"Summer is in full swing, and we're going to distract ourselves from this gnarly heatwave by reflecting on the spring television gone by.
In the list below, we're looking back on nearly 40 season or series finales that aired across the broadcast networks — ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and The CW — earlier this year, with quick-hit recaps of each episode's strengths and weaknesses. But when it came time to rank these three dozen-ish hours of TV — a near-impossible feat on its own — we turned to TVLine readers for help, ranking the finales based on the average grades you gave them in our reader polls at the time of each episode's airing.
Note: Though most of the finales below aired in May, we also included season enders for shows like Fox's Doc and CBS' Matlock, which arrived earlier in 2025. And in the case of any ties — where multiple finales earned the same average score from TVLine readers — we've listed the tied shows in alphabetical order."
-REBECCA LUTHER
