Samus Is A Girl / Live-Action TV

Sherlock: So who is the man I spoke to on the phone? The man who said he was Moriarty?
Moriarty: You talked to one of my Lieutenants. He has over the years played the role repeatedly and with great conviction. More often than not he has done so to protect my identity. Other times it was because I suspected some potential clients might... struggle with my gender. As if men has a monopoly on murder.

— Elementary

Examples of Samus Is a Girl in live-action TV.

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• America's Best Dance Crew: In the sixth season finale, the Jabbawockeez performed and they were joined by a little dancer, who is revealed to be a little girl.
• The Blackadder' episode "Amy and Amiability" has a subplot involving a mysterious highwayman called "The Shadow". It turns out to be Amy Hardwood, a woman he had earlier tried to fix the Prince Regent up with.
  • “Bob” in Blackadder II reveals herself (as the viewer already knew) to be a woman, much to Blackadder’s relief, as he’d been questioning his sexuality due to his feelings towards Bob. Averted with Bob in Blackadder goes Fourth as she is immediately sussed out by Blackadder with only the more stupid members of the cast still fooled.
• In The Blacklist, Elizabeth is surprised to learn that Reddington's lieutenant and cleaner "Mister Kaplan" is actually a woman. Her Origins Episode later reveals that this alias is a tribute to her dead lover.
• Bones:
  • "Fire in the Ice": Albie the poker ring organizer. Booth is very shocked. Perhaps because he recognizes her as Kendra from his Buffy days?
  • The recurring villain the Gravedigger is referred to by male pronouns until her identity as Heather Taffett is revealed.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer was at first thought to be a man by The Initiative.
  Forrest: "Whoever he was, the guy was big."
  Graham: "Strong, too."
• Burn Notice had an episode where Team Weston needed an ambulance so Sam got one of his buddies to provide one. Afterwards, Sam's buddy is revealed to be a female paramedic.
• In Castle, Lone Vengeance is revealed to be a previously unsuspected woman.
• Chuck
  • In the pilot, Chuck and Morgan catch a masked burglar trying to steal Chuck's computer. After a fight that results in the destruction of the computer (and Chuck and Morgan's pride), the burglar races away, then unmasks. She turns out to be Sarah, the beautiful woman who'd been flirting with Chuck at the Buy More earlier in the episode.
  • In a later episode, the trio infiltrate an art gala to capture the elusive arms dealer La Ciudad. They think they identify the man but he was an undercover MI-6 operative. Chuck discovers that La Ciudad is a woman after seeing the scar on her neck.
• Cold Case:
  • In "The Big House", it is found out that Hanks as a "Boss" who was going to break him out of prison. It is later revealed that Boss is his affectionate nickname for his girlfriend Bobbi.
  • In "Cargo", the human smuggler known only as Nachalnik ("Boss") turned out to be a woman named Linda Boyka. She runs a hostel just in case her sex slaves tries to escape.
• Community: Greendale's Human Being mascot is revealed to be portrayed by a female student during a webisode.
• Counterpart (2018): The German police seeking Baldwin, a notorious assassin, believed that this was a man. Given this, she gets the drop on them as they didn't suspect that she's actually a woman.
• Done in The Courtship of Eddie's Father with Joey, Eddie's classmate in "Bully for You".
• Criminal Minds: The UnSubs in "Jones", "Seven Seconds", "The Instincts", "Outfoxed", "The Good Earth", "All That Remains" and "What Happens in Mecklinburg?" are revealed to be female. "The Perfomer" and ".. A Thousand Words" are cases where in turns out she is one of the UnSubs. And in "The Night Watch", the enigmatic artist "Morpheus" is revealed to be female, though the UnSub is actually her ex-husband.
• Doctor Who:
  • "The Daleks' Master Plan": Mavic Chen and his aide decide to call out their toughest Space Security Agent to apprehend the Doctor and company. It takes several scenes before we establish that "Kingdom"'s full name is "Sara Kingdom".
  • "Remembrance of the Daleks": The Renegade Dalek battle computer is the young girl constantly seen beforehand. Made more effective by having a voice of the opposite gender before The Reveal.
  • "The Age of Steel": Played for tragedy as an unwillingly Cyber-converted human rambles deliriously about her wedding plans.
  • "The Unicorn and the Wasp": The Unicorn, a mysterious jewel thief, is referred to with male pronouns before Agatha Christie deduces that she's present and posing as Robina Redmond.
  • "The Impossible Astronaut": The eponymous astronaut is the little girl who is constantly phoning Richard Nixon for help.
• In-Universe on Dollhouse: Topher had long been fascinated with the research of Bennett Halverson, but the Gender-Blender Name apparently kept him from realizing his idol was a woman. A young, attractive woman who wears librarian glasses around her neck. The truth makes him even more infatuated with her!
• The entire premise of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman is that the town hired a female doctor by mistake. When Dr. Michaela Quinn sent a telegraph of her impending arrival, the local telegraph man assumed her name was "Michael A. Quinn" and admitted to leaving off the A to save money, as no one would care what the doctor's middle name was.
• Elementary's Moriarty is a villainous example, only being revealed as a female long after her name is first heard. Most of her Mooks even think she's male.
  Sherlock: So who is the man I spoke to on the phone? The man who said he was Moriarty?
  Moriarty: You talked to one of my lieutenants. He has over the years played the role repeatedly and with great conviction. More often than not he has done so to protect my identity. Other times it was because I suspected some potential clients might... struggle with my gender. As if men had a monopoly on murder.
