20 TV Twists So Good You Wish You Could Forget Them

A successful plot twist is glorious in whatever medium. As TV shows are longer, there'll inevitably be more time to build up to the reveal and establish the characters and story world, thus allowing a shocking rug pull to blow your mind even more than one that comes at the end of a feature film. There really is nothing like a good TV plot twist, as the following examples reaffirm. So with that in mind, I'm Ellie for WhatCulture and let's take a look at these amazing TV plot twists you wish you could relive. Let's kick things off with Invincible – Omni-Man is the villain Ending the pilot on a tantalising cliffhanger is a foolproof way to hook viewers in a show. Did Invincible do this? Oh yes! This animated superhero saga revolves around Mark Grayson slash Invincible, a young superhero slowly growing into his role under the guidance of his father, Omni-Man, tragically unaware his father is anything but a hero. Viewers, on the other hand, learn this in the most brutal way imaginable at the end of the show's first episode, where Omni-Man abruptly massacres a team of superheroes in a grotesquely violent sequence that'll leave even the hardest viewers feeling queasy. It was a bold choice to do the big reveal so early in the season, yet it paid off in spades. The other characters being unaware of Omni-Man's true nature gave the season a great helping of dramatic irony and set the stage for a bruising emotional finale in which Omni-Man finally revealed to his son that he's on a mission to conquer Earth, leading to a gory and gruelling showdown between father and son. EastEnders The Six Soap operas probably do twists more than any other TV genre, and EastEnders, debatably the UK's most famous soap, is no exception. It delivered an absolute blockbuster of a plot twist in its 2023 Christmas episode, one which saw the 38-year-old soap break convention to great effect. Earlier that year, EastEnders had done something it had never done before, a flash-forward. In a February 2023 episode, it flash-forwarded to Christmas, showing six of Albert Square's most prominent female residents around a dead man in the iconic Queen Victoria pub. And then, throughout the rest of the year, viewers anxiously watched on, trying to figure out who was going to die and which of the six was going to kill him. Once Christmas arrived, it turned out that showrunner Chris Clenshaw and co. had been tricking us all along. The off-screen man in the flash-forward was Nish Panesar, one of the main antagonists of the soap at that point. But he wasn't dead, just knocked out. No, the real death occurred moments later, when Keanu Taylor attacked his would-be wife who'd dumped him at the altar, Sharon. Her close friend, Linda Carter, stabbed him in a panic and killed him by mistake. As well as being a fantastic twist on its own, it also powered many great storylines throughout the rest of the year, as the six women present tried to cover up Keanu's death. Honestly, so proper storytelling at its best. Arrested Development – Ahn Young's True Identity Not all great plot twists are serious or thought-provoking. Some are just ridiculously, excruciatingly funny, and such was the case with this much underrated rug pull in the finale of Arrested Development's original run. One of the very best things about this outstanding sitcom was the way it would set up gags and then give them the most masterful payoffs imaginable, sometimes over several episodes. The longest game it played regarded Ahn Young, a South Korean kid adopted by Lucille Bluth, the hilariously insufferable matriarch of the Bluth family. Ahn Young was an amusing enough background character throughout the first season, but he was then sent off to boarding school early in season two by Lucille, who apparently forgot all about him, and it's likely that viewers would have done as well, as he was scarcely mentioned and didn't appear again until a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment in one season 3 episode that appeared to show him operating some surveillance equipment. That little snippet was only explained in the third season's fantastic season finale, where Ahn Young revealed himself to the Bluths at last. He explained that he'd actually been gathering evidence to destroy the Bluth family because they ruined his grandfather's life by stealing his business idea. As well as being hilarious, it satisfyingly paid off a multitude of plot threads that had been around since the very beginning of the show. And Anyoung's revenge scheme gave this appalling family the downfall they deserved. Fleabag – The Priest Notices the Fourth Wall Breaking Forget House of Cards. To hell with Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Nothing has ever broken the fourth wall better than Fleabag did. Fleabag was originally only supposed to be a mini-series, with writer and star Phoebe Waller-Bridge only deciding to write a follow-up when she came up with an idea that was too good to waste. What if a different character became aware of Fleabag's fourth wall-breaking? For the first season and a half, the fourth wall-breaking was a lovely way to provide an insight into Fleabag's complicated, troubled mind. Yet it took on a new level of thematic significance midway through the second season, where something totally unexpected happened. Fleabag's new love interest, the priest, started to notice her breaking the fourth wall. she does it less and less, and