Top 20 Plot Twists That Changed the Entire Season of a Show
What a twist! Welcome to MsMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for story developments that shook up an entire season of a show.
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00:00I actually close my eyes, and I pray that I can get back
00:07Welcome to miss mojo and today
00:09We're counting down our picks for story development that shook up an entire season of a show
00:14This is live-action only and there will be spoilers
00:17Oh
00:22God
00:26Number 20 season 9 never happened
00:29Roseanne the original series finale of the working-class sitcom saw Roseanne Conner telling us in voiceover that the entire
00:37Ninth season was an extended fantasy her family never won the lottery
00:42This was a relief because the show took a nosedive as a result of the family's newfound
00:47Wealth Roseanne then tells us that the entire series was a fictionalized version of her real life
00:53The biggest blow came when Roseanne revealed her husband Dan didn't survive his heart attack at the end of season 8
01:00I lost Dan last year when he had his heart attack
01:09He's still the first thing I think about when I wake up and the last thing I think about before I go to sleep
01:15Equal parts devastating and confusing few people knew what to make of the finale's relentless onslaught of the show-changing plot twists
01:23These revelations were then retconned yet again when the show was revived in 2018
01:28Well, looky here written by Roseanne Conner. I'll trash that
01:33This would have sold like hotcakes. If only you hadn't killed off the most interesting character
01:40Number 19 Chuck is God
01:43Supernatural the long-running CW show follows the demon-fighting Winchester brothers as they interact with denizens of the afterlife
01:51season 4 introduced the Prophet Chuck Shirley
01:54Chuck is a surly writer who chronicles the brothers as exploits and knows more about them than they know themselves
02:00Chuck Shirley the Chuck Shirley who wrote the supernatural books
02:05Maybe why?
02:07I'm Dean. This is Sam the Dean and Sam you've been writing about
02:12His intrusion in their lives is incredibly meta, but it's no stranger than demons invading the earth
02:18So it's kind of low on the list of weird things that happen on this show
02:22seven seasons later
02:24everything becomes clear Chuck reveals himself as a human facsimile of God himself and
02:30God at least the version in supernatural is pretty complicated as far as creators of the universe go
02:42This revelation affected not just this season, but those that preceded it and those that followed as well
02:53We should probably talk number 18 Leo's death the West Wing
02:58After serving as president Jed Bartlett's chief of staff for most of the series
03:03Leo McGarry was poised to serve an even higher office
03:07Access to the first-class treatment that I firmly believe saved my life
03:13He didn't really answer the question
03:15Doesn't matter the seventh and final season of the West Wing follows Bartlett's successor who selects McGarry as his vice president
03:23Then real-life intervened actor John Spencer died during production of the last season
03:29Effectively changing his character's entire storyline
03:33Once again, Leo McGarry has been pronounced dead by dr. Elliot M
03:38Gross of the Texas Methodist Medical Center
03:41He was rushed to the hospital after a massive heart attack instead of serving as the next VP
03:46His death would cast a shadow over his running mates election night victory
03:50Although it was a shocker
03:52Producers have since denied the myth that the show changed the outcome of its finale as a result of Spencer's death
03:58Still Leo's absence clearly affected the show's tone as it came in for a landing
04:05Number 17 big dies and just like that on sex in the city
04:10Carrie Bradshaw's storylines are largely about her complicated love life when she finally settles down with mr
04:17Big that story seems to be over
04:19Carrie you're the one
04:22I
04:27Kiss me a big cry, baby
04:30For a second viewers thought the revival series would give Carrie a chance to be comfortable in her romantic life
04:36But no, it wasn't meant to be and just like that immediately flushes Carrie's happy ending down the drain
04:43I'll see you later
04:49What
04:52The married couple's wedded bliss and suddenly at the end of the revivals first episode
04:57Which shows big dying of a heart attack on his Peloton machine?
