Top 20 TV cliffhangers of all time

Greetings, reader!

My girlfriend Martta suggested this topic a while back. It was originally supposed to be a top 10, but it became a top 15 and then a top 20, because there are so damn many great cliffhangers that I wanted to talk about. I've always loved a good cliffhanger, no matter how much modern elitist video-essay internet 'critics' call it a lazy narrative trick. It's always exciting when your favorite show's episode ends on such a note that you can't stop thinking about how it's all going to play out in the next one. Various listings I've of TV's greatest cliffhangers tend to focus exclusively on season-ending moments, but I figured I won't discriminate, as there are so many great ones from the middle of a season (I especially have a fondness for second-last episodes ending on a juicy open-ended situation). Anyways, these are my very favorite cliffhanger endings of all time!

Also, a major spoiler alert is in order!

20. Crime and Punishment (Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Season 4 Episode 22)

Only two shows with comedy as their primary genre made it onto today's list, as dramas tend to produce more meaningful and, y'know, dramatic cliffhangers. But at their best, comedy cliffhangers can be quite the treat as well, and hardly anyone does them better than Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

Almost every season has ended with an exciting situation left to be resolved in the first episodes of the following season: Jake (Andy Samberg) going undercover with a criminal gang at the end of season 1, Jake and Holt (Andre Braugher) going into witness protection in Florida due to a mob boss being after them at the end of season 3, et cetera. But my personal favorite has to be the ending of the fourth season, where Jake and Rosa (Stephanie Beatriz) are framed for a crime and sentenced to prison.

19. Call to Arms (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Season 5 Episode 26)

The Star Trek franchise has turned season-ending cliffhangers into an art form, which is why you'll see four different Star Trek shows on today's list. My favorite Trek series Deep Space Nine may have the franchise's finest characters, most immaculate atmosphere and biggest amount of masterpiece episodes, but cliffhangers is something it didn't do quite as well or as frequently as some of the franchise's other shows.

That being said, there are a few very memorable ones, chief among them the jaw-dropping ending of the fifth season - the peaceful Federation is dragged into war for the first time in the franchise's history, and the space station that has been home to the main characters for five seasons is invaded by the Dominion. As the characters evacuate and the situation feels hopeless, we see that Captain Sisko (Avery Brooks) left his most emotionally valuable possession, his baseball, in his former office on the station, optimistically symbolizing that he fully intends to return.

18. His Last Vow (Sherlock, Season 3 Episode 3)

The third season's plotlines are all wrapped up, the bad guys are defeated, everything is fine, the closing credits are about to begin - and this gets disrupted. At first, we hear the audio. Then we see the video, which in this version of the Sherlock Holmes mythos, is being broadcast on every screen in Britain. It's Moriarty (Andrew Scott), one of the greatest literary villains of all time adapted into one of the greatest TV villains of all time, asking "Did you miss me?" over and over again.

Only, the thing is - Moriarty was killed off in the previous season!

Therefore, this ending left audiences asking so many questions; did he fake his death? Or is this a copycat criminal using footage of him? Or a genius beyond-the-grave plan to take out his revenge? Or was the Moriarty we saw just a pawn being told to act a part by the real Moriarty who has been operating from the shadows all the time? These were the theories that me and the rest of the internet were forced to obsess with for two long years.

17. Shockwave, Part I (Star Trek: Enterprise, Season 1 Episode 26)

Now this is a proper Star Trek cliffhanger (I love it when they do the thing where the season finale is Part One of a two-parter and the next season's premiere is the Part Two, as that always promises a cliffhanger ending bound to be juicy as hell). The temporal cold war heats up (heh, see what I did there), and before Captain Archer (Scott Bakula) can properly intervene, a chain of events causes him to be transported through time - nearly a thousand years into the future. And then he's stuck there. That's one hell of a pickle to get out of.

16. Course Listing Unavailable (Community, Season 3 Episode 18)

My favorite individual cliffhanger from a comedy series comes, unsurpsisingly, from my favorite individual comedy series. In this episode belonging to the insane chain of events at the end of Community's third season, things escalate when the main characters incite a riot at Greendale Community College, which is further escalated by Ben Chang (Ken Jeong) - but, in a long-planned power move, Chang covers his tracks and essentially takes charge of the school (Dean Pelton (Jim Rash) is kidnapped and replaced with a doppelgäner, it's a whole thing), and the 'Greendale Seven' are expelled from the school.

Heavy stuff for a sitcom - the expulsion of the main characters would naturally end up being temporary, but that doesn't make the moment any less dramatic, and I remember how invested I was as a first-time viewer to see how the story would pick up from here.