even pushes the camera away at the end of the fifth episode. This was a fantastic way to symbolize Fleabag finally developing a genuine relationship with someone other than the audience. And at the end of the series finale, Fleabag walks away from the camera and it doesn't follow her, thus acting as a symbolic farewell to the character. As such, despite the many calls for a follow-up, there can never be a third season of Fleabag. Also, why would you want to touch such a perfect ending? Leave it alone! The Cry, a smashing British-Australian child-kidnap drama headlined by a fantastic performance from Doctor Who's Jenna Coleman, is more obscure than most of the other shows on this list, meaning there's a greater chance of its two big reveals catching you off guard. For the first two episodes of this four-part series, viewers will watch with mounting dread as Joanna and her self-centred Australian fiancé Alistair search for their young baby boy, Noah, who's gone missing during a trip to Australia. It's only in part 3 that the full truth is shown. Noah never went missing, because he's dead. Thanks to mixed up medications, it appears that Joanna has accidentally killed her own son, and they faked the kidnapping in order to cover this up. But wait, there's more! Joanna's psyche is destroyed by her guilt, and yet as she works out in the final episode, it was actually Alistair who mixed up the medicines and killed Noah, that he gaslit her into thinking she was responsible. What a bastard! These twists helped The Cry to stand out in the crowded world of TV abduction thrillers, and it made the whole thing a bruising and unpredictable exploration of guilt and mental illness, as well as the tragically relevant topic of abusive relationships. Well worth checking out if you haven't watched it, although I guess now you know the twist. Logan Dies Out of Nowhere Succession's final season might have been kind of dreary compared to the rest of the show's run, but nonetheless, its third episode, Connor's Wedding, is pretty much the greatest Succession episode of them all, and it's one that drops an absolute nuke of a plot twist on both the characters and the viewers early on. Out of nowhere, Logan Roy, the villain of the whole show, dies. Off-screen, no less. During the wedding of Logan's oldest son, Connor, the four Roy siblings are suddenly informed that their father has collapsed while on a private jet. They all make what will probably be their final phone call to him, and struggle to process the enormity of this life-changing event that just came out of absolutely nowhere. Presenting this event as a plot twist was an absolute masterstroke, as it lent this episode a tragic and unmistakable air of authenticity. Quite often, bereavements happen when we are least expecting them, and this was exactly the way to handle Logan Roy's long-awaited demise, and the result is quite possibly one of the best TV episodes of the 21st century. House of Cards – Frank Kills Zoe House of Cards might have crashed and burned with its catastrophic final season, but it was really entertaining for quite a few years. It always made for a good binge watch that was constantly subverting your expectations, although its greatest shock came early in the show's run. That was the death of Zoe Barnes. Zoe had been one of the most important characters in the first season. She'd formed a twisted alliance with Frank Underwood. In exchange for him furthering her career, she'd been publishing damaging things he'd told her about his opponents. That said, their relationship became more antagonistic once she suspected, correctly, that he'd murdered someone else. And in Season 2's premiere episode, Zoe and Frank meet at a subway station in order to try and resolve their differences. However, Zoe cannot quite let the question of Frank's crimes go, and she continues to press the issue, thus spelling her doom. A frustrated Frank disappears around a corner, and Zoe follows him, only for him to turn her around and throw her in front of the metro train, ruthlessly killing her. As the train screeches to a stop and passes by a screen, the psychopathic Frank Underwood calmly walks away. Thanks to Carl Franklin's claustrophobic directing, the pounding musical score, and the excellent acting from Kevin Spacey and Kate Mara, This is a tripwire tense scene that concludes in the most brutal ways, making it easily the most memorable sequence from House of Cards' entire run. The excellent first season of Broadchurch was driven by a tantalising mystery. Who killed 11-year-old Danny Latimer? It was a mystery that perplexed DI Alec Hardy and DS Ellie Miller, and it drove the viewing public mad. Every single character was a suspect, and hardly anyone anywhere knew who the perpetrator was. Only a few members of the cast and crew were informed, so virtually everyone was in the dark. Eventually, the real culprit was revealed, and it was possibly the darkest reveal they could have gone for. It was none other than Joe Miller, Ellie's own husband. The seemingly likable husband and father was actually a budding paedophile who'd been trying to groom Danny. He'd killed Danny during an argument. This was pretty much the best twist writer Chris Chibnall could have chosen. It was a harrowing blow that destroyed the life and optimistic worldview of the kind-hearted Ellie Miller and her sons and it also tied beautifully into the season's key theme of the town's residents hiding secrets. Ellie had