Left Hanging / Live-Action TV

• 24 has an unfortunate tendency to simply abandon important secondary characters and leave their fates hanging; examples include Rick from season 1; Miguel, and Lynne Kresge from season 2; Andrew Paige and (quite egregiously) Behrooz Araz in season 4; and former President Charles Logan in season 6. The hanging plot thread regarding Charles Logan was ultimately subverted it the long run, as he turns out to have survived his wound and went on to serve as the Big Bad of the final season.
• 90210 started off as a series that involved both the old gang (the ones from the 90s) and a new fresh almost entirely unrelated (except for the half-sister of the franchise protagonist). For instance, it was revealed that Dylan and Kelly had a son but then broke up, Brenda was sterile but ended up adopting, Kelly's mother relapsed in alcoholism and got cancer for which she'd die in the second season, but as the show changed executives, it was decided that it wouldn't rely on the old gang any longer (except for Kelly, who's now been downgraded to recurring supporting character), leaving the whole thing about what happened to Donna and David, their divorce, their kid, David's flowers and message in the air.
• Alcatraz'': The final episode ended with Rebecca having been shot and seemingly dying on the operating table, and no indication what would happen to the 63s who were still at large.
• ALF ends with the eponymous alien surrounded by government agents facing certain vivisection. What happens to him after would later be covered in a TV movie.
• Atlantis got cancelled after 2 seasons ending with a resurrected Pasiphae taking over Atlantis and Jason and friends starting his quest to find the Golden Fleece.
• Babylon 5 inverts this problem—the carefully planned five-season format of the original show wrapped up the entire premise of the universe at the end of the series, dooming future sequels to serious Sequelitis from the very beginning, as they seem like nothing but barely related afterthoughts to a story that has already been told. A more straight example is the Spin-Off sequel Crusade, which was Screwed by the Network only half a season in, leaving the Drakh plague story arc unresolved.
  • According to JMS's DVD commentary, the plague plot was to have been wrapped up in the second season. As with the original, the real plot was supposed to lead out of things that seemed like minor side details in the episodes that actually aired. The endgame for the Drakh war was handled in novels set more than a decade after the events of the full run of Crusade would have been over.
• The last two episodes of the second season of The Baby-Sitters Club (2020) have Stacey's parents starting to fight about things (including while Claudia is staying over), with Stacey later mentioning that her father has been staying in the city instead of at home with her and her mother. This likely was setting up for her parents' divorce like in the book series. However, since the series was cancelled, there's no follow through.
• The 2000s Battlestar Galactica has a reputation for not leaving plot threads unresolved, though due to the sheer number of threads ongoing in any episode some tend to be dropped due to lack of time or neglect. Examples include Boxey in Season 1, who was left on the cutting room floor after two episodes, and "Shelly Godfrey", a Number Six hiding within the civilian fleet who is never seen again after her sole appearance. (Notably, Helo's storyline was intended to be abandoned after the pilot miniseries, but was maintained due to popular demand.) Apparently, Shelly Godfrey will eventually be explained, in "The Plan". However, the Opera House itself (not the visions), the original temple on the Algae Planet, and the exact nature of the Lords of Kobol seem destined to remain in the file marked Left Hanging. Not to mention "God". Many fans thought that Shelly Godfrey was just Head Six who had materialized herself to help Baltar, but The Plan shows that she was a real Six trying to discredit him. Cavil and another, cooler Six intimate that she made it too easy to discover her fake evidence because of Baltar's "dreamy hair".
• Bugs ended with Alex's husband murdered by persons unknown at her wedding and Beckett and Ros being kidnapped by a mysterious man they seemed to recognize. The cancellation of the series means we'll never know who killed the poor man, or who kidnapped our two heroes.
• The first season of Class (2016) ends on a triple cliffhanger : Miss Quill is pregnant with a kid that could kill her, April is trapped in the body of an alien, and the Board of Governors' backers are revealed. BBC has announced that there won't be a second season, so no resolutions to those plotlines.
