A good TV show is designed to keep you guessing, but a great TV show seeks to take things one step further. Great TV shows stay with you long after the credits run, they leave a mark and impact us for years to come.
The best way to do that is by incorporating a true twist that absolutely no one sees coming. Have a look below and check out these 15 TV plot twists that I’m still thinking about after all this time. Forewarning, this article contains severe spoilers .
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Discovering that Walt had poisoned Brock in ‘Breaking Bad’.
The gradual degradation of Walt’s morality was becoming more and more pronounced as time went on. But when he stooped to poisoning a 10-year-old boy, fans knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Walter White was long since dead and Heisenberg was here to stay.
Pietro’s unexpected arrival on ‘WandaVision’.
What really threw fans for a loop was that the version of Pietro that showed up was the one played by Evan Peters — not Aaron Taylor-Johnson. It ignited a swirl of theories that kept fans guessing until the bitter end.
Luke Skywalker’s sudden appearance on ‘The Mandalorian’.
Cards on the table, I cried my eyes out in the final episode of Season 3’s The Mandalorian. Watching Luke dismantle an entire platoon of Dark Troopers so effortlessly only further reinforced the fact that he is/was the most powerful Jedi in the galaxy.
When Jon Snow was stabbed and “killed” on ‘Game Of Thrones’.
By the time that Benioff and Weiss got around to killing Jon Snow, fans had become well aware of the fact that nobody, not even the main characters, was safe on the set of Game of Thrones . Still, the fact that Jon was murdered by his own brothers of The Night’s Watch made it all the more unbearable.
The death of Maude Flanders on ‘The Simpsons’.
This wasn’t the first time that The Simpsons had tackled the issue of death, but it was by far the most significant up until that point and arguably of the entire series. One minute, she was getting Ned a hotdog. The next, she was falling to her death after being inadvertently hit in the face with a t-shirt cannon.
When Gemma mistakenly murders Tara on ‘Sons Of Anarchy’.
Dramatic irony can be a killer. Watching this scene unfold, the audience knew full well that Tara had never and would never betray Jax or the Club. Unfortunately, Gemma came to this realization just a few minutes too late.
“This is the Bad Place” in ‘The Good Place’.
The best plot twists are the kind that is staring you right in the face the entire time, but for one reason or another, you’re just unable to put two and two together. When Eleanor finally figured it out, it was as if a bomb went off inside my brain.
Trinity Killer murdering Rita in ‘Dexter’.
By the end of Season 3, Dexter had become formulaic and largely easy to predict. But when Trinity Killer came to town — all bets were off. Also, Dexter finding Harrison sitting in a pool of his mother’s blood was largely reminiscent of his own sinister origin story from back in Season 1.
“We’re all infected” on ‘The Walking Dead’.
Sure, it’s true that the show had been not-so-secretly hinting at this fact along the way. But you can’t sit there with a straight face and tell me that when Shane rose up after being gunned down by Rick that you weren’t caught off guard.
“They were dead the entire time” in ‘Lost’.
Not everything ends the way you think it should. That much, we can all agree on. Was it the best way to wrap up the series? Arguably not. But by then things were so complicated and convoluted that it really had become the only acceptable outcome.
Learning that Tracy (the mother) was dead the entire time on ‘How I Met Your Mother’.
I had been a diehard fan of HIMYM since the very beginning. I still stand by it but I don’t think there’s anyone out there who would argue that from season 8 onward — things get a little sloppy. This “twist” is just the greatest example of that.
“The Bent-neck Lady” reveal in ‘The Haunting’.
Truth be told, I still have nightmares about The Bent-neck Lady. Learning that the ghost was actually the embodiment of Nell’s suicidal grief and that she was actually haunting herself, was arguably one of the best horror twists of the past decade.
Learning that Mr. Robot and Elliot are the same person in ‘Mr. Robot’.
Not all plot twists are made equal. Sure, there were probably a good number of viewers who were blown away upon learning that Mr. Robot and Elliot were one and the same. But for myself, all it did was make me change the channel for good.
When Walt lets Jane die on ‘Breaking Bad’.
Jane’s death is one of the most horrific scenes I’ve ever witnessed in all my years watching television. Being forced to slowly watch her asphyxiate is disturbing not only for obvious reasons but also for the fact that it underscores the beginning of Walt’s true transformation from hero to villain.
The death of Eddard Stark in ‘Game Of Thrones’.
Name me another series wherein the main character is brutally murdered before the end of the show’s inaugural season; go ahead, I’ll wait. You can’t because no one had ever done it before, and no one has done it since.