been shocked by all that she'd discovered about the townsfolk and also how other characters had been unaware of things going on within their own homes only to discover that the worst secret of all was right there in front of her. Westworld, Bernard is a host. Alongside the strong cast and impressive visuals, Westworld also had some clever twists, especially this one. At the end of Season 1's seventh episode, it's revealed that Bernard Lowe, seemingly the human head programmer of the titular theme park, is actually an android, just like those which populate the park, known as hosts. Just after this reveal, the park's director Robert Ford, who has control over Bernard, gets him to violently kill Teresa, Westworld's operations director, who had been trying to remove Ford from power. This was easily Westworld's red wedding moment, and it also neatly tied into some later revealed backstory. It turned out that Bernard was actually a replica of Arnold, Ford's late business partner, who had tried to stop the park from opening, believing, again correctly, that the whole operation was amoral. He tried to prevent the opening by getting Dolores, the most prominent of the hosts, to kill him alongside the other hosts. Ford's regret over these events led to him trying to get the host to become fully sentient, as Arnold had wanted. Westworld might not have been to everyone's taste, but nevertheless, this twist was an intelligent moment of brilliance. Black Mirror, Kenny's True Nature Nearly every Black Mirror episode has a twist of some sort, and there have been some absolute bangers over the years. Having said that, with apologies to episodes like White Bear and Black Mirror White Christmas, nothing beats season 3's Shut Up and Dance. This was utterly insane. In this harrowing episode, which ranks as one of Black Mirror's best, several people are manipulated into doing a series of tasks by an unseen blackmailer. If they don't do as they're instructed, their worst secrets will be sent to all their contacts. The main character of this episode is Kenny, a mild-mannered restaurant worker who seems completely harmless. Well, as we learn at the very end of the episode, he's actually a paedophile who'd been accessing horrible material online. In one of the darkest endings Black Mirror has ever done, all of the blackmailed people throughout the episode are sent a trollface meme and their secrets are leaked anyway, including Kenny's. After being forced to fight a fellow paedophile to the death, Kenny receives a panicked phone call from his mother and is arrested by the police. Shut Up and Dance has its detractors, and that's fair enough, for this ending was so unbelievably dark. Nevertheless, even if it's not to all tastes, it's hard to argue against just how powerful and shocking this twist was, and how fantastic the reveal scene was which was fittingly soundtracked by Radiohead's Exit Music for a Film. The Twelve, A Terrible Secret. Time to look at an obscure example now. The Twelve is an excellent Australian legal drama where each season examines the jurors in a high-profile trial and examines how being on the jury affects their lives. The second season might not have reached the glorious highs of the first season, but good lord this twist was freaking incredible. In this sophomore installment, farmer Bernice Price has been killed and her daughter Sasha and her boyfriend farmhand Patrick are on trial for her murder. Throughout the court case, we see flashbacks to life on the farm and it becomes clear that Bernice was a difficult character who interfered in her daughter's relationships. In the case of Patrick, however, she had a very good reason to interfere, because Patrick is her long-lost son. Sasha has been having an affair with her own brother, and is now pregnant with his child. How totally effed up. Across all sorts of media, ranging from ancient Greek tragedy to several beloved movies, some of the most famous and powerful plot twists out there have revolved around accidental incest. And now, the 12's second season joins the canon. It was a bruising sucker punch, but crucially, it didn't feel shock for shock's sake, and it gave the central mystery an extra sting in the tale. Bravo! And then there was none. Justice Wargrave did it. No one can do it like Agatha Christie. Even now, all these decades after her passing, Dame Agatha remains the absolute master of the whodunit, with And Then There Were None standing out as her arguable masterpiece. 2015's BBC adaptation of the book really did it proud, With atmospheric visuals, a haunting screenplay, and exquisite performances from a phenomenal all-star cast, this is a contender for the best Agatha Christie adaptation of all friggin' time. While writer Sarah Phelps made some largely effective deviations in places, the solution to the mystery remained intact. And my goodness, it's a doozy. As in the original novel, the killer is Justice Lawrence Wargrave, a former judge who'd apparently been shot dead earlier in the story. Working with another one of the guests, whom he later murdered, Wargrave faked his death and successfully fooled everyone else. All of the other nine were guilty of various crimes, but had evaded justice. And Wargrave, now terminally ill, decided to exact one last bit of justice before he died. As a twist that's utterly shocking yet still feels entirely logical, this was a watertight solution to the mystery. And in a departure from the novel, where Wargrave's