15. Sanctuary (Grey's Anatomy, Season 6 Episode 23)

The two last episodes of the sixth season of Shonda Rhimes' hospital drama Grey's Anatomy are essentially a two-parter that is largely seen as the show's best episode. A shooter enters the hospital, and the atmosphere or borderline panic is created in a manner that will have any viewer's heart racing as the situation continues to escalate. Things come to head at the end of Sanctuary, the second-last episode of the season, when the shooter reaches chief of surgery Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey), the man he blames for his wife's death.

Derek tries to talk him down, but after careful consideration, the man takes a shot at him, and the episode ends on the note of one of the show's main characters being shot in his own hospital. I had to take a moment to collect my thoughts and breathe deep as the episode ended, before clicking 'Next Episode' with an anxious determination.

14. One Step Too Many (The Newsroom, Season 2 Episode 6)

This cliffhanger is an unconventional one, as the timeline-jumping nature of The Newsroom's second season leaves a lot to be interpreted in the manner of this episode's ending. Basically, we've been following flash-forwards of the main news team getting into legal trouble over something throughout the season, while the present-day storyline has followed them uncovering a major military conspiracy and getting ready to report it.

Throughout this episode, the fourth-last of the season, they've been gathering all the final pieces of evidence they need, while getting ready to blow the whistle and report the story they've been preparing for the whole season. And, just as this is about to happen, we jump to the flashforward, as Charlie (Sam Waterston) delivers the unforgettable words:

"These were war crimes. It was a Sunday special report, 9:00 P.M. Eastern. Nielsen tracking showed it was gonna be a monster audience, three and a half, four million - it ended up closer to six. By 10:05, I knew we had a problem - none of it was true".

These ambiguous, narrative-flipping words leave the viewer with a pressing sense of uncertainty, raising multiple questions and wanting to see the next episode ASAP.

13. Faith (Suits, Season 5 Episode 10)

This was the cliffhanger we always knew to be coming, as the very premise of the series seemed to be leading up to this inevitable moment and its fallout - yet, when it came, it still managed to feel dramatic and shocking. After four and a half seasons of high-stakes 'fake it 'til you make it', of close calls and cover-ups, Mike Ross (Patrick J. Adams) is finally caught - despite practicing as a lawyer, he didn't have lawyer's papers, and his boss Harvey (Gabriel Macht) knew about this, as we in the audience had known since the first episode.

When the moment finally happens, it leaves the audience begging for answers: what's going to happen next? Will Mike get fired? Is he going to prison? What is the fallout for the firm and for Harvey? How will this affect literally every storyline and character in the show? And will the upcoming trial be the show's best storyline (spoiler alert: it was)?

12. There's Something Else Going On (Homeland, Season 4 Episode 9)

I remember watching this episode, knowing beforehand that it was the show's highest rated episode on IMDB, with an impressive 9.7 rating. With a majority of the episode focusing on a super-delicate and mega-tense prisoner transfer, I figured that this is why the rating is so high. When all the dust of the transfer had settled, I felt that the episode was among the show's best, but not quite worthy of a 9.7...

Then, Carrie (Claire Danes) starts to speculate. In the words of the episode's title, she's becoming anxiously convinced that there is, indeed, something else going on.

In the heart-racing seconds between that moment and the episode's end credits, we see the car in front of them (on its way back to the U.S. embassy in Islamabad) getting blown up, with everyone's fate unclear, after which we see terrorist operatives using the secret entrance into the embassy (subtly established in a previous episode). And that's how the bold-ass episode ends, with the embassy seconds away from being ground zero for a terrorist takeover. So the 9.7 was pretty f**king accurate after all.

11. Basics, Part I (Star Trek: Voyager, Season 2 Episode 26)

Oh yes, another vintage Star Trek cliffhanger! Voyager indulged heavily in the season finale / season premiere two-parter trope, and while two-parters like Scorpion and Equinox are overall better stories, Basics (the end of season 2 and the start of season 1) has the best cliffhanger.

A cliffhanger of this nature feels much more dramatic in the context of Voyager as it would on any other Star Trek show. After two seasons of following the U.S.S. Voyager as it slowly makes its way home after being sent through a wormhole to the far side of the galaxy, a major roadblock is hit when the villainous Kazon take over the ship - and leave the crew stranded on a desolate planet, while rolling ahead aboard the Voyager!

10. Are You...? (Dexter, Season 7 Episode 1)

Ending the second-last episode of a season on a cliffhanger is typical, as is ending the season finale on one - but ending the season premiere on a cliffhanger is different gravy. One of the best examples of this trope can be found from the earth-shattering opening episode of Dexter's seventh season. After the titular character has successfully kept his serial killing a secret from the other major characters for six straight seasons, the dynamic of everything in the show is shaken to its core when Dexter comes home to his sister, who has followed a hunch and looked into his stuff, asking him: "Are you...a serial killer?". Roll credits. Shivers.

