- 5 minutes ago
These devastating cliffhangers were eventually resolved - one way or another.
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00Nothing pisses people off quite like a cliffhanger ending, especially where TV is concerned. Where
00:06fans have spent potentially years and years investing themselves emotionally in a show,
00:11only for it to go off the air without any sort of concrete conclusion. But it's not always a
00:16total loss, given that many showrunners and writers have later got on the record to reveal
00:21what was originally supposed to come next. I'm Ewan, this is WhatCulture, and here at
00:26infuriating TV cliffhangers you didn't realise had answers.
00:31Earl Jr's father is a random celebrity, and Earl never finishes his list. My name is Earl.
00:38My name is Earl's cancellation after its fourth season is especially cruel given that NBC had
00:44provisionally already teed the series up for another go-around, before unexpectedly pulling the plug.
00:49Plus, Season 4 ended on a massive cliffhanger, with the revelation that Darnell isn't the father of
00:54Earl Jr, suggesting that his wife Joy had another affair. Oh, and Earl never finished atoning for
01:00his list of wrongs, so there's that too. Creator Greg Garcia did at least reveal the
01:05intended direction for the fifth and final season in a 2013 Reddit AMA. Though the writers of My
01:11name is Earl hadn't yet settled on the precise identity of Earl Jr's biological father, they
01:15planned for it to be someone famous like Dave Chappelle or Lil Jon. And the kicker about
01:20Earl not completing his list? Well, Garcia was actually going to end the show without
01:25Earl finishing it anyway. Instead, he'd get stuck on a particularly tough item on the list,
01:30before running into someone who'd made their own list with Earl's name on.
01:33Basically, Earl's choice to make a list unknowingly kickstarted a chain reaction of
01:38other people creating their own atonement lists, making Earl realise that he's brought some gut into
01:43the world, at which point he tears up his list and moves on with his life.
01:47The baby was Kryptonian royalty. Lois and Clark, The New Adventures of Superman.
01:52Classic 90s Superman series Lois and Clark was abruptly cancelled at the end of its fourth season,
01:58leaving fans with an agonising cliffhanger as an unknown party leaves a baby boy in Lois and Clark's
02:04home. Given that the baby's blanket is emblazoned with the Superman symbol and a note declares that the
02:09child belongs to them, it certainly raised some questions, which per the show's cancellation,
02:13were infuriatingly never answered. In the show, at least. But in a 2003 interview with the
02:20puddly titled Krypton Sight, one of the show's writers and executive producers, Brad Buckner,
02:26revealed what was supposed to happen next. According to Buckner, the baby was actually
02:30Kryptonian royalty who had been stashed with Lois and Clark by his mother in order to keep him safe from
02:35assassins. Throughout the planned fifth season, the boy would have grown up at an abnormal rate,
02:40quickly ageing into a teenager in mere months while also developing his own superpowers.
02:44The season would have basically focused on Lois and Clark parenting a superpowered child,
02:49who by season's end would tragically leave the duo to save his people.
02:53Jim survives being shot. The Glades
02:57Hit crime drama series The Glades was harshly cancelled at the end of season 4,
03:01which wrapped up with an absolutely devastating cliffhanger in which protagonist Jim Longworth
03:06is shot twice in the chest in his new home prior to his wedding, leaving his fate unresolved.
03:11However, shortly after the show was canned by A&E and any prospect of shopping it to other networks
03:16had dried up, creator Clifton Campbell revealed what season 5 would have been about if given the
03:21green light. Simply, Jim would have in fact survived getting shot, with the season being focused
03:26around him investigating the identity of the person who tried to kill him, though Campbell sadly didn't
03:31go so far as to reveal who the actual culprit was. In the very least, fans can rest easy that as much
03:37as he appeared to be left in existential limbo, Jim didn't take a big long dirt nap at show's end.
03:43Ash fights machines in the future. Ash vs Evil Dead
03:47The brilliantly wacky Evil Dead sequel series Ash vs Evil Dead was cancelled after three spectacular,
03:53blood-soaked, vice-cracking seasons, leaving fans hanging on one hell of a tease of a fourth season.
03:59In the final scene, Ash, played by the peerless Bruce Campbell, is shown waking up in a post-apocalyptic
04:05future, where he has a newly augmented hand and a modified version of his beloved car,
04:10the Oldsmobile. Aided by robotic companion Lex, played by Jessica Green, Ash drives off into the
04:16night, presumably to kick more demonic ass, but sadly we never got to see precisely what Ash got up to.
04:22While you can certainly argue that season 3's ending is still a decent enough leaping off point for the
04:28character, concept art for the intended fourth season reveals that it would have basically been
04:32a Mad Max-inspired romp in which Ash scours an arid wasteland and battles robots. According to
04:39art director Nick Bassett, the season would have been named Ash and the Machines, and though producers
04:44apparently loved the direction for season 4, network stars felt that it would have been too expensive to
04:49produce. Hannibal and Will both survive. Hannibal. Hannibal ironically ended on a literal cliffhanger by
04:56having its two central characters Hannibal Lecter, played by the brilliant Mads Mikkelsen, and Will
05:01Graham, played by the also brilliant Hugh Dancy, go tumbling over a cliff edge. NBC had cancelled the
05:07show due to low ratings for the time the cliffhanger had aired, leaving fans to speculate on their
05:12fate ever since, and I have never ever gone over it. Now in fairness, the final episode's post-credits
05:17scene in which Bedelia Du Maurier, played by Gillian Anderson, sits at the table beside her own
05:22cooked leg, with two additional places set for dinner, did at least hint that the duo survived,
05:27though that certainly didn't confirm it. While Hannibal creator Brian Fuller initially played coy
05:32about confirming Hannibal and Will's fates, in later years once it became clear that the show wouldn't
05:37be picked up for a fourth season, he finally relented. In a reply to a since-deleted 2019 tweet
05:43asking about the cliffhanger, Fuller confirmed that they indeed both survived, ensuring that if Hannibal
05:48is ever given an unlikely revival, we can expect to see both Mads Mikkelsen and Hugh Dancy return.
