Anticlimax

An anticlimax is "a disappointing event after events that were full of excitement." Wikipedia has no standalone article for it: "Anticlimax" lands on a disambiguation page and "Anticlimax (narrative)" redirects into the article on the climax, which treats the anticlimax as the climax's shadow, the failure mode of a buildup that is never paid off. Handled poorly it leaves the story's stored tension and drama in dissolution, which is the specific betrayal readers name when an ending lands flat after a long climb.

Handled deliberately, it is a technique. Where a work's tone suits an equivocal conclusion more than a dramatic shift in how things stand, an anticlimax built with care can serve as legitimately as a traditional climax, and the article's example is the end of The Hunger Games, where an outside force resolves the Games for Katniss and Peeta, a resolution it files under deus ex machina. The anticlimax is not the same as bathos, the comic drop from the elevated to the trivial, though the two can appear together. For serial writers the stakes are schedule-bound: an arc finale that deflates is already published, and cannot be quietly reworked.