9. Granite State (Breaking Bad, Season 5 Episode 15)

What really hits different is when the second-last episode of the entire series ends on a cliffhanger. Especially in a more plot-oriented show, that gives such an "it's all coming down to this great conclusion, and we still have no idea how it's gonna shake out, Jesus Christ" feeling.

The second-best example that I can think about is Breaking Bad, where the show's penultimate episode ends in a spine-shivering manner: Walter White (Bryan Cranston) feels that he has come to the end of the road and calls the authorities to turn himself in - until, while waiting for them to arrive at a pub, he sees something on the TV that reminds him of unfinished business in Albuquerque. A sensationally dramatic arrangement of the show's main theme starts to play, as we see the police arriving, only to find a glass of scotch by an empty stool. Major goosebumps.

8. Day 8: 2:00 p.m.-3:00 p.m. (24, Season 8 Episode 23)

And then for the only pre-series-finale cliffhanger I dare to call even better than the Breaking Bad one. After eight long seasons of 24, the final season had upped the ante with the extremely high-stakes storyline of world leaders about to sign a false-pretext peace treaty that would only make matters worse, as the U.S. government turns its back on those seeking evidence for the truth, leading to Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) going rogue in order to get proof in the hours leading up to the signing of the treaty.

With the situation looking more and more dire, Jack turns to desparate action, figuring in a 'kill one to save many' logic that the assassination of Russian President Suvarov (Nick Jameson) might put an end to the conspiracy. Using his CTU-trained chops, Jack gears up for the assassination, while Chloe O'Brian (Mary Lynn Rajskub) tries to reach him and talk him out of it, reckoning that the fallout of such an assassination would only make things worse and that there must be another way. The second-last-ever 24 episode ends with our main character, looking out the window, about to have the President of Russia at gunpoint, and any invested viewer gasping for breath.

7. Turn Left (Doctor Who, Season 4 Episode 11)

Here we have a perfect example of building the atmosphere of a cliffhanger - the music, the lighting and the editing details have just as much to do with the power and panic of this cliffhanger as the actual plot events. In the last Doctor Who episode before season 4's two-part finale, the threat of the episode seems to be over, as Donna Noble (Catherine Tate) recounts her experiences to the Doctor (David Tennant) - and the calm and reflective mood shatters like a glass when he Doctor realizes one detail and its grave implications.

As Donna utters the words 'bad wolf', the Doctor is quicker than the audience to realize the massive scale of the shit that's about to go down, as he runs back to the TARDIS in full panic mode (further elevated by Murray Gold's thrilling score). With the TARDIS alarms blaring red and a confused Donna asking what's going on, the Doctor turns around and utters the unforgettable "It's the end of the universe" just as the credits start to roll. That's how you set up a f**king season finale.

6. A (The Walking Dead, Season 4 Episode 16)

This very unconventional season finale from The Walking Dead feels like the whole thing is a 45-minute set-up for the perfect cliffhanger. This works, as does the eventual payoff in the season 5 premiere. After the whole episode has simmered with suspenseful build-up, the final scene sees a bunch of our main characters reuniting under just the worst circumstances - locked in a cargo container by a survivor group who has turned to a cult-like ideology and cannibalism. Hope seems lost, until Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), the second-most badass character in TV history, starts to talk.

"They're gonna feel pretty stupid when they find out"

"Find out what?"

And then, the line so good that AMC gave the show a special permission to drop the F-bomb:

"They're fucking with the wrong people"

5. Twenty Five (The West Wing, Season 4 Episode 23)

There's some heavy symbolism to the last The West Wing episode to be written by Aaron Sorkin. It must've been difficult for Sorkin to let his show go, realizing that he had to leave and forcing himself to trust the series in the hands of the other writers, who he basically trusted but also knew to have differing visions. There are many ways to deal with such an emotional dilemma, and one of them is writing a season finale where President Bartlet (Martin Sheen) is forced to temporarily step down as President, handing the power over to Republican Glenallen Walken (John Goodman), in the face of a crisis.

Not only does it mirror Sorkin's exit powerfully, it is also a damn great cliffhanger for this fictional universe, leaving the stakes astronomically high for the upcoming fifth season. The dramatic music that plays as Walken enters the Oval Office, not to mention everyone's complete trust in Leo (John Spencer) holding down the fort through this turbulent period, sent major shivers down my spine when watching.

4. Through the Looking Glass (Lost, Season 3 Episode 23)

Through the Looking Glass is a home run for Lost - the season 3 finale nails the show's most emotional death scene, the show's most triumphant payoff, and an ending scene that is both the greatest plot twist and the greatest cliffhanger that the show ever did. All that in one episode. Christ.

Throughout the episode, flashbacks of Jack's (Matthew Fox) past have been interspersed into the story, and they have confused the viewer, as they're from a very different-seeming period in his life than we've seen in previous flashbacks. These questions are answered, in a manner that raises several more questions, when in the final scene, he meets Kate (Evangeline Lilly). For just a moment, the viewer might interpret this as "What the hell? They knew each other before the island? That doesn't make any sense!" - and then it hits.