• In the Cracker episode "One Day A Lemming Will Fly", Fitz actually spends the entire episode pursuing the wrong man for the murder of a child. The episode's entire resolution hinges on the fact that the child's killer will never be known - at least, until he strikes again...
• Deadwood was canceled after three seasons, and had been intended to run longer. As the series was based on the real history of Deadwood in a macro sense, there was enough material and history left for at least a few more seasons. Due to the abrupt cancellation, several plotlines had to be hastily tied up, to no one's satisfaction.
• Drake & Josh has many episodes that play with this.
  • For example, the episode, "Tree House" features the boys fixing a treehouse and getting trapped inside it. The episode doesn't show how the boys are let free.
• Farscape had, initially, one of the most evil Left Hanging endings ever. Knowing they were going to be canceled, the writers extricated the crew from the worst of the crap they were buried in, and set them on a planet to recuperate. This left some of the major arcs unfinished, but hey, we can deal with that, right? So there they are, recuperating. John proposes to Aeryn. It's a really touching moment. The crew are watching, all happy. Then, out of nowhere, the newly affianced couple get blown up by a random fighter craft. To Be Continued. On a show that's canceled. Luckily, there was enough fan pressure that a TV miniseries, the Peacekeeper Wars, was eventually made and tied up the remaining loose ends.
• Firefly's abrupt cancellation left a number of plot threads dangling. Though many of them, particularly River's psychosis and the origins of the Reavers, were covered in The Movie, many more, such as Book's past, were left in the air. They're only resolved in the comics; Book in particular gets a trilogy devoted to his past.
• Flash Forward left just about all plotlines open due to series cancellation.
• Forever: Although the show does resolve what happened to Abigail, the identities of Abe's birth parents, and the fate of the ship Henry was sailing on during his first death, it ends with no answers about the source of Henry's immortality curse or whether there's any way to reverse it. Adam is still alive but is temporarily neutralized, but could be a threat later on if he dies again. As to whether or not Henry ever will tell Jo his secret, the show ends right when he's confronted with evidence, and though the dialogue implies he is starting to tell her, we ultimately don't know for sure.
  • Word of God revealed, in interviews and on Twitter, what the creators had intended for a second season (e.g., Adam would return with the help of a third immortal, and Henry telling Jo would be interrupted but she would eventually become a Secret-Keeper), but not much else — in fact, some tidbits raised even more questions.
• According to this page, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids ended its first season revealing that the leader of the Men in Black (no, not those Men in Black) was an evil alien who had plans for the Szalinskis. It ended up getting tossed by the wayside for the rest of the series.
• iCarly has a few plot-points unresolved or not referred to, and they revolve around the shipping that is not the main focus for the show, and only comes up in a handful of episodes per season. There are differing ideas on what it meant, mostly around which side of the Creddie (Carly + Freddie) or Seddie (Sam + Freddie) shipping divide people stand on.
  • The first, is the end of "iThink They Kissed" where Carly asks Sam and Freddie (who shared a First Kiss, then hid it from Carly), how long it was, and if they enjoyed it. The episode ended before they answered the question.
  • The second, is at the end of "iSpeed Date", Sam walks in on Freddie and Carly sharing a slow romantic dance in each other's arms. She walks out with saying a word. Again, it's not been brought up again, so speculation abounds on her motives and feelings for Freddie (or Carly). Again, what people think is based around the shipping divide.
  • Finally, "iSaved Your Life", where Freddie saves Carly's life, they enter a relationship. Carly tries to say she loves Freddie, but Freddie begins doubting if she really means it or just think she does because he saved her life.
  • This fate would ultimately befall the 2021 revival, as the third season's finale ends with Carly's mother showing up (albeit off-screen) just as Carly and Freddie decide to get married. The show was cancelled just a few months afterward, leaving this huge Cliffhanger unresolved.
• Kamen Rider Kabuto: Who is Dark Tendou? Why was ZECT cooperating with worms from time to time? Where did the Hopper Riders come from?
• Kyle XY left many plots dangling (although Word of God cleared up a few of them). In fact, the finale actually introduced a new plotline in the last few seconds of the episode!
