Series Fauxnale / Western Animation

Series Fauxnale in Western Animation.

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• Adventure Time:
  • "Mortal Folly" and "Mortal Recoil" were originally intended to be the final episodes of the show in case Cartoon Network didn't renew the show for a third season.
  • The original series ended with "Come Along With Me", an hour-long finale that concluded many of the show's major plotlines, most notably Betty's quest to cure Simon of being the Ice King. Two years later, a series of specials called Adventure Time: Distant Lands began streaming on HBO Max, following various characters after the events of the Grand Finale, and this was in turn followed by a ministries, Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake, also set after the main show.
• Animaniacs: One of the earliest episodes of the revival series in 2020, Good Warner Hunting serves as a final outing for many of the series' popular supporting acts, who were largely left out of the revival except for Pinky and the Brain. Turns out they had all been hunted down and captured by Chicken Boo posing as a big game catcher, and are last seen chasing him out of town when freed by the Warners
• The Amazing World of Gumball has the aptly titled episode The Finale, the final episode of the show's second season. The episode parodied the notion of negative continuity by showing that everything the Wattersons have done in the series had serious consequences, leading to them being imprisoned and, at the end, mobbed by the entire town who wants them dead. The show would end up running for another four seasons, seemingly concluding with the cliffhanger ending of The Inquisition before a television movie was put into production two years later to tie-up the remaining loose ends.
• American Dad!:
  • The infamous season 7 opener, "Hot Water", was written to be aired as a finale when the writers weren't certain Fox would renew the show. When it was announced that American Dad! would continue, the episode became a non-canon season premiere.
  • "Blagsnarst: A Love Story" is another, with the entire series revealed to be Stan reading a story that chronicles how Kim Kardashian was born and putting a book called American Dad! on FOX on a shelf next to some classic novels (The Brothers Karamazov, Moby Dick, From Whom the Bell Tolls, and War and Peace).
  • "Echoes" has been confirmed to be another. The episode ends with a demon destroying Langley Falls and the Smith family driving off with AD4EVA on their license plate. The ending reveals it to all be happening in an alternate timeline, though.
• American Dragon: Jake Long: The season two episode "Homecoming" was originally written as the series finale, and while it does leave some plot points unresolved (Rotwood knowing Jake's a dragon, Jake's dad not knowing he's married into a magical family, etc.) it still saw the show's main villain deceased, the overarching threat of the season neutralized, and Jake and Rose's relationship seemingly concluded. However, the showrunners found out during the writing process that Disney had actually expanded the season order without telling them, giving them an additional 10 episodes.
• Archer: Despite the massive Cliffhanger ending in which the main character is seemingly murdered, the Season 7 finale "Deadly Velvet: Part II" was this. By Word of God, they weren't sure if they were going to get renewed or not, but felt that Archer's death would be a good place to end the series if they didn't. However, they also included a few hints towards ways the Cliffhanger could be resolved if they did get renewed, which, luckily for fans, they did.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender: "The Blue Spirit" was originally written as a final episode in case Nickelodeon did not renew the show, as the creators were initially only signed on for thirteen episodes in the first season before the executives ordered more. Word of God has even stated that the premise of Zuko rescuing Aang from captivity and the two working together was intentionally written to be an exciting season finale.
• Aqua Teen Hunger Force:
  • The series played with this by naming one Season Finale "Last Last One Forever and Ever" and ending it with the titular trio moving away, with Carl poignantly saying, "Truly, they were an Aqua Teen Hunger Force." Then it was revealed that the producers were already planning new episodes, and the next aired episode revealed that the Aqua Teens moved into the other house next to Carl's. At the end of the episode, the Rabbot from the first episode returns and destroys the house. The Aqua Teens fully expect a Snap Back, but it doesn't happen, so they go back to their old house.
  • The episode "The Last One Forever and Ever (For Real This Time) (We Fucking Mean It)" plays off as a Grand Finale, which ends with Shake and Frylock dead and Meatwad starting a family. Three days later, the real final episode, "The Greatest Story Ever Told" was leaked onto the [adult swim] website (and aired on TV a week later), which was more in line with a typical Aqua Teen episode.