05:01Suddenly the sequel series finds a way to throw Carrie back into the muck of a troubled personal life
05:08John
05:16Number 16
05:18Penelope is Lady Whistledown
05:20Bridgerton move over gossip girl. There's a new gossip queen on the scene Lady Whistledown's frank observations of London's
05:28High Society enrage and enthrall her readers many of whom become characters in her gossip column
05:35Although she's voiced by Julie Andrews season 3 finally reveals to the characters what audiences have known since season 1
05:42Lady Whistledown's true identity. She is none other than the unassuming and seemingly naive
05:49Penelope Featherington
05:51Especially of those of us who are told so little
05:55But I can no longer conceal the biggest piece of information I have
05:58My identity
06:01Penelope had everyone fooled
06:03No one in her life takes her seriously and so she is the last one they would ever think would be behind the column
06:09The revelation shifts her entire standing within the social hierarchy and reshuffled her relationship with every character
06:17including Queen Charlotte herself
06:20She seems humbled
06:22But we will be watching that she remains so
06:26Number 15 violet is a ghost
06:29American Horror Story
06:31Ryan Murphy's horror anthology opens with a bang in its first season
06:36Subtitled murder house the Harmon family moves into a house and is immediately besieged by the ghosts of its past
06:43Of course, they don't know that at first. In fact, we're hardly ever really sure who's a ghost and who's not
06:50Excuse me, man. I don't want to bother you, but I'm hurt and needing some help
06:55As my wife medicated you are you here for the procedure the depressed violet falls for one of these spirits a
07:01Disturbed and morbid teenager named Tate when she tries to escape the house. He reveals the truth to her
07:08She actually died after taking her own life a few episodes earlier
07:13Her experience of the house since then has been as one of its lost souls trapped in its walls forever
07:19Like how's it gonna be?
07:21Just like this like it's always been
07:27To you and me together for always number 14 Bernard is an Android Westworld
07:34Incredibly ambitious and cerebral the HBO series puts a new spin on a sci-fi
07:40Classic and is also a master class in misleading the audience
07:44the first season has us following Bernard Lowe who is introduced to us as a human programmer at the park as he
07:51Investigates the mysterious disruptions in the AI hosts. We eventually find out he's an Android himself
07:57Park director. Dr. Ford lets us in on this little secret in
08:01Spectacularly spooky fashion. I can't be my wife
08:09My son
08:11They're real I
08:13Was a father this bombshell gives new meaning to Bernard's entire character arc and cleverly
08:19Expands on the show's themes of human consciousness and free will he brought me here to show me this
08:26No, he brought you here because I asked him to
08:34It's been very loyal for many years
08:37Number 13 the bent-neck lady the haunting of Hill house the five crane children's childhood
08:44Experiences in a haunted house didn't exactly set them up for success later in life
08:49In this liberal adaptation of Shirley Jackson's classic horror novel
08:53No crane is haunted from childhood by a sleep paralysis demon. She calls the bent-neck lady
08:59Do you remember the bent-neck lady?
09:07Yes
09:09She's back
09:11Halfway through the season. It's revealed that the bent-neck lady is not a ghost but Nell herself at the moment of her own death
09:18This is when we realize it's not just the trauma of their experience in a haunted house that dogs the cranes in their adult lives
09:26Oh
09:28It's okay
09:30Hill house is evil infects them and never lets them go
09:35number 12 Ned Stark's death Game of Thrones
09:39Yes, the Red Wedding is iconic and brutal but think back to that first season
09:45Game of Thrones positioned Ned Stark as the classic fantasy protagonist
09:50He is the noble soldier who will fight to defend the kingdom and the king he's aligned with in George RR Martin's world
09:57Bravery will only get you so far
10:00What is to be done with this?
10:03traitor
10:06Stark is beheaded in front of his daughters all because the new king wanted to make an example of him
10:12It's an act of pure brutality
10:15Without a heroic and noble center the show begins its descent into chaotic power games where no one is safe
10:22Treason shall never go unpunished
10:26Sir Ilyn
10:28Bring me his head
10:32Maybe we should have known Ned Stark was doomed. He was played by Sean Bean after all
10:37Number 11 Ward is a double agent
10:41Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. This small-screen Marvel offshoot sees special agent Phil Coulson forming a team of agents
10:48Responsible for warding off supervillains. That's bad, right?
10:51And given your family history, I'm surprised it's not worse
10:56but I
10:59Think you're the guy for this the agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. are all that stands in the way of the evil Hydra
11:04Organization's plans for world domination as in any spy thriller
11:09Betrayals are inevitable when it turns out that S.H.I.E.L.D. operative Grant Ward is a Hydra double agent. It's a true shocker
11:17What do you think agent Ward?
11:19You shot the wrong clairvoyant before
11:23Care to shoot the right one more than just being an effective twist. It changes the entire dynamic of the agency
11:30Irreparably shifting many of the relationships we've come to know over the first season
11:35Number ten the bad place the good place
11:39We loved the good place and while the whole series was fantastic the first season really set the standard
11:45There's been a big mistake
11:48I'm not supposed to be here
11:50Wait what?