• Done very intentionally in the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Doubt", which literally cuts off right before the verdict (as in, the last line of the episode is, "We find the defendant —" Cut to black), so not only does the audience not find out what really happened, they don't even know the outcome of the trial. Viewers who saw the episode live were invited to take a survey on whether, in their opinion, 1. The man was guilty, 2. He was innocent or 3. There "wasn't enough" evidence to make a judgment on the facts displayed. (Option 2 received 60% of the vote, with the other two getting 20% each.)
  • The intial murder case in "Harm" ends with the suspect fleeing the country to a non-extraditable location, so they can't even confirm that he did it. What's more, because it's mentioned only briefly and because of how much the Halfway Plot Switch (involving a Torture Technician who was implicated in a related murder) is already beginning to take over the episode when this is revealed, many viewers didn't even remember that much, leading to a perception that the murder case had just dropped away with no explanation.
  • The season eleven episode "Savior" did this. A young prostitute goes into premature labor and her baby is put on life support. The mother then runs away, giving power of attorney to Olivia, effectively giving Olivia the choice of whether the baby lives or dies. The episode ends with the baby needing immediate brain surgery and the doctors hammering Olivia for a decision that she never gives. This turns into a case of What Happened to the Mouse?, as neither the baby nor the mother are ever seen or heard from again.
  • "Executive Producer: Dick Wolf" are often claimed to be the most frustrating words in the English language, due to the many episodes of Law & Order, and the spin offs, that end without enough resolution or sometimes any resolution at all.
• The ending of the TV miniseries The Lost Room wrapped up only the main story line (Joe searching for his daughter) and left every other plot thread unanswered. This is because it was meant to be the pilot for an ongoing series, where those story lines would presumably be continued, but its low ratings meant that the series never happened.
• After it being a slow burn plot element since the first series, Mayans M.C. ends without EZ or Angel ever finding out that Miguel is their brother.
• The Mentalist spent several seasons building up a very intricate web around Red John, but viewers began getting tired of the arc, so the series ended up rushing the conclusion, and in the process failed to follow up on some plot lines that initially seemed like they would be significant.
  • The most notable example is the connection between Red John and the Visualize cult. After teasing it for several seasons, a Season 5 episode confirmed that a link existed, but that's the extent of what's revealed; the man who turns out to be Red John has no established connection with the cult, and in fact that link is never mentioned again. (The fact that they Dropped A Bridge on the cult leader doesn't help.)
  • In the Season 5 finale, Red John is able to do a few things that should be impossible; he accesses a memory of Jane's that Jane had never shared, and he demonstrates that he knew who would be on Jane's final list of Red John suspects months before Jane actually created said list. How all of this was accomplished is never established, and the entire thing is Hand Waved by having Jane decline an explanation in favor of taking his revenge.
• Moesha ended with Myles having been kidnapped.
• My Name Is Earl was canceled at the end of the fourth season, which ended on a big cliffhanger and a To Be Continued. It's somewhat dealt with on Raising Hope where we find out that a "a local man who made list of good things to do finally finished it", but the main characters shut the TV off before its revealed how it went out. Both shows are by the same creator, Greg Garcia.
• Mystery Science Theater 3000 did this concerning Jonah’s fate between Season 11 and 12. At the end of season 11, Jonah is ate by Mecha-Reptilicus, but when season 12 starts, Jonah is healthy and whole. He tries to explain, but the Bots don’t care and Kinga orders him to drop it because they weren’t doing those plot points anymore.
• Now and Again - final episode of the first (and only) season ends with most of the plot strands resolved and a brand new bunch just springing out in the last five minutes.
• The Office (US):
  • One episode deals with Dwight finding a joint in the parking lot and becoming more paranoid than ever as he tries to find the culprit. By the end this morphs into Dwight covering for Michael, who had accidentally inhaled some pot smoke the night before, leaving the question of how the joint itself got there unanswered. It's revealed in a deleted scene that it's two employees from Vance Refrigeration.
  • Dwight never finds the man who flashed Phyllis.