    Shake: Come on, really?
    Carl: So that's it? That's how they end it, this series?
  • But then, that too would become this trope, with it being announced that following the positive reception of Aqua Teen Forever Plantasm, a five-episode twelfth season was announced in early 2023, and it later premiered later that November.
• As Told by Ginger has "Butterflies Are Free". For a show largely centered around the junior high experience, it focuses on graduation from junior high and even contains a retrospective montage with clips from earlier episodes at the very end. Despite this they do not Graduate from the Story. There's another season dealing with the characters in high school, and especially Ginger's maturing love life.
• According to Bob Forward, the writing staff of Beast Wars didn't know if they were going to get renewed, so they gave the first season a Downer Ending, and the second season a massive Sequel Hook.
• Ben 10: Alien Force: The "War of the Worlds" 2-parter has a very Grand Finale-esque feel, with Ben having saved the entire universe from the Highbreed (including the Highbreed themselves), and thus reaching his peak as a hero. The episode also ends with the Omnitrix resetting itself, with Ben implying that he had yet again been locked into another new set of 10 alien heroes, an obvious Bookend to both the original and Alien Force pilot episodes. Of course, this wasn't actually the end of the series (and nowhere near the end of Ben's adventures overall), with him going on to have many, many more adventures afterward. The Here We Go Again! ending was also retconned to Ben only having unlocked a single new alien, which he starts using in the third season.
• Big Hero 6: The Series: Even though a third season would be confirmed and the ending to the second season did leave plot points unresolved, there was still a lot of finality to the episode "Legacies", to the point where it could've served as a satisfactory Grand Finale and one could be forgiven if they thought it was. Wasabi, GoGo, and Honey Lemon graduate from SFIT, Hiro accepts Tadashi's honorary degree, Chief Cruz exonerates Big Hero 6 and Globby and is allowed to know their secret identities, and the threat that was started in the beginning of the series is completely neutralized.
• The third season of The Boondocks was supposed to be the last, with "It's Goin' Down" to serve as the Grand Finale.
• Captain Planet and the Planeteers: The season two two-parter "Summit to Save Earth, Part One" and "Summit to Save Earth, Part Two" plays out a lot like an endgame for the series, with Gaia's rival Zarn teaming with all of the Planeteers eco-villains, traps Gaia and depletes her powers to the point she ages signficantly, and turns the world into a toxic pit. After the Planeteers and Captain Planet defeat their enemies and send Zarn packing, the titular 'Summit' goes off without a hitch and the goverments of the world all agree to do more to keep the planet cleaner, which evokes an emotional reaction from Gaia.
• Towards the end of the one and only season of Centurions there are several multi-part adventures that serve as functional series finales. There is the epic five-parter Man Or Machine which reveals the origins of the Centurions, Doc Terror and Hacker and involves a battle to liberate Skyvault from Terror and stop an alien machine from destroying humanity. Other candidates include' To Dare Dominion which appears to kill off Terror and Hacker completely and wipes out their base of operations after they unleash a near universe-consuming Lovecraftian nightmare, and The Better Half, where Terror and Hacker's robot halves combine to create an even more powerful and malevolent threat, forcing them to ally with the Centurions and destroy those parts of themselves. The story also resolves the Belligerent Sexual Tension between Centurion Ace and Crystal Kane, as the two finally kiss.
• The Crumpets: "Sound The Alarm" was the final episode of the second season and the original batch of episodes. It features the developing relationships of the teenagers Caprice and Marylin, and Pfff and Cassandra, then it concludes with a Concert Climax and Pa mentioning a "happy ending". Afterwards, two more seasons were made and also focuses on the teenagers. The episode retrospectively serves as a bridge to the events of the newer episodes; however it is the last episode of the original episodes' English dub which has its own voice cast and due to the show's partial YouTube release and geographic availability it's difficult to find some of these episodes including this one. The newer episodes have probably yet to be released in its entirety in English.
• The Season 3 finale of Craig of the Creek is a five-part episode called "Capture the Flag" and wraps up a long running plot-line featuring the king from the Other Side of the Creek in a massive event where all characters from the entire series unite to defend their side of the Creek. However, the series would run for two more seasons after this.
