YMMV / Star Trek: Voyager S7E23 "Endgame"

• Broken Base: It certainly isn't outright hated like the finale of Star Trek: Enterprise would prove to be, but it's a very divisive ending to the series. Many fans complained about the apparent final defeat of the Borg being much too easy, the seeming contrivances in the time-travel plot, and the episode ending abruptly and inconclusively almost as soon as Voyager gets back to Earth. For other fans, however, Voyager essentially going into God Mode before going on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against the Borg and blowing them up left right and center before dealing a crippling blow to the Collective just falls too much under Rule of Cool for them to dislike the episode, even if they'll generally admit it doesn't quite measure up to TNG's or DS9's finales.
• Fanfic Fuel: Given fan dissatisfaction with Endshame, an obvious subject for a Fix Fic.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • If you remember the lore on alternate universes, it's probable that Janeway's trip into past put her into a parallel universe, much like the Kelvin Timeline. This would be a way for viewers who didn't like the risky use of time travel to feel assured that Janeway didn't undo the original timeline.
• Fridge Horror:
  • Janeway erases sixteen years worth of discoveries, rescues, and countless connections for the sake of three people. On the flip side, the fact that several other people helped her do it, including Miral Paris who would be literally changing her entire life's history to do so, could hint that there was a better reason for doing so than simply Seven, Chakotay and Tuvok (granted, both Admiral Janeway and the show's writers forgot to mention or show us these reasons). Which brings its own dose of Fridge Horror; what the hell happened in Miral Paris's life that she was willing to change all of it?
    • Janeway apparently didn't care much for her First Officer, Chief Engineer, the Conn Officer, Transporter Chief, and literally the entire medical staff, because she never bothers to even consider going back to before the ship went on its doomed mission into the Badlands. That said, she probably took into account the fact that if she did that, Chakotay and the other marquis may more than likely try to perform 'Suicide by Cop' to avoid capture and Seven of Nine would have still been in the Borg collective.
    • Janeway also clearly didn't have a lot of love for Joseph Carey, who died only five episodes away from the finale. All she had to do to save him was go back just a few weeks further and use her knowledge to defuse the Friendship One situation. It really helps further cement Carey's Butt-Monkey status, and make her grief over his death at the end of "Friendship One" sound pretty hollow.
    • Alternatively, some fans have speculated that Janeway was trying to go back far enough to rescue Carey, but she couldn't set the temporal device quite that accurately; understandable, given that she was under attack when she opened the portal and didn't have time to properly study its operations.
  • The future seen in this episode doesn't tally with the present-day setting of Star Trek: Picard in a lot of ways, leading to the awful implication that in saving the lives of Chakotay, Seven, Tuvok, and a few Red Shirts, Admiral Janeway unwittingly doomed the Federation to a worse future.
  • Admiral Janeway also indirectly caused Icheb dying prematurely, considering that the future Icheb seen in VOY: "Shattered" (wherein we see a timeline in which Voyager still in the Delta Quadrant many years later) seems to be older than the one seen in PIC: "Stardust City Rag".
  • Timey-Wimey Ball notwithstanding, the only way to make the events of the episode stick is to establish a Stable Time Loop. Meaning that sometime in the "new" future, Janeway still has to go back to the past and make her Heroic Sacrifice.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Team Janeway crippling the Borg on their way out of the Delta Quadrant. While it's a triumphant note to end the show upon, it'll backfire in the long run and come back to bite the entire Federation in the ass over 20 years later — though, on a brighter note, that will allow Team Picard to defeat the Borg once and for all.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Though criticized in-universe and out for it, Admiral Janeway's motivation is to Set Right What Once Went Wrong. The star of the next show certainly has a lot of experience in that regard.
• Les Yay:
  • The Borg Queen purring to Seven: "You've always been my favourite, Seven."
  • Admiral Janeway to Seven. "Your colleagues, your friends, people who love you! Imagine the impact your death would have on them."
    • Janeway only seems to give a shit about going along with Future Janeway's time travelled shenanigans once she realises that Seven didn't make it.
• Strangled by the Red String: Because there was no follow-up to Seven's attraction to Holo-Chakotay in "Human Error", her Relationship Upgrade with the real Chakotay also comes out of nowhere.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Admiral Janeway comes off as this since she's trying to undo a future that isn't all that terrible. Sure, Tuvok suffers from Vulcan Alzheimer's and both Chakotay and Seven are dead, but everyone else has happily moved on, they have kids and successful careers. Janeway however, doesn't think it's good enough, so she wants to erase a future where a large majority of her crew are happy.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • As mentioned above, one major issue people have with the finale is the time travel plot, particularly since the future isn't bad enough to warrant a risky and unpredictable change to the timeline. Chakotay and Seven are dead, and Tuvok is suffering from Vulcan Alzheimer's, but everyone else seems to have settled down and has kids.
  • The other biggest complaint is that the show ends very abruptly. Voyager makes it back to Earth and is greeted by a small fleet, and then the credits roll. No denouement, no tearful reunions. It just ends.
  • The brief mention of Unimatrix Zero and the rebellious drones in the future segment is a reminder that unleashing a pathogen with the potential to destroy the entire Borg Collective would mean killing an untold number of drones who could potentially have somehow, someday broken free of the Borg's influence (to say nothing of those unlucky enough to have been assimilated in the preceding few days). There was a legitimate debate to be had over whether the Voyager crew's actions were effectively genocide, or if they were taking an unfortunate but necessary action to remove a threat to all life in the galaxy, while Mercy Killing all Borg drones in the process. Instead, it's just treated as a minor detail in a plan to get Voyager home quicker.

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