Top 20 Plot Twists That Changed the Entire Season of a Show

The original series finale of the working class sitcom saw Roseanne Conner telling us in voiceover that the entire ninth season was an extended fantasy. Her family never won the lottery. This was a relief, because the show took a nosedive as a result of the family’s newfound wealth. Roseanne then tells us that the entire series was a fictionalized version of her real life. The biggest blow came when Roseanne revealed her husband, Dan, didn’t survive his heart attack at the end of season 8. Equal parts devastating and confusing, few people knew what to make of the finale’s relentless onslaught of show-changing plot twists. These revelations were then retconned yet again when the show was revived in 2018.

The long-running CW show follows the demon-fighting Winchester Brothers as they interact with denizens of the afterlife. Season 4 introduced the prophet, Chuck Shurley. Chuck is a surly writer who chronicles the brothers’ exploits and knows more about them than they know themselves. His intrusion in their lives is incredibly meta, but it’s no stranger than demons invading the earth, so it’s kind of low on the list of weird things that happen on this show. Seven seasons later, everything becomes clear. Chuck reveals himself as a human facsimile of God himself. And God, at least the version in “Supernatural,” is pretty complicated as far as creators of the universe go. This revelation affected not just this season, but those that preceded it and those that followed as well.

After serving as President Jed Bartlet’s Chief of Staff for most of the series, Leo McGarry was poised to serve an even higher office. The seventh and final season of “The West Wing” follows Bartlet’s successor, who selects McGarry as his Vice President. Then, real life intervened. Actor John Spencer died during production of the last season, effectively changing his character’s entire storyline. Instead of serving as the next VP, his death would cast a shadow over his running mate’s election night victory. Although it was a shocker, producers have since denied the myth that the show changed the outcome of its finale as a result of Spencer’s death. Still, Leo’s absence clearly affected the show’s tone as it came in for a landing.

On “Sex and the City,” Carrie Bradshaw’s storylines are largely about her complicated love life. When she finally settles down with Mr. Big, that story seems to be over. For a second, viewers thought the revival series would give Carrie a chance to be comfortable in her romantic life. But no, it wasn’t meant to be. “And Just Like That…” immediately flushes Carrie’s happy ending down the drain. The married couple’s wedded bliss ends suddenly at the end of the revival’s first episode, which shows Big dying of a heart attack on his Peloton machine. Suddenly, the sequel series finds a way to throw Carrie back into the muck of a troubled personal life.

Move over, “Gossip Girl.” There’s a new gossip queen on the scene. Lady Whistledown’s frank observations of London’s high society enrage and enthrall her readers, many of whom become characters in her gossip column. Although she’s voiced by Julie Andrews, season 3 finally reveals to the characters what audiences have known since season 1- Lady Whistledown’s true identity. She is none other than the unassuming and seemingly naïve Penelope Featherington. Penelope had everyone fooled. No one in her life takes her seriously, and so she is the last one they would ever think would be behind the column. This revelation shifts her entire standing within the social hierarchy, and reshuffles her relationships with every character, including Queen Charlotte herself.

Ryan Murphy’s horror anthology opens with a bang. In its first season, subtitled Murder House, the Harmon Family moves into a house and is immediately besieged by the ghosts of its past. Of course, they don’t know that at first. In fact, we’re hardly ever really sure who’s a ghost and who’s not. The depressed Violet falls for one of these spirits, a disturbed and morbid teenager named Tate. When she tries to escape the house, he reveals the truth to her. She actually died after taking her own life a few episodes earlier. Her experience of the house since then has been as one of its lost souls, trapped in its walls forever.

Incredibly ambitious and cerebral, the HBO series puts a new spin on a sci-fi classic and is also a masterclass in misleading the audience. The first season has us following Bernard Lowe, who is introduced to us as a human programmer at the park. As he investigates the mysterious disruptions in the AI hosts, we eventually find out he’s an android himself. Park director Dr. Ford lets us in on this little secret in spectacularly spooky fashion. This bombshell gives new meaning to Bernard’s entire character arc and cleverly expands on the show’s themes of human consciousness and free will.

The five Crain children’s childhood experiences in a haunted house didn’t exactly set them up for success later in life. In this liberal adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s classic horror novel, Nell Crain is haunted from childhood by a sleep paralysis demon she calls the Bent-Neck Lady. Halfway 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. This is when we realize it’s not just the trauma of their experiences in a haunted house that dogs the Crains in their adult lives. Hill House’s evil infects them and never lets them go.

Yes, the Red Wedding is iconic and brutal, but think back to that first season. “Game of Thrones” positioned Ned Stark as the classic fantasy protagonist. He is the noble soldier who will fight to defend the kingdom and the king he's aligned with. In George R.R. Martin’s world, bravery will only get you so far. Stark is beheaded in front of his daughter all because the new king wanted to make an example of him. It’s an act of pure brutality. Without its heroic and noble center, the show begins its descent into chaotic power games where no one is safe. Maybe we should’ve known Ned Stark was doomed. He was played by Sean Bean, after all.

This small screen Marvel offshoot sees Special Agent Phil Coulson forming a team of agents responsible for warding off supervillains. The Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. are all that stands in the way of the evil Hydra organization’s plans for world domination. As in any spy thriller, betrayals 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. More than just being an effective twist, it changes the entire dynamic of the agency, irreparably shifting many of the relationships we’ve come to know over the first season.