• Meet Dexter's Laboratory, the show so nice it did this twice! First was the Season 2 closer, "Last But Not Beast", a crossover where Dexter and his family, Monkey, and the Justice Friends battle a Kaiju. Genndy Tartakovsky didn't think this episode was a satisfying conclusion so he made an hour-long TV movie, "Ego Trip", where Dexter teams up with versions of himself from other time periods. Three years later, Cartoon Network noticed the amazing ratings even the reruns were pulling down and produced two more seasons without Tartakovsky's involvement.
• The Dragon Prince: The Season 3 finale "The Final Battle" was written before the show was renewed for Season 4, and it shows. The show's main Myth Arc is resolved, as the heroes reunite the titular dragon with his mother, and there appears to be a chance for peace between humans and elves after they join forces against Viren's mystically mutated army, while Viren himself is given a Disney Villain Death. Even then, however, a Sequel Hook is thrown in at the last scene, where Claudia resurrects Viren and reveals that Aaravos' familiar has entered a cocoon, implying that the latter's own agenda is going forward.
• DuckTales (1987): "Til Nephews Do Us Part" ended the first season of sixy-five episodes. All the major characters, and many one-time characters, appear as guests at the wedding of Scrooge and Millionairia Vanderbucks. Scrooge finds out at the last minute that Millionaira is only marrying him for his money; but that doesn't save him from being chased into the parking lot by his old girlfriend, Goldie, brandishing a shotgun! DuckTales would go on to have an even hundred episodes and a cinematic motion picture. The real Grand Finale would end up being the two-part episode "The Golden Goose".
• Ed, Edd n Eddy:
  • The Season 4 finale, "Take This Ed and Shove It", had Eddy refusing to grow up and dreaming he and the neighborhood kids have gotten old. This was followed by a number of holiday specials and a fifth season which had its own Fauxnale, titled "A Fistful of Ed", in which the Eds finally end an episode being fully content. The show was going to get a sixth season as well, but it was scrapped in favor of definitively wrapping thing up with a television movie: Ed, Edd n Eddy's Big Picture Show, with the few S6 episodes that were finished being released beforehand as "lost episodes".
  • Another one that almost happened for Ed, Edd, n Eddy was a series finale known as "All's Ed That Ends Ed". It was written specifically to act as the series finale, revolving around the Eds and the rest of the kids trying to stop the cul-de-sac from being demolished for a construction project.
• The Fairly OddParents! and The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius had the Crossover final The Jimmy Timmy Power Hour, which was the intended finale for both shows. However, both series were renewed and the crossover rewritten as a result.
  • The live-action movie, A Fairly Odd Movie: Grow Up, Timmy Turner!, which Word of God said was the canon ending to the series, retconning the ending to Channel Chasers...then this movie got two sequels in A Fairly Odd Christmas and A Fairly Odd Summer, the latter of which ends with Timmy Ascending to a Higher Plane of Existence.
  • Jimmy Neutron had the episode The League of Villains, which was clearly intended to be the series finale, as it had a majority of Jimmy's enemies from the series gang up to try and beat him for good. Despite taking place after several episodes in season 3, it wound up airing before those said episodes even premiered in America.
• Futurama has had FOUR of these. Five if you include the video game.
  • "The Devil's Hands are Idle Playthings" rather sweetly concluded the fourth season, and it was canceled for several years... until the straight-to-DVD movies, culminating in the second finale, Into the Wild Green Yonder, which ended with all of the major characters flying into a wormhole, not knowing where in the universe it would bring them, but admitting it didn't matter if they never found their way back to Earth, as long as they had each other. Then the show was completely Un-Canceled, and it was revealed that the wormhole led straight to Earth.
  • Between the fourth season and the DTV movies, the Futurama video game (the story of which was written by the show's writers and so is considered official canon) also acted as a finale for the series, with Fry, Bender and Leela all dying at the end and the game forming a Stable Time Loop. After the series was Un-Canceled, the events of the game fell into Canon Discontinuity.