05:54Given reported plans to adapt aspects of Silence of the Lambs, I am begging for this to happen.
05:59John Doe was injured in a boating accident. John Doe
06:03A short-lived but fondly remembered sci-fi mystery series, John Doe revolves around Dominic Purcell
06:09waking up on an island off the coast of Seattle with a strange mark on his chest and no memory of who he
06:14is, or how he wound up there. Oh, and he possesses a supernatural knowledge of basically everything.
06:19Yeah, the show was cancelled after a single season, leaving not only the mystery of John Doe's true
06:24identity forever unsolved, but also ending on a more overt cliffhanger by revealing that John's
06:29buddy Digger, played by William Forsythe, was the leader of the Shady Phoenix organization,
06:33which has been following him since the start of the series. A year after the show ended, creators
06:38Brandon Camp and Mike Thompson revealed to EW what would have happened next. For starters,
06:42the Digger twist was actually a fake-out. A member of Phoenix simply had facial reconstructive
06:47surgery to resemble Digger instead. As for the bigger mystery of Doe? Well,
06:53turns out he's just a regular guy who was injured in a boating accident, and the mark on his chest
06:57was just from debris. But what about his ridiculous repository of knowledge? Well, here's where things
07:02get a little bit wackier. It was a result of having a near-death experience during the accident and
07:08venturing to a spiritual plane where he received all the answers to the universe's questions.
07:13TV. You are a wild medium. Justin, Ben, and Jonesy all survive.
07:19Carnival.
07:20Almost 20 years later, HBO's cancellation of the epic drama series Carnival still stings fresh,
07:26coming it just two seasons into its planned six-season arc. The second season's final episode
07:32left fans to chew over a handful of shocking moments. Namely, brother Justin, played by Clancy
07:37Brown, and Ben, Nick Stahl, being both grimly wounded following their climactic fight, while Jonesy's
07:43fate is left hanging in the balance after he's shot by Sophie. But a few years after Carnival's
07:49cancellation, the show's creator, Daniel North, dropped the veil and detail would have become the
07:53trio. Somewhat unsurprisingly, the show's protagonist, Ben, survived the ordeal. Yet,
07:59decidedly more unexpectedly, despite his grim prognosis the last time we saw him, brother
08:04Justin would have also been alive. And then there's Jonesy, who would have additionally survived a
08:09season three, having had his life saved by Iris. Kyle meets the leader. V. 1984.
08:17V was one of the quintessential water cooler shows of the 1980s, a sci-fi series in which Earth is
08:23invaded by a race of carnivorous reptilian humanoids known as the Visitors. Unlike most entries,
08:28on this list though, NBC didn't even wait for the 20 episode series to finish production before
08:34binning it completely. They cancelled it, while the season's final episode was actually still being
08:39filmed. God, that's rough. And so, V ended instead on the season's penultimate intended episode,
08:44with a cliffhanger in which Resistance member Kyle Bates throws away on a shuttle headed towards the
08:49Visitor's homeworld. Creator Kenneth Jackson has spoken extensively about V in the decades since
08:55its cancellation, and eventually revealed that the season finale was intended to have Kyle
09:00transported to an alternate dimension where he sees the leader. Literally, the leader of the
09:04Visitors. The episode would have also killed off Julie Parrish and set up the second season,
09:09which was set to focus on the Resistance searching for an all-powerful ancient artifact known as the
09:14Annex. The underground survivors die. The Last Man on Earth.
09:19The post-apocalyptic comedy series The Last Man on Earth was cancelled at the conclusion of its fourth
09:24season, which ended on a cliffhanger as Tandy, Will Fort, and the other survivors set up camp,
09:29only to be surrounded by a group of gas mask-wearing survivors who had been living underground.
09:34Fort did at least offer fans a taste of what would happen in the unrealized fifth season though.
09:38In an interview with Vulture, Fort revealed that the underground survivors initially quarantined Tandy
09:43and company, before growing increasingly comfortable with them over the course of the season.
09:47However, the ironic twist? Though Tandy and the other above-ground survivors are immune to the
09:54deadly virus, they're still carriers and would consequently infect the underground survivors and
09:59inadvertently kill the majority of them. Fort planned to keep just one of the underground survivors
10:04around who would have been played by a notable guest star and joined the main ensemble.
10:09Brooke breaks every bone in her face. Popular.
10:12Before Ryan Murphy became the household TV name he is today, he co-created the teen comedy series
10:19Popular, starring Leslie Bibb and Carly Pope as a pair of opposed teenage girls who are forced to
10:24co-exist when their single parents get married. Popular was ultimately cancelled after two seasons
10:30and left the show's loyal fanbase crushed given the absolutely brutal cliffhanger it ended on.
10:35Season 2 concluded with Brooke being hit by Nicole Julian in a drink driving accident,
10:41the screen cutting to black at the moment of impact and leaving Brooke's fate hanging in the balance.
10:46Fans have speculated about the outcome ever since, though in an interview several years later,
10:51Murphy did eventually reveal what became of Brooke. As it turns out, she did survive being hit by Nicole,
10:57though broke every single bone in her face. But in a hilarious twist, when Brooke's bandages are
11:03removed, she looks just as beautiful as before, except with one minor difference. She's now a brunette
11:09instead of a blonde. Amazing.
Comments