• Nickelodeon's The Other Kingdom abruptly ends with Tristan revealing to be the lost fairy prince of Spartania, forcibly getting taken to his homeland of Spartania and Astral being forced to make a choice between her world and the other world. On top of that, there are various additional unresolved plot points that never had a chance to properly get resolved or answered, such as:
  • Why exactly does Athenia hate Spartania so much? ... Aside from their arrogance and snobbishness.
  • What exactly went down to cause the fairies to isolate themselves from humanity or "others" as they call them? Is there some Greater-Scope Villain of the franchise? Granted, Peaseblossom briefly stated it was due to polluting the land, and overtaking it with buildings, cars and sewage forcing them to put up a wall, but it still feels like more detail could have gone into explaining the fairy world's relationship with humanity.
  • What's the deal behind King Reed?
  • What is Versitude's plan specifically and what was her history like?
  • What was Tristan's life in Spartania like prior to coming to the human world, and why didn't he know about his true heritage prior to that point?
  • When will Devon be getting his fairy powers, since his father's actually a fairy, and Astral and Brendoni are actually related?
  • Who was Devon's mother and what happened to her?
  • Who are Hailey's older brothers she mentioned in the pilot episode?
• In Phil of the Future, after Phil and Keely get together, the Diffys head back to the future, only to turn around for the caveman Curtis. Then it ends forever.
• The final (British) series of Primeval ended with a battered, bloodied future version of Matt appearing him, warning him that there's still something he needs to fix, and that he needs to 'go back'. With the New World series mostly unrelated to the old characters, the movie languishing in Development Hell and the sixth series even worse, it is doubtful this huge plot thread will ever be picked up.
• Due to being canceled by the second season, Pushing Daisies left a lot of stuff hanging, in spite of its sweet finale. Alfredo and Oscar were Put on a Bus by the end of the first season, and no one will ever find out where is Charles Charles or what the deal with Ned's father was.
• Red Dwarf:
  • Season VIII ends with a sci-fi cliffhanger involving Rimmer kicking Death in the groin with the rest of his cast members are in a mirror universe, while the ship was being eaten slowly by a genetically engineered virus.
  • "Red Dwarf: Back to Earth'' does nothing to resolve this, as it's set, well, ten years later. In fact, just to make things more frustrating (intentionally), the 3-parter includes a meta-reference to the existence of a "Series 9" which included resolution of this plot (there wasn't one, the show ended at series 8 and then the next episodes were the 3-parter). Then after the 3-parter the show started "Series X". In the finale of series X they even specifically mentioned the cliff-hanger at the end of series 8 but changed the topic before they could give the audience any details about it what happened with it.
  • Lampshaded/subverted with the end of Season II, which ended with Dave pregnant with twins fathered by a female version of himself from a mirror universe. Season III opened with a Star Wars Crawl that explained it all away, but was too fast to read.
• The '90s AMC series Remember WENN ended with an unresolved cliffhanger after the network's new management abruptly canceled the show.
• Salvation was cancelled after its second season, with the show ending on a cliffhanger with The Reveal that the potentially world-ending asteroid was not an asteroid at all, but rather an alien spaceship, with the "asteroid" coming to a halt and hovering like a hummingbird between the Earth and the Moon. The cancellation of the show means we'll never know what happened next.
• Sesame Street: A classic Ernie and Bert skit "Ernie's Short Story" — which is the alphabet — comically twists this. After Ernie gives his usual over-the-top performance of it (a standard opening, followed by "the sad part," "the exciting part" and "the big finish") ... he leaves viewers "hanging" by stopping after "Y" and when Bert presses Ernie for the obvious conclusion ("Z"), Ernie says, "Wha? And give away the ending?" before giving his trademark giggle and Bert being frustrated.
• Sliders ends similarly, with a finale that ends on a cliffhanger, with a few but not all plot threads updated if not resolved. There was also talk of a Wrap It Up movie for that one, but it never got beyond the talk phase.
• The Fox sci-fi series Space: Above and Beyond ended its one season run with an awful lot of loose ends left unwrapped. The show ended with one character presumed dead, two more falling in an escape pod into enemy territory, one reunited with his prisoner-of-war lover, and everyone else generally in limbo.