  • Season 6's "Overclockwise" was a third series finale in which Bender overpowers himself and Fry and Leela worry about their future together. The show writers created it in case Comedy Central didn't pick up any more seasons. The network ended up greenlighting another season though.
  • Season 7's "Meanwhile" was a fourth series finale in which Fry and Leela get stuck in frozen time together due to a time-reversing button being broken. Stuck in that instant, they make the most of it, get married, and grow old together. Once an unstuck Professor fixes the time button and sets it to make time go back to before the button was conceived, the events of this episode are undone, Fry and Leela content with living their lives over again. To add to the feeling of finality, Comedy Central followed up the premiere of this episode with the pilot episode. From its airing in September 2013 to the February 2022 announcement of 20 more episodes from Hulu set to air sometime in 2023, it was the longest-lasting of the show's finales.
• Harley Quinn (2019): The season 2 finale "The Runaway Bridesmaid" plays a lot like the end of the series with the Justice League being honored, Gotham City restored, and Ivy and Harley driving off into the sunset with their new relationship. The show's crew themselves appear to have no idea whether they'd get a third season while the episode was made, given the final "The End?".
• He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983) The early season one episode The Dragon Invasion raises the stakes so considerably one would be forgiven for mistaking it for a climatic chapter in the battle between good and evil. Skeletor is able to infiltrate Castle Grayskull and imprison the Sorceress within Snake Mountain. The episode concludes with Skeletor's allies soundly defeated after a battle within the castle itself, and a final confrontation between He-Man and Skeletor concludes with Skeletor almost falling to his death, only to be spared by He-Man, forcing him to flee his own lair. Of course the series would have many episodes to come and the saga continued.
• Hilda and the Mountain King served as this for Hilda in case Netflix didn't renew the series for a third season, the movie notably wraps up any existing series arc and ends in an And the Adventure Continues ending where Hilda is now a teenager.
• Justice League had two: "Starcrossed", which is the Grand Finale to the original series, and "Epilogue", and episode of Justice League Unlimited that was the chronological end to the DCAU as we know it. It should be mentioned that every season finale was a multi-part blowout in case they didn't get picked up again. The reason for this is because the previous DCAU series (Batman: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond, and Superman: The Animated Series) never got any major pay-offs due to being dropped unexpectedly. When the creators got to do Justice League, they decided to always end each season with a bang, just in case there weren't anymore.
• Kaeloo: The episode "Let's Play Bye-Bye, Yoghurt" was originally intended to be the series finale, and it had the characters re-create moments from past episodes and ended with a Pet the Dog moment between Mr. Cat and Quack Quack. The show wound up getting renewed, but this was the final episode of the English dub.
• Kim Possible: The Made-for-TV Movie So the Drama was expected to be the end of the show as a result of Disney Channel's then-ironclad 65 episode rule, complete with Last-Minute Hookup. Then they got another season due to fan demand. Oddly enough, So the Drama debuted while there were still five unaired episodes (including one Two Shorts episode) that nominally took place before it, and one of those episodes didn't even air until over a year after So the Drama, by which time the Postscript Season was in the works.
• King of the Hill had the episode "Lucky's Wedding Suit", in which Lucky and Luanne got married (and, in a shining example of Continuity Porn, many single-episode characters showed up). The show was later renewed for three more seasons (with the final episode being "To Sirloin With Love" where Hank finally discovers that Bobby has a talent that doesn't embarrass him^note identifying and inspecting the quality of meat and the series ends with everyone gathering for a small, neighborhood barbecue and showing that Kahn can give his daughter a break in studying, Luanne and Lucky are happy together as a married couple and parents, Dale can please his wife better than John Redcorn, and Boomhauer has a job as a member of the Texas Rangers...and then there were the four Missing Episodes only viewable on syndication (both cable and free-to-air TV) and streaming sites, with "Just Another Manic Kahn-Day"^note the episode where Hank and his friends use Kahn to build a grill after learning that he's very talented at robotics when he's not on his medication to curb his bipolar mood swings as the final broadcast episode).