• Farscape:
  • Aeryn Sun (played by Claudia Black) is first seen as a fearsome person in a bulky, black, armored spacesuit with a smoked-glass helmet, on a spaceship full of bizarre alien creatures. Off comes the helmet...and you see a fearsome, angry (but attractive) woman in an armored spacesuit.
  • While no helmet or concealment is involved, in the episode "The Flax" one very masculine-looking Zenetan pirate (played by a male actor) is revealed to be female of her species by the end of one Farscape episode. In their race, both genders look androgynous, and a female can pass as male.
• Forever: "The Frenchman" is a fellow antiques dealer specializing in weapons and blades who Henry asks Abe to visit after an antique Liston Knife is used in a murder. Abe finds the Frenchman creepy. Turns out the Frenchman is a Japanese woman.
• Ross on Friends initially assumes Charlie, another professor, is an older, stuffy man before he meets her, based on other professors he has met. When he meets her, he is pleasantly surprised that she turns out to be a attractive woman, and she becomes his love interest.
  • Gender inverted with Sandy, who applies to be the nanny of Ross and Rachel's daughter, Emma.
  • When Phoebe is acting as surrogate for her brother's triplets the initial scans make it look like she's having two boys and a girl. After delivering a boy and a girl everyone's surprised when the third baby also turns out to be a girl. Frank Junior guesses that the doctor must have misread the sonogram and got the gender wrong, but decides to just be happy that all three of his kids are healthy. Chandler, who the third baby is due to be named after, is less happy to hear this.
    Frank Jnr: Chandler's a girl!
    Chandler: Oh god, kindergarten flashback.
• Game of Thrones: Brienne of Tarth defeats renowned knight Loras Tyrell to win a tournament before removing her helmet to reveal she is a woman to the viewers and the crowd, which elicits gasps.
• Subverted in the first episode of Get Smart. We can tell Agent 99 is a girl, it just takes Max a while to realize it.
  • A funnier one occurs in a later episode where Max agrees to host a scientist who has the power of invisibility at his house while 99 (now married to him) is on vacation. He then finds out after the scientist becomes visible that the scientist is female (and even the Chief didn't know!). Now he must deal with hosting a female while his wife is out (think about how that would look to others). It gets worse when 99 comes back from her trip early and accuses him of cheating when she finds him; thankfully they sort it out.
• Grantchester: In Episode #8.1, Geordie arrests a mysterious biker known only as 'Lightning', only to discover that when 'Lightning' removes their their helmet and their long hair tumbles free that 'Lightning' is a girl.
• In Help! I'm a Teenage Outlaw, everyone who learns about it is shocked to discover the original Swiftnick was actually Tom's mother. Especially Tom.
• In the first Hercules: The Legendary Journeys episode/pilot movie, much suspense is made of the nature of the "beasts" and the eventual dramatic reveal that they are, in fact, women. This would be much more dramatic if the episode weren't called Hercules and the Amazon Women.
• Hit & Miss: Surprise, the hooded killer in the first five minutes of the first episode is our female protagonist! Then that she's also trans since we see her penis while in the shower.
• Homicide: Life on the Street: Lewis' first reaction to Det. Teri Stivers in Season 5 is reminiscent of this.
  Lewis: Which one of you is Stivers, I'mma slap you.
  Stivers: I'd like to see you try, pal!
• How I Met Your Mother has an example in the episode "Jenkins". Marshall is constantly describing the hilarious exploits of his coworker Jenkins, and he lets his friends visualize Jenkins as an older, vaguely overweight man in order to avoid making his wife jealous. It turns out Jenkins is an attractive woman Marshall's age, and this revelation leads to all the main conflict of the episode.
• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: In an early season establishes Mac's old, indestructible, and seemingly immortal dog named Poppins. The dog returns in a later season, and he's finally starting to act infirm. Mac takes him to a vet, who announces that he's... pregnant. Mac continues to refer to Poppins as a male dog in spite of repeated assurances from the vet that Poppins is female. In the end, it's subverted: the female is a different dog who merely looks a lot like Poppins. The real Poppins arrives and steals the blanket that the pregnant dog is resting on.
• In Jane the Virgin, the notorious drug lord Sin Rostro turns out to be Raphael's step-mother, Rose.
• Kamen Rider:
  • In Kamen Rider 555, Kamen Rider Delta was revealed to be a woman encountered by the cast previously (until then, we'd also never seen Delta in real action; just baddies getting wasted and Delta standing there). In an example of rather blatant sexism, she's just about to suit up for the first time since we found out who she was and have her first onscreen fight scene... when she's impaled by a villain and her armor taken and used by another.
  • In Kamen Rider Fourze:
    • The Scorpio Zodiarts is revealed to be female, despite having a male voice and fake hints being dropped that various male characters were behind the disguise. However, Japanese-speakers may have noticed the Significant Anagram: Sarina Sonoda = Sasori na no da = "I am the scorpion."
    • Inverted in case of the Virgo Zodiarts, who appears and sounds female when her true identity is male. Despite that, similar to the previous example, the man has a significant Sdrawkcab Name of Emoto, as "otome" is "virgin" in English.
• The (classic) Knight Rider episode "Buy Out" starts with Michael seeking out a "Mel" at a factory after Devon's assignment briefing. He goes to the factory where sent, spots a worker with a blowtorch with