• Stargate SG-1 ends with an episode that makes no attempt to resolve any of its plot lines. Of course, given the many times they were Absolutely Finally About to Be Canceled and got renewed again, it could be that the Powers That Be didn't know it was for real this time. At any rate, a Wrap It Up movie, Stargate: Stargate: The Ark of Truth, came out and resolved the Ori plotline, and was followed up by Stargate: Continuum. A third movie was announced, but seems to be stuck in Development Hell.
  • Also left in Development Hell was an MMORPG, and concepts for another series... Interestingly however, Stargate: The Ark of Truth seemed to be quite deliberate in avoiding stating "Yes, the Asgard are dead and gone we're not going to retcon that." Events from the final SG1 episode remain, for instance the presence of the Asgard computer core, but there is no reference to the fate of the Asgard. Oddly though, they are stated as an intended playable race in the MMORPG, which takes place some time after the upcoming movies — supposedly a significant amount of time, despite, again, being allegedly canonical.
  • Stargate is a prime example of this trope in general. Especially in the first seasons there were a lot of plotlines opened that were just left hanging. For example, Daniel's grandfather as ambassador with an alien super race is never again heard from. Or the time they found a device with the recorded knowledge of all the ancient races on a planet where the gate plunges into the ocean is never visited again as soon as the SGC has ships. You should think something like this would be of value enough to fly there, especially since the planet was very close to Earth.
• Keeping with the Stargate tradition is Stargate Universe. At the end of the final episode Eli has decided to stay awake onboard the Destiny while everyone else goes into stasis, in hopes of fixing the broken stasis pod and joining them so the Destiny can begin its really long voyage to another galaxy, one where they are not constantly pursued by evil aliens and robot drones. It ends with Eli staring contemplatively into space and no follow-up seasons exist to resolve matters.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation, in the "Groundhog Day" Loop episode. When the loop breaks, they find out that their collision partner is a ship — captained by Kelsey Grammer — that is a full century out of date, the USS Bozeman. It was never mentioned on the show again, but dialogue references to a ship named "Bozeman" popped up in both Star Trek: Generations and Star Trek: First Contact (complete with an uncredited one line Continuity Cameo from Grammer to imply that yes, it's the same Bozeman and his character is still its captain even years later), and it was the subject of a (non-canon) novel. TNG also left the fate of Enterprise-C and the alternate timeline Tasha Yar hanging in "Yesterday's Enterprise". Did they succeed in their mission, or die senseless deaths? All we knew is that their passing back into the phenomenon, they restored Enterprise-D to it's original timeline, with only Guinan aware of the entire affair. It wasn't until much later (several seasons) that the fate of Tasha Yar was learned.
• Titus was canceled before they could write a proper episode to conclude the series, with the last episode ending with Titus being put in a mental hospital for a few months as a stipulation for everyone to avoid jail time.
• Twin Peaks:
  • Perhaps David Lynch thought that by leaving every single subplot sadistically hanging on multiple cliffs that the fans would scream and cry for another season in which to see them all resolved. If such was the case, then the tactic didn't work as the show was canceled with little fanfare and with much grumping by the small devoted fanbase the show had. And apart from the subplots, the main plot wasn't really resolved with the "How's Annie!" ending either.
  • Interestingly, the show was originally planning on doing this on purpose with the murder of Laura Palmer; part of the reason for the Seasonal Rot (and consequent cancellation) of season 2 is that the network forced them to reveal the murderer.
  • The movie, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, ended up a prequel, which meant it did almost nothing to resolve any of these ambiguities. However, in the usual Twin Peaks fashion, there are a few chronological irregularities that tie into the events of the series' finale (though in a very ambiguous and indirect manner).
  • A sequel series, released almost 25 years after the fact, does tie up some unresolved plot and character points, though leaves others unanswered and adds quite a few new ones as well.
• The Myth Arc of The X-Files never received a fitting conclusion. This series has also drifted in and out of Screwed by the Network and Un-Canceled several times, so Chris Carter knows he's playing with fire.

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