• The final episode of The Legend of Korra's first season, "Endgame", with the show first planned as a one-season Mini Series. As such, it wrapped up all the major plot points: Amon's true identity is revealed and he is defeated, Korra enters the Avatar State for the first time, the love triangles are resolved by Korra and Mako getting together, and Korra learns how to restore the bending that Amon had taken away from others. Nickelodeon would go on to commission a second season partway during production, followed later by a third and fourth during that season's production.
• Each season of Littlest Pet Shop (2012) is a major example of the idea "write every season finale as if it will be your last." Season 1 ended with an episode where protagonist Blythe moves away to another state for a few years. Season 2 ended in a two-parter in which Blythe's amateur fashion design gained international recognition and she was on the fast track to going pro. And Season 3 ended on another two-parter with Blythe founding her own convention and becoming a celebrity via the talents her friends and family have demonstrated over the previous two seasons, even ending in a Climactic Music sequence. Every single time, the following season would begin with the Reset Button being hit, with the prior events being handwaved (if even addressed at all), and things returning to normal.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic had a shortened, 13-episode third season due to the series being intended as a 65-Episode Cartoon. The season finale "Magical Mystery Cure" was a Musical Episode that changed the status quo when main character Twilight Sparkle authored her own magic, Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence, and returned as an alicorn princess. However, the overwhelming popularity of the series resulted in a fourth season of the show and a Spin-Off being ordered. "Magical Mystery Cure" was heavily rewritten, and the first two episodes of the following season loosely continued what it had set up. The main show would go on to have nine seasons, a movie, and a few specials, while the Equestria Girls spin-off would see several movies, specials, and shorts in its own right.
• Ninjago has two examples of this.
  • "Rise of the Spinjitzu Master" was originally intended to be the series finale, until the immense fan outcry and demand caused the show to be renewed for a third season.
  • "Endings" has all the trappings of a series finale, right down to the title. Downplayed however, as while the show is still going, this episode would end up being the Grand Finale for the Hageman Brothers era of the show and the last episode WILFilm ApS animated.
• Oscar's Orchestra: "Four Of Our Notes Are Missing", the last episode of season two. Oscar and the orchestra finally defeat Thaddius Vent and bring back music to the land... and then the producers decide they want a third season.
• The final episodes of the first season of Pet Alien, "The Time that Time Ended" and "The Day of Judgement", both feel like potential series finales in case the show didn't get another season. "The Time that Time Ended" features the aliens thinking the world will end and dealing with their last day left on Earth, while "The Day of Judgement" has Swanky moving out of the lighthouse and getting a surprisingly emotional farewell as Tommy and the remaining aliens realise how much they miss him. Neither lasts, of course — the former ended with a New Year celebration while the latter had Swanky moving back in by the end — and the show continued for another season.
• A rather Genre Savvy example: the season one finale of Phineas and Ferb titled "Phineas and Ferb Get Busted!" was actually produced halfway through the first season; that way the producers had a final episode that they could neatly wrap up the series with all ready to air, in the event that the Disney Channel didn't renew the show for a second season or ended up cancelling it prematurely. The series naturally went on to become one of the longest-running shows in Disney Channel history.
  • The show actually has quite a few of these, notably "Summer Belongs to You!", "Across the 2nd Dimension", "Act Your Age" and the Grand Finale "Last Day of Summer", until the 2nd movie (which can also serve as another finale to the series) and later revival.
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998) originally ended with the season five episode Musical Episode, "See Me, Feel Me, Gnomey" in which the girls make a deal with a reality-altering gnome to rid Townsville of the villains plaguing it in exchange for their powers. Realizing that evil still lurks in Townsville in the form of a cult formed by Gnomey, and that evil will always exist as long as there is good, the deal is broken, thus giving the girls their powers back. As a result, the girls go to stop him, and free Townsville from his false promises. The show would get one more season afterwards. Notably, this episode never aired in the United States, only becoming available years after the show's run through the complete series DVD set and digital download.
• ReBoot ended its third season with episode "End Prog" assuming that there wouldn't be a fourth season, wrapping things up nicely. It unexpectedly got renewed for a fourth season and the creators went into that with the expectation they would have at least five seasons... and promptly got canceled again.