*Creepy plot twist sound effects from the Lost score start to play*

These haven't been flashbacks.

*The unsettling sound effects escalate*

These have been flash-forwards.

*Full-on panic mode*

Meaning that they will eventually get off the island, and into a situation where Jack wants to go back for some reason, and this is the way in which it is revealed.

*Possibly an impulse to faint*

Lost was something else, man.

3. Beyond Life and Death (Twin Peaks, Season 2 Episode 22)

This may rank third overall, but in terms of longevity, the Twin Peaks cliffhanger is the GOAT. While the ending of season 2, produced and released after news of the show's cancellation, was largely seen as a series finale at the time, David Lynch always intended to continue the story. For decades, people saw season 2's utterly shocking ending as an ambiguous ending that will always remain ambiguous, all the while Lynch was playing the long game and killing time with projects like Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire.

Then, little by little, hints started to drop that there may be more. A few years and a genius marketing campaign later, the world finally got the masterful Twin Peaks: The Return, which really gave new gravitas to the moment in the season 2 finale where the Man from Another Place (Michael J. Anderson) says "I'll see you again in 25 years".

But, yeah, the ending of season 2 was amazing as a 'last scene of the series' and even better as a cliffhanger of the 'wait 25 years for this to pay off' variety. Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan), quite possibly my favorite fictional character of all time, heroically goes into the Black Lodge to save Annie (Heather Graham), and one psychedelic fever dream later, seems to come out unscathed. Until you start to notice that something is wrong. I recall my own reaction being along the lines of "Wait, why is he acting like that, is everything - oh fuck, oh jeez, oh Jesus f**king Christ, he's BOB isn't he, he's possessed, Jesus f**k, why would they hurt us like this, God dammit, ah shit". I can only imagine what it was like for those who saw this in 1991, and had to wait the full two and a half decades for it to get resolved.

2. Shadow Box (Person of Interest, Season 2 Episode 10)

This one is interesting - it has nowhere near the high-stakes gravitas and epicness of the cliffhangers from Twin Peaks, Lost, The West Wing et cetera that is surpassed. Event-wise, it's a pretty typical cliffhanger for the midseason finale of a crime show. I rank it this highly, however, because of how perfectly it is built - a good cliffhanger is about much more than just what happens plot-wise, and the final minutes of this episode nail the cliffhanger atmosphere better than any other.

The soundtrack choice, first of all, is Gimme Shelter by the Rolling Stones, and there simply is no better music choice for an intriguing 'some shit is about to go down' atmosphere. It starts to play as the episode's central bank heist starts to be over, as we realize that protagonist John Reese (Jim Caviezel) is still stuck in the basement, with possibly no way out.

The directing choices further complement the atmosphere, as the cops start to arrive and the other major characters show their worry over Reese in just the right pace while Gimme Shelter continues to rock, up to the moment that Reese is arrested and the credits start to roll. While this is a solid cliffhanger story-wise, leaving some very interesting implications for the next episodes to follow up on, the reason why it's one of my all-time favorites is simply how thoroughly it nails the 'something exciting is about to happen, oh shit!' atmosphere required for a great cliffhanger.

1. The Best of Both Worlds, Part I (Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 3 Episode 26)

This may be a cliché choice, as I haven't heard anything else argued to be the greatest TV cliffhanger of all time than this one - but it's a common favorite for a reason. Not to mention its historical value, as having the viewers hooked and speculating on the fallout for a year apparently played a big role in the transitioning of drama TV shows from episodic storytelling to more long-term stories. This cliffhanger is so good that it changed the very nature of television for the better.

The explosive events of this entire season finale (Part I to a two-parter that would be concluded in the next season's premiere, naturally) already have the viewer in an edge-of-their-seat mode when the final minutes arrive. The Federation's face-off with the Borg collective has finally arrived, with the U.S.S. Enterprise as the Federation's first line of defence, as Captain Picard (Sir Patrick Stewart) goes on a risky away mission aboard the Borg Cube. In the final scene, First Officer Will Riker (Jonathan Frakes), now acting Captain, finds out that the mission failed and Picard was assimilated by the Borg, just as a battle is brewing. He must now decide whether or not to fire on the enemy ship (unknowns!) that has his commanding officer and friend on board, absolutely unclear on if he could survive such an attack (more unknowns!) or if he could even be brough back from assimilation (even more unknowns!).

In the scene that culminates his character arch up until that point, Riker assumes the burden of being captain and utters the line "Mr. Worf - fire", as the third season comes to and end, and viewers are left with about a million questions concerning what happens next. It does not get better than this.

Thank you for reading! Tune in next week for my ranking of the episodes in the hit show of the past spring, Shogun.