11:54That's largely because the team cooked up one of the best end-of-season twists of all time at first
12:02Eleanor and company are trying to navigate the ins and outs of the so-called good place following their deaths though
12:08They're supposed to be in a utopia things seem to go wrong at every single turn
12:12Then Eleanor finally figures out the gambit it turns out the good place is actually the bad place
12:19Everything that's happened to our four main characters has been orchestrated to help them hurt each other
12:23It turns everything completely on its head and brilliantly so shall we you know what bro?
12:30Do your worst we figured it out once we can do it again because you know what Michael?
12:36Yeah, they say
12:42Number nine long-lived David Clark revenge
12:46When the central story of your television show revolves around one character being dead
12:50It can be pretty shocking to learn that said character is actually alive and well. You know how much I love you Amanda
12:58Infinity well infinity
13:04Times
13:06infinity
13:08Revenge follows a young woman Amanda Clark who moves to the Hamptons under a false name Emily
13:14She wants to get revenge on the Grayson family who are seemingly responsible for the death of her father David years before
13:20My father's chance to bring justice to the truly guilty was stolen from him
13:26His only option was to forgive
13:30I have others
13:32but at the end of season 3 the patriarch Conrad Grayson has just fled prison and is joined by a
13:38Mysterious driver except that driver is none other than David Clark himself. No, I can't be
13:50Yep, Amanda's father has been alive the whole time reframing everything that happened that season and the ones before
13:58Number eight il-nam is behind it all squid game
14:02There's arguably nothing more unassuming than an elderly man on TV
14:07Especially an elderly man with a tumor forced to play a bunch of deadly childhood games
14:17Let me see what spring is like
14:21Jupiter and Mars in squid game
14:24We're introduced to il-nam as one of the players after he loses a game to our main character Gian
14:29We're led to believe that he's killed
14:31No
14:41But in the season finale a year after the main events of the series
14:45Guillaume is taken to see a very much alive il-nam on his deathbed
14:50We learned that il-nam was the orchestrator of the games
14:53He created them so the wealthy could be entertained by the plight of the poor and participated just for fun
15:00It makes us look back on every moment with new eyes
15:14Number seven Agatha all along
15:17WandaVision
15:19Sometimes a character is introduced and you just know something is up and when you cast Catherine Han
15:24We have to assume she's going to have a pretty important role
15:28Well, it feels like we've always been together
15:31lucky gal
15:32The only way Ralph would remember our anniversary is if there was a beer named June 2nd
15:37But we could have never guessed the extent of Agatha's involvement in Wanda's manipulated WandaVision life
15:43Han first appears as Wanda's wacky neighbor Agnes that you should stumble when you walk into a room so he can catch you
15:52Romantic any other tricks you could point out that the death rate of single men is twice that of married men
15:58But in the seventh episode
15:59She's revealed to be the witch Agatha Harkness and we learned she's been responsible for the major
16:05disruptions to Wanda's life with a fantastic musical sequence the show even takes us back through major moments and
16:12Demonstrates just how much of an impact Agatha had
16:15Now that everything has gone wrong
16:25Number six Taisa sleepwalks
16:28Yellowjackets throughout the first season of Yellowjackets. We're led to believe that something is definitely up with Taisa
16:34We eventually learned that she deals with sleepwalking, but it's not your run-of-the-mill stuff
16:40Which is revealed in the most shockingly twisty of ways
16:43If we're stuck out here long enough, I have a feeling it'll come out
16:49One way or another
16:50In the 2021 timeline Taisa's son complains about a woman in a tree outside of their house
16:56Though she initially thinks he's imagining things it ultimately becomes clear that there is indeed a lady. It's her
17:05When she's asleep at night her alter-ego takes over and does horrifying things
17:10It's a wonderful setup for what's to come as the story progresses and shines new light on both timelines
17:16No, he's trying to see me do it Shauna. He's seen me do it
17:21He thinks there's some other
17:23Version of me he calls it the bad one. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie
17:28I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie
17:31He thinks there's some other version of me he calls it the bad one
17:36Number five Spike gets a soul Buffy the Vampire Slayer
17:40Throughout the later seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. We're not quite sure what to think about Spike. You got any more ready-to-smell your pants?