• Rick and Morty: Parodies this in "Forgetting Sarick Mortshall", the ninth episode of Season 5, which ends with Rick realizing what a toxic and unhealthy relationship he and Morty have and refusing to reunite with him, instead telling Morty that he's Leaving You to Find Myself. It's deliberately written to provide an overly-cheesy, abrupt, anti-climactic wrap-up for Rick's and Morty's character arcs, complete with ending on an Award-Bait Song and the post-episode behind-the-scenes segments with the writers treating it like Rick and Morty have truly "broken up" for good. There was little fear of viewers taking it seriously: not only had the series had already been renewed at this point for many more seasons, but "Forgetting Sarick Mortshall" wasn't even the season finale. The next episode and actual season finale, "Rickmurai Jack", hit the Reset Button and restored their usual dynamic within the first ten minutes.
• Although there aren't many loose ends to tie up, most Robot Chicken season finales involve the show being canceled, should life imitate art. Given the show's high ratings during it's peak led to things like two-season orders, at this point, it's purely a Running Gag.
• The original run of Rugrats ended with season 3 episode Moving Away where Angelica was moving away, and Tommy told the others he would miss her. When the others asked for clarification, Tommy explained how it was Angelica who made them all friends, complete with a flashback origin story. It turned out Angelica didn't have to move, but it ended up in one of her purest Jerk with a Heart of Gold moments, and because of that the series later got renewed.
• Samurai Jack had the episode "Aku's Fairy Tales", a largely comedic episode centered around Aku telling fables to a group of young children, altered to feature him as the protagonist and Samurai Jack as the villain. After failing to entertain them, Aku leaves frustrated. The kids tell their own story, wherein Samurai Jack reaches a portal to his own time period after striking down Aku once and for all. This episode, despite taking place in the imagination of children, was meant to provide some semblance of closure if the show were not renewed.
• Space Ghost Coast to Coast: Originally the series wrapped in 1999 with the episode King Dead, Cartoon Network announced in 2001 that the show would be revived and be broadcast on it's Adult Swim block. The series aired for two more seasons, helping to set up Aqua Teen Hunger Force before ending with the 'unfinished story Live At The Filmore in 2004. Afterwards, two further seasons made up of five minute shorts appeared on the Gametap service, where Space Ghost and company would interview key names in the video game industry. The series came to an official end in 2008, with the show's ratings failing to sustain it in-universe and the characters all moving on with their lives. Then the show made another brief comeback on Adult Swim with a few short interviews airing in between programmes.
• The Simpsons: The season 23 episode "Holidays of Future Passed" was slated to be the final episode, as FOX was having budget issues with the show. Once everyone agreed to take a pay cut in order to keep the show afloat for at least two more seasons, this was re-framed as a Christmas Episode. The show is currently on track for 34 seasons. Even before this, "Behind the Laughter" back in Season 11 has an air of finality to it. Given its setup and how most of the old staff left after this, it feels like this was the backup in case the show ended here.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars: "The Wrong Jedi" at the end of the fifth season gives this impression, being an emotionally heavy conclusion, but they did intend for a sixth season that was meant to be more of an epilogue. After the Disney purchase of Lucasfilm the sixth season was truncated and released on Netflix, culminating in "Sacrifice", an episode focusing on Yoda that brought the show to a philosophical resolution but largely disconnected from the actual war. It was then Uncanceled with a seventh and final season on Disney+, providing an affirmative conclusion by intermingling events with Revenge of the Sith, the official conclusion to the war.
• Steven Universe:
  • Season 1's "Mirror Gem"/"Ocean Gem" was approached as though the network would decide not to renew the series for a second season. The episode revealed that the Crystal Gems are aliens rather than mystical beings, that all the monsters they've fought are also Gems, and has Steven successfully use his abilities on command for the first time. The episode's ending conversation between Garnet and Pearl was also originally meant to be more conclusive. The show ended up being renewed for more episodes early enough that it was replaced with a vaguer exchange that would help set up the remainder of a now extended season, with the two-parter now being a midseason finale.
