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 that 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 grueling 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 offscreen 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

Note the real death occurred moments later when Keanu Taylor attacked his would-be wife who 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

soap opera storytelling at its best. Arrested Development, Ann Yong's True Identity

Not all great plot twists are serious or thought-provoking. Some are just ridiculously

extremely 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 Anyeong, a South Korean kid

adopted by Lucille Bluth, the hilariously insufferable matriarch of the Bluth family

Anyong 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 three 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 An-Yong 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 An-Yong'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. Thereafter, 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 symbolise 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, the double twist. 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-centered Australian fiancé Alistair search for their young baby boy

Noah, who's gone missing during a trip to Australia. It's only in part three 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 more Joanna 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 But he gaslit her into thinking she was responsible What a 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. 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 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 two'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. 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 a metro train, ruthlessly killing her. As the train screeches

to a stop and passers-by scream, 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

Broadchurch, Joe did it. The excellent first season of Broadchurch was driven by a tantalizing

mystery. Who killed 11-year-old Danny Latimer? It was a mystery that perplexed D.I. Alec Hardy and

D.S. 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 one'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 hosts 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 troll face 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 fair enough for this ending was so unbelievably dark Nevertheless even if it not to all tastes it 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 instalment, 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 Twelve'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 freaking 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 three episode Utopia, the Doctor and his

companions Martha Jones and Captain 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 Hooniverse

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, mesmerizingly

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 Tenerman Must Die

the legendary fifth season episode where Cartman enacts an elaborate revenge scheme

on a school bully named Scott Teneman. He gets his parents killed

grinds up their bodies, and then feeds it to Scott. Scott Teneman, 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 Teneman, Scott's dad. He was an American football player for the Denver Broncos

who had an affair with Leanne. 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

His hand 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 9th 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 soapy plot lines 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 a total loss. 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 one, viewers were given a game changer of a twist. Mark's wife is very much alive. She's 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 one'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 rug pulls, 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, Georgia's Shocking Demise

Writer Jed Mercurio is a master of plotting gripping, twisty thrillers, and with the exception

of the questionable hate 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 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 bitten the dust far earlier than expected

Inside number nine, 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 nine, 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 Reese 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 nine, 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 some 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 Number 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 the 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 program 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