One of the greatest HBO series finales ever aired 20 years ago, and it still holds up now. best TV shows ever have struggled to land the plane on their finale. Game of Thrones, How I Met Your Mother, and Dexter have all famously stumbled when it came to the end of their runs.

Other series like The Sopranos, Silicon Valley, and Lost all received mixed reviews for their series finales, but as time has gone on, they've come to be recognized as incredible capstones. Then there are the shows that are fantastic from start to finish. Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, Succession, and Gravity Falls all wrapped up perfectly. A great series finale doesn't necessarily have to be the best episode of the show, but it should tie the themes and storylines back together in a satisfying manner that makes viewers glad they stuck through it all.

Six Feet Under's "Everyone's Waiting" Is The Highest-Rated TV Finale On IMDb

The Finale Has A 9.9 On The Site

Six Feet Under season 5, episode 12, "Everyone's Waiting" has a claim to be the best TV series finale on a notable metric, which is IMDb rating. The series currently has a 9.9 on the site, with 14,000 reviews. The next highest-rated finale is Spartacus with a 9.7. While there are always some problems with judging a show solely based on rankings from IMDb or Rotten Tomatoes, it's still telling that the episode received so much acclaim, and with 14,000 reviews, even ing for bots or multiple reviews from the same source, it's clear the episode is highly touted.

What Made "Everyone's Waiting" Such A Great Series Finale

The Finale Gave Everyone's Arc A Satisfying And Logical End

"Everyone's Waiting" starts in a way that the series never has before: with a birth instead of a death. It's the birth of Willa Fisher Chenowith, Brenda (Rachel Griffiths) and Nate's (Peter Krause) daughter, who wasn't due for two more months. This nerve-wracking beginning is followed by increasingly heartwarming events that resolve some of the last lingering problems of the series, and just about everyone gets the ending they deserve. It's not the greatest possible series of wrap-ups, a la Parks and Recreation, but the endings are satisfying and logical.

Six Feet Under then makes the brilliant, and relatively novel, decision to flash-forward to the main characters' lives. The main characters of Six Feet Under are shown living their lives, long or short, but it's their deaths that are the focus of each sequence. It makes perfect sense for a series where death is not just a theme, but the trunk from which everything else in the series stems. This series finale doesn't tie up everyone's story with a look at their lives, but with their deaths, which the show has spent the whole series explaining the importance of.

Six Feet Under Is One Of HBO's Best Shows And Deserves More Love

The Series Was Buried Under The Wire And The Sopranos, But Is One Of The Best Shows Of The 21st Century

That season finale earned five Emmy nominations and won for Outstanding Prosthetic Makeup for a Series, Miniseries, Movie, or Special. That's par for the course for the series, which ended up with 44 nominations and 9 wins at the Emmys, 8 Golden Globe nominations and 3 wins, and 6 SAG nominations with 3 wins. It's an acclaimed series in almost every sense of the word, and yet it feels a little bit lost in time. Maybe it's because it came out on HBO around the same time as The Sopranos and The Wire, so many audiences simply missed it.

Six Feet Under is a fantastic examination of love and life through a lens that's often considered too taboo and grim to be discussed in any nuanced way.

Six Feet Under is a fantastic examination of love and life through a lens that's often considered too taboo and grim to be discussed in any nuanced way. The series is concerned with morality and how closely life and death are intertwined. Smart, sardonic, and unafraid to get up close and personal with death, Six Feet Under es no judgment and does not push any moralism on the audience. It takes an impartial look at the most harrowing moments of people's lives, and looks at character, an ethos retained in the finale, one of the best in HBO's history.