  • Season 5's finale "Change Your Mind" concluded the show's Myth Arc (the Crystal Gems defeat the Diamonds and convince them of the error of their ways, the Corrupted Gems are cured, Steven makes peace with his mother's legacy, Homeworld is heading towards a brighter future, and most of the major plotlines are conclusively wrapped up). Creator Rebecca Sugar believed that this would be the final season, as the network was adamant that they wouldn't order more, forcing her to argue for a handful of extra episodes so she could even wrap things up. Then the network changed their minds, not only allowing her to do the television movie she wanted, but also greenlighting a sixth season which became the mini-series Steven Universe: Future.
• Teen Titans: The "three"-"part" "finale" of the fourth season, meaningfully titled "The End", pitted the Titans against Trigon in a post-apocalyptic wasteland for the sake of the entire universe. Then the show was renewed for a fifth and final season, with two separate endings: a straightforward Grand Finale featuring every major character in the show, and a much more downbeat Dénouement Episode focusing on Beast Boy and a Back from the Dead Terra.
• Total Drama: The final episode of Island (2007) The Very Last Episode, Really!, has a lot of tropes you'd see in a series finale: every character on the show appearing, a title card with the word "last" in it and the characters earning their happy ending. It also has a feeling of a series finale too. Despite this, Total Drama got a special called "Total Drama, Drama, Drama, Drama Island" and it's been pumping out new seasons since then.
• The fifth season of Totally Spies! ended with the spies leaving WOOHP and saying their goodbyes to Jerry. This was later followed by the Spin-Off The Amazing Spiez!, in which they made occasional cameos, and a sixth season in 2013.
• The "Contest of Champions (1982)" arc from Ultimate Spider-Man was written to serve as a Grand Finale for the show, but at the last second, Disney XD picked up the cartoon for one more season, making it the longest-running Spider-Man adaptation to date.
• Voltron: Legendary Defender: "Defender of All Universes", the Season 6 finale, has a sense of coming full circle in its conclusion that makes it feel a lot like a series finale, even when it was made with the full knowledge that they had two more seasons. If not for the fact that Honerva was still out there, the story could have wrapped up in that episode. There's even a unique credits sequence for it. Quite possibly a Mythology Gag referencing the original Voltron, which as mentioned above, also had a Series Fauxnale as its 52nd episode.
• Winx Club was clearly intended to end with the first film Winx Club: The Secret Of The Lost Kingdom, where Bloom finally finds her birth parents after three seasons searching for them and Sky asks her to marry him. But then we're given a Sequel Hook where the Ancestral Witches (whose spirits were freed when Bloom saved her home) possess the Trix. The creator of the series, Iginio Straffi, said in an interview that he always planned the show to end after the third season. The show was eventually renewed for more seasons and given two more movies (the first of which resolved the Sequel Hook), but Straffi wasn't heavily involved with them.
• X-Men: The Animated Series:
  • Episode 13, "The Final Decision", has a number of arcs cleanly tied up in case the series wasn't renewed: The Sentinels are defeated, Beast is released from prison, Senator Kelly stops his anti-mutant rhetoric, Magneto and Xavier form a truce, Rogue and Gambit share an Indirect Kiss, and Cyclops asks Jean to marry him. It ends with a clearly-tacked-on voice-over by Mr. Sinister (and it sounds nothing like the actor who eventually played Mr. Sinister! It was all very quick-and-dirty.) to set up the next season's arc.
  • There was also "Beyond Good and Evil", written to be the finale. It was a massively massive four-parter where damn near everybody takes part in an epic that crosses time and space, from ancient Egypt to the present to Bishop's future to Cable's future and Deathbird (who was standing in the background when Fabian Cortez met Apocalypse back in "Sanctuary;" you knew there was something to that!) shows up. In the end, Apocalypse appears to be defeated once and for all. And they get renewed. The second of the intended series finales was more quiet and emotional than either of the blockbuster epic finales: Professor X is dying, and we get some Tear Jerker moments, character exploration, and one fight that ends when Magneto is told he can help save Xavier's life. As it ends with Xavier leaving for intensive care in the Shi'ar galaxy, with those he taught as the caretakers of his dream, it is named "Graduation Day". Several decades later, Disney renewed the series for another season, to premiere exclusively on Disney+.