guilt is related through a suicide note, We're gifted a fantastic final scene where Wargrave reveals himself to the last victim, child killer Vera, before killing her. Doctor Who Harold Saxon is the Master Yes, 2007's Master-themed two-parter might have had some questionable moments, namely the Doctor becoming Dobby and then Space Jesus. But the twist that started it off was fantastic. In the Series 3 episode Utopia, the Doctor and his companions Martha Jones and Captain and Jack Harkness end up in the year 100 trillion. They try to help some of the last humans find a new home, including a friendly scientist named Professor Yana. But then, Martha notices something strange in Yana's possession. A few episodes earlier, the Doctor had used a chameleon arch to become human and hide from some aliens that were pursuing him. This device resembled an old watch, and the Professor has an identical watch in his possession. Once Yana examines the watch, some voices from within encourage him to open it. voices older fans would have instantly recognised. And once he does, he regains his true identity. He's the Master, a villainous Time Lord from classic Who. Prior to this, the Doctor had believed he was the last of the Time Lords. And now everything was flipped on its head. And it doesn't end there. In the next episode, a regenerated Master is revealed to be posing as Harold Saxon, the Prime Minister of the UK, who'd been name-dropped multiple times throughout the preceding series. Simply put, this is one of the best Doctor Who plot twists ever. And if you are a Doctor Who fan, then might I suggest that you head over to our sister channel, Who Culture, for all things related to the Whoniverse. South Park, Eric's True Father Eric Cartman is one of the greatest comedic creations in television history. He's all of humanity's worst aspects combined within this screechy-voiced, mesmerisingly awful eight-year-old boy who'll offend you senseless while also leaving you in stitches. Nevertheless, despite how iconic he is, one question was unanswered for many years. Who was Eric's father? Previously, the explanation had been that Cartman's mother, Leanne, was a hermaphrodite who'd been both father and mother. But no one took that especially seriously. We had to wait until the 14th season two-parter for the true answer, and it was something no one could have seen coming. Every South Park fan remembers Scott Tenorman Must Die, the legendary fifth season episode where Cartman enacts an elaborate revenge scheme on a school bully named Scott Tenorman. He gets his parents killed, grinds up their bodies, and then feeds it to Scott. Scott Tenorman, now a crazy Joker-style supervillain, makes a long-awaited return in this two-parter. And the mother of all twists is finally dropped on us. Eric Cartman's father was Jack Tenorman, Scott's dad. He was an American football player for the Denver Broncos, who had an affair with Liane. This secret was covered up to protect the football team's reputation. Yep, that's right, Cartman killed his own dad and fed him to his half-brother. However, in typical Cartman fashion, he's much more concerned about the fact that he's half-Ginger than the fact that he killed his own father. Twin Peaks – Leland Palmer is the killer David Lynch hadn't planned to reveal who killed Laura Palmer, at least not as early as he did. was forced by the network though and he made the best of a bad lot with the solution to the mystery which was undeniably outstanding the killer of Laura Palmer was none other than her own father Leland, a previously sympathetic character who'd been shown to be completely devastated by his daughter's death as is shown in season 2's ninth episode titled episode 14 the demonic killer Bob has possessed Leland and to hammer this point home he kills Laura's cousin Maddy in a terrifying sequence. Resolving the Laura Palmer storyline at this point in the narrative was a mistake, and the remainder of the series struggled to find a new narrative direction, eventually resorting to a multitude of ill-judged, soapy plotlines that moved away from what made people love Twin Peaks to begin with. Nonetheless, this was perhaps the most unexpected and sad reveal that Lynch could have gone for, and episode 14 is one of the best episodes of Twin Peaks' entire run, so it wasn't wasn't a total loss. Severance – Gemma Is Miss Casey Severance is one of the great TV shows of the 2020s so far. It's a captivating, cinematic and visually spellbinding sci-fi series that took an astonishing premise and executed it to absolute perfection. The series follows a group of office workers who've undergone a procedure called severance. Their memories are divided between their work selves and their home selves, thus creating two separate identities for them. The innie, who has no knowledge of the outside world and the outie who has no idea what they do at work. Protagonist Mark had undergone the procedure so that he could forget about his beloved wife Gemma, who died in a car accident during the day. Nevertheless, towards the end of Season 1, viewers were given a game-changer of a twist. Mark's wife is very much alive. She is Miss Casey, the wellness counsellor at Mark's office. Viewers learn this when a photo of Mark's wife is shown at the end of Season 1's seventh episode, while Mark found out when his innie consciousness was activated while at his sister's house. To give credit where it's due, Severance has several other smart