17:50I'll take anything you can throw at me
17:53If it'll get me what I need to take care of the Slayer
17:55We know he has feelings for Buffy yet
17:58Hey, he did start out as a full-blown villain after all, but then we learn that's not the case
18:04It's quite the opposite
18:05In fact Spike fought for the opportunity to regain his soul and succeeded in doing so so he could be good enough for Buffy
18:17What does a man do that he mustn't for her to be hers
18:21It's surprising in the moment, but looking back on it everything about Spike's decision makes sense
18:27It's the rare season-defining twist that's imbued with sweetness rather than shock value. So yeah, I go and pass the time
18:36With someone but that's all it is is time
18:40It's gotta help me Buffy. It's still all about you number four. Not the Elliot we thought mr. Robot
18:47You know those plot twists that come in at the end of a show's run and find a way to make you question
18:52Everything you've watched up until that point. Well, this is one of those I know
18:57You're afraid
18:59But the fear you have is a right one
19:02Means you'll be forever vigilant
19:05Throughout mr. Robot. We get to know Elliot a hacker with disassociative identity disorder
19:11Twist and turns abound as we learn the title character is Elliot's creation and we understand
19:16We can't always trust the protagonist to be a reliable narrator. Why would I trust any of you? You've been trying to kill me
19:23We've been trying to show you the truth and you've been resisting
19:31Still we believe our main window into the story is really him not one identity
19:36That's taken over his body and yet the series finale reveals that this is exactly what was going on with the mastermind
19:44Having been in charge, even though we'll be gone
19:47It's like mr. Robot said
19:50We'll always be a part of Elliot Alderson
19:53Number three it's in the past
19:55Battlestar Galactica
19:57Battlestar Galactica is one of the best science fiction shows in recent memory
20:01But it has one thing going for it that many others don't it doesn't actually take place in the future
20:08there are certain things that
20:11That we've all done certain things that
20:14People would be shocked to learn about
20:17That's right
20:18After a miniseries in four seasons the beloved show ended by revealing that Battlestar Galactica takes place in the past
20:25When our beloved battleship finally lands on earth, it's during prehistoric times human beings
20:32Naturally evolved on a planet 1 million light-years away
20:37The odds against that are astronomical
20:40Though the characters vowed to eschew their technology. The epilogue tells us that
20:45150,000 years later things evolved much like they did in the real world after all this has happened before and it can happen again
20:53technology run amok
20:55Remind you of anything take your pick
20:59cobalt
21:00earth
21:01The real earth before this one
21:04Number two George is John Doe Grey's Anatomy. I joined the army to be a trauma surgeon. I report for duty tomorrow
21:14You did what yes, I thought we'd start it's always surprising when a main character is killed off
21:20But because this is Grey's Anatomy, of course, they had to do things in the most upsetting way possible in the season 5 finale
21:28A John Doe is brought to the hospital after he jumps in front of a bus to rescue a woman and just hit himself
21:35Unidentified male dragged by a bus. He's clamped down so we couldn't innovate
21:38They stopped when they hit him bus driver didn't know he was there until he got halfway down the block
21:41His face has been wrecked and he's
21:44Unrecognizable, but he keeps trying to write something for Meredith when she finally figures out what it is
21:49She starts freaking out. The John Doe is tracing double-oh-seven George O'Malley's hospital nickname
21:59It's George John Doe is George
22:02George is the man who was hit by the bus and his subsequent passing marks a turning point for the show
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22:24Number one
22:25flash-forwards lost
22:27Lost is one of the quintessential mystery box shows as such
22:31Twists and turns to find its legacy like when we learned that Ethan isn't on the plane's manifest in the first season
22:38One of them isn't in the manifest
22:41He wasn't on the plane
22:44Hello there
22:45But the biggest plot twist of all and maybe one of the most effective ever came in the two-part season 3 finale
22:53Flashbacks became a central part of lost episodes and for most of this one. We think that's what we're watching as Jack struggles
23:00There was no funeral sir only a viewing
23:03Nobody showed up
23:06Nobody
23:08You sure just you my deepest condolences
23:12Then eventually he meets up with none other than Kate as he tells her that they need to return to the island
23:18We realized that we're watching a flash-forward
23:20Not a flashback. We
23:23Were not supposed to leave
23:25Yes
23:27Did these twists make or break a season for you tell us in the comments
23:32I mean horror is one thing but to be forced to live bad writing
23:37Do you agree with our picks check out this other recent clip from Ms
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