the show’s main focus.
The finale of ‘Newhart’ invalidated the entirety of the series
Newhart aired from 1982 until 1990. The series followed an inn owner and his wife as they navigated life in a small and incredibly quirky Vermont town. The entirety of the series centered around Bob Newhart’s character, Dick Loudon, and his wife, Joanna Loudon, figuring out life in the rural hamlet. That is, until the final episode.
In the series finale of Newhart, a tycoon buys the hamlet, intent on turning it into a golf course. In the finale moments of the show, fans learn that Dick Loudon and Joanna never existed, nor did the inn or tiny town. The entirety of the series was a dream that Bob Hartley, Newhart’s character on The Bob Newhart Show, had. A reboot of the famed sitcom is impossible because the show’s premise technically never really existed.