reveals, yet nothing quite compares to this blockbuster. This was an exemplary plot twist that genuinely did come out of absolutely nowhere, and it led to many extraordinary plot developments in the show's wonderful second season as well. Line of Duty – George's Shocking Demise Writer Jed Mercurio is a master of plotting gripping, twisty thrillers, and with the exception of the questionable H reveal from Line of Duty's sixth season, he's managed to deliver one knockout after another. Having said that, Line of Duty never topped this gobsmacking punch in the gut from season two's opening episode. This episode introduces DC Georgia Trotman as a new member of the team, and there was no reason not to expect that she'd be a new lead. After all, Jessica Lorca Raine is a well-established actress of British television, and the character had already begun a romance with fellow colleague Steve Arnott. Who could ever have expected this? Nobody. At the end of her first episode, Trotman is abruptly thrown to her death by an assassin. And this is so startling that it will leave you in a daze. It was arguably with this very scene that Line of Duty went from just another BBC thriller to absolutely unmissable, binge-worthy television. It's certainly established that no one is safe in this show, and since this, many other seemingly major characters have been bit in the dust far earlier than expected. Inside number 9... where to even begin? Okay, so this entry is cheating a little bit, but when a show is basically constructed from one incredible twist after another, it seems unfair to highlight just one. Inside number 9, which is one of the most brilliant and underrated things to appear on British TV in the last few years, is an exceptional black comedy anthology series written by and starring Rhys Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton, who made their names with the League of Gentlemen and Psychoville. Each half-hour episode is set in a location numbered 9, and each one contains some sort of plot twist. And if there isn't one, then that in itself is the twist. Year in and year out, Inside Number 9 would churn out one amazing episode after another, and along with that came an almost never-ending series of jaw-dropping WTF plot twists. Some were frightening, some were deliciously clever, some were hysterically funny, and were outright harrowing, but with a few exceptions, nearly all of them were absolute bangers. Put it this way, anyone who thinks that M. Night Shyamalan is the modern master of the plot twist hasn't come across Shearsmith and Pemberton. And on that note, if you haven't watched Inside No. 9, then do so. Like, right now. Anyone who misses this TV gem is doing themselves a disservice. 24. Nina is the Mole Like many other TV shows on this list, 24 is one that absolutely mastered the art of twist. At least it did before it declined in quality during later years. Late in its exemplary first season, it dropped a reveal so stunning that it would have been pretty much impossible to ever top it. And sure enough, although many of the subsequent 24 seasons are great, none of them match this. In the penultimate episode of season one, it turns out that Nina Myers, seemingly a likeable and decent CTU operative, is a mole who's been working with the season's antagonists all along. This was a gobsmacking, soul-crushing betrayal in every conceivable way, and it made audiences feel like Breaking Bad's Hank Schrader when he discovered that Walter White, his brother-in-law, was the drug kingpin he'd been pursuing. It was a shattering turn of events, especially when Nina then proceeds to cruelly murder Jack's wife, making the finale of 24's first season one of the most powerful and brilliant season finales of all time. It really established 24 as a programme for the ages, one which helped to usher in TV's golden age. Startling and unexpected, yet also logical enough to be believable within the context of the story, this is a practically perfect rug pull. Nina Myers is the twist villain most other twist villains wish they were as good as. And finally, Game of Thrones, The Red Wedding. Ah, The Red Wedding, the climax of one of the most devastating TV episodes ever made. Game of Thrones pilot concluded with young Bran Stark discovering Queen Cersei Lannister and her brother Jaime having an incestuous affair, after which Jaime pushed the little boy to his apparent death. In the strongest possible way, this announced that Game of Thrones was going to be one of the most twisty shows around. Much like Jaime Lannister in that scene, it took our expectations and threw them out of the window time and time again. This legendary fantasy drama featured a treasure trove of fantastic plot twists, and even those can't come close to the Red Wedding, where Robb Stark, his wife, his mother and nearly all of the forces of Northern Westeros are betrayed and massacred at a wedding. With this one, words just don't really do it justice. Rather, just watch all of the reaction videos that show the harrowed, shell-shocked reactions of viewers as they witness the cruel destruction of multiple characters, the fall of the North and the triumph of evil over good. Even after Game of Thrones' reputation was irretrievably damaged by its catastrophic final season, the Red Wedding's legacy remains undiminished. This is a strong contender for the greatest TV plot twist of all time, and it deserves all the praise in the world, even if it did break us all.