I think each series will serve as incredible touchstones of epic storytelling for years to come in their own genres, and some fans will forever have gripes for how they got resolved. But which will gnaw at the soul the longest?
I never got very invested in BSG. I liked it, but no more than a lot of other Syfy shows, and I frankly expected it to either get unceremoniously cancelled or peter out anyway. I didn’t care for where it went but my expectations were low, so it was a big shrug for me.
GoT has the double whammy of being a bad last couple of seasons with all the speculation of how it could’ve gone compared to the hypothetical books we’ll probably never see. Sigh.
Edit: Lost was fine. I prepped myself for a goofy ending because there was no way all those story bits and questions would get satisfactorily resolved.
Oof, this is difficult.
Mostly because the reasons the last seasons were bad are so different between Lost and GoT. Can’t really comment on BSG as I never really watched it.
In Lost, the final season was definitely better written than GoT. There were no character arc 180s, no completely inexplicable changes in character behavior, no fucking stupid battle “strategies” that make you scream at your TV (yes I did that during the “Long Night”) and (at least to me) the whole thing did not feel extremely rushed.
However, Lost completely dropped the ballpit when it comes to closure. I mean, nothing was explained, absolutely nothing. They didn’t even try. Your were left as confused, if not more, than when the season started. I’d say it was on purpose.
GoT at least gave closure. I don’t think the last episode was terrible (nowhere near episode 03-05 anyway), and except the weird Bran situation, things generally were okay, if a bit too much of a happy ending. There have been way worse final episodes in series, that’s what I’m saying.
Meanwhile, everything that is terrible about the final GoT season was not done on purpose. Except if terrible writing and characters across the board acting out of character was done on purpose but… I doubt it.
In the end. for me, being crap due to incompetence is worse than being crap on purpose, therefore the final GoT season is worse than the final Lost season.
I never got into GOT. Found it too gratuitous and way to killy-stabby for the sake of it. So no opinion on how it ended.
Lost pissed me off because so many people figured it out and the producers just flat out lied about it. “Its purgatory!” “No its not. We refuse to use a cheap out like the afterlife” Show ends and Surprise! They have been in purgatory waiting to move on to the afterlife.
The ending to BSG was just plain bad. I liked the series overall and it had some great moments but then the threw the whole thing right out the window at the end. Major disappointment.
I voted for Battlestar Galactica. I absolutely loved that show until the last episode. I even loved the general depressing direction of Season 4/4.5, I thought it was really well done in terms of tone. I even liked the 3rd last episode where they revealed the Cylon’s plan. Obviously it was a bit tacked on, but it fit about as best as one could hope for. But man, the second half of the series finale was dire. It made me never want to watch the series again.
GoT’s final two seasons were really rushed. So much so that I sort of view it as a general outline of where the story is supposed to go, giving me the broad strokes of where the story is headed overall, even if all the important details and motivations are missing. I can’t get too mad over that. It just feels like they ran out of time, so they ended the thing with a bullet point list instead of an actual novel. At least I can still watch that and sort try to fill in the details of how we get to those bullet points in my own head so that it kind of fits.
Lost, I thought the last season was quite good. From the pilot of Lost, I thought it was a silly show with nonsensical “mysteries” and “plot”. But a few episodes in, they introduced Locke, a man who used to be in a wheelchair in his flashback and yet who was walking fine in the present on the island. The episode was so well made and such a pleasure to watch, that I decided that day that the “plot” and other things didn’t matter. This was the reason to watch Lost: for the character moments, the music, the superb acting, and the excellent moment-to-moment intrigue (never to be viewed from more than a few feet away). In that sense, I thought the last season was excellent. It kept the character moments, the music, the acting (except Evangeline Lilly, who was terrible from beginning to end), and the moment-to-moment intrigue.
I loved Lost’s ending and thought it fit the show quite well. I especially loved the little touches like when Benjamin remains seated outside of the church and says he’s not ready and says to go on without him. That was a great moment.
I give GoT a lot of slack because the people tasked with finishing the series weren’t the creators. I voted for Lost because the creators were the same throughout. I feel Lost failed to deliver on the promises.’
GoT’s ending is probably the worst series ending I’ve experienced, but I can’t really compare it with others, because I haven’t watched them. It’s generally rare that I actually reach the ending of a series.
My big problem with the GoT, really, was that I just didn’t care about anything by the last episode. The character arc 180s, the cartoon-villain heel turn, the way the entire thing just shifted into exposition mode because they couldn’t manage subtlety once the source material ran out meant that I really had zero emotional investment in any of the characters by the end. I’m not really mad about it either - like @Rock8man says, it’s just felt like a bullet point list vs an actual novel.