We loved “The Good Place,” and while the whole series was fantastic, the first season really set the standard. That’s largely because the team cooked up one of the best end-of-season twists of all time. At first, Eleanor and company are trying to navigate the ins and outs of the so-called “Good Place” following their deaths. Though they’re supposed to be in a utopia, things seem to go wrong at every single turn. Then, Eleanor finally figures out the gambit. It turns out, the Good Place is actually the Bad Place. Everything that’s happened to our four main characters has been orchestrated to help them hurt each other. It turns everything completely on its head, and brilliantly so.

When the central story of your television show revolves around one character being dead, it can be pretty shocking to learn that said character is actually alive and well. “Revenge” follows a young woman, Amanda Clarke, who moves to the Hamptons under a false name (Emily). She wants to get revenge on the Grayson family, who are seemingly responsible for the death of her father David years before. But at the end of season three, the patriarch Conrad Grayson has just fled prison and is joined by a mysterious driver. Except that driver is none other than David Clarke himself. Yup, Amanda’s father has been alive the whole time, reframing everything that happened that season and the ones before.

There’s arguably nothing more unassuming than an elderly man on TV. Especially an elderly man with a tumor forced to play a bunch of deadly childhood games. In “Squid Game,” we’re introduced to Il-nam as one of the players. After he loses a game to our main character, Gi-hun, we’re led to believe that he’s killed. But in the season finale, a year after the main events of the series, Gi-hun is taken to see a very-much alive Il-nam on his deathbed. We learn that Il-man was the orchestrator of the games. He created them so the wealthy could be entertained by the plight of the poor, and participated just for fun. It makes us look back on every moment with new eyes.

Sometimes, a character is introduced and you just know something is up. And when you cast Kathryn Hahn, we have to assume she’s going to have a pretty important role. But we could’ve never guessed the extent of Agatha’s involvement in Wanda’s manipulated “WandaVision” life. Hahn first appears as Wanda’s wacky neighbor Agnes. But in the seventh episode, she’s revealed to be the witch Agatha Harkness, and we learn she’s been responsible for the major disruptions to Wanda’s life. With a fantastic musical sequence, the show even takes us back through major moments and demonstrates just how much of an impact Agatha had.

Throughout the first season of “Yellowjackets,” we’re led to believe that something is definitely up with Taissa. We eventually learn that she deals with sleepwalking, but it’s not your run of the mill stuff, which is revealed in the most shockingly twisty of ways. In the 2021 timeline, Taissa’s son complains about a woman in a tree outside of their house. Though she initially thinks he’s imagining things, it ultimately becomes clear that there is indeed a lady – it’s her. When she’s asleep at night, her alter ego takes over and does horrifying things. It’s a wonderful set-up for what’s to come as the story progresses, and shines new light on both timelines.

Throughout the later seasons of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” we’re not quite sure what to think about Spike. We know he has feelings for Buffy, yet it also seems like he might be trying to defeat her. Hey, he did start out as a full blown villain, after all. But then, we learn that’s not the case. It’s quite the opposite, in fact. Spike fought for the opportunity to regain his soul – and succeeded in doing so – so he could be good enough for Buffy. It’s surprising in the moment, but looking back on it, everything about Spike’s decision makes sense. It’s the rare season-defining twist that’s imbued with sweetness rather than shock value.

You know those plot twists that come in at the end of a show’s run, and find a way to make you question everything you’ve watched up until that point? Well, this was one of those. Throughout “Mr. Robot,” we get to know Elliot, a hacker with dissociative identity disorder. Twists and turns abound, as we learn the title character is Elliot’s creation, and we understand we can’t always trust the protagonist to be a reliable narrator. Still, we believe our main window into the story is really him, not one identity that’s taken over his body! And yet, the series finale reveals that this is exactly what was going on, with “the Mastermind” having been in charge.

“Battlestar Galactica” is one of the best science fiction shows in recent memory. But it has one thing going for it that many others don’t. It doesn’t actually take place in the future. That’s right. After a miniseries and four seasons, the beloved show ended by revealing that “Battlestar Galactica” takes place in the past. When our beloved battleship finally lands on Earth, it’s during prehistoric times. Though the characters vow to eschew their technology, the epilogue tells us that 150,000 years later, things evolved much like they did in the real world. After all, this has all happened before, and it can all happen again.

It’s always surprising when a main character is killed off. But because this is “Grey’s Anatomy,” of course they had to do things in the most upsetting way possible. In the season five finale, a John Doe is brought to the hospital after he jumps in front of a bus to rescue a woman and is hit himself. His face has been wrecked and he’s unrecognizable, but he keeps trying to write something for Meredith. When she finally figures out what it is, she starts freaking out. The John Doe is tracing 007, George O'Malley’s hospital nickname. George is the man who was hit by the bus, and his subsequent passing marks a turning point for the show.

“Lost” is one of the quintessential mystery box shows. As such, twists and turns define its legacy, like when we learn that Ethan isn’t on the plane’s manifest in the first season. But the biggest plot twist of all, and maybe one of the most effective ever, came in the two-part season three finale. Flashbacks became a central part of “Lost” episodes, and for most of this one, we think that’s what we’re watching as Jack struggles. Then, eventually, he meets up with none other than Kate. As he tells her that they need to return to the island, we realize that we’re watching a flashforward, not a flashback.

Did these twists make or break a season for you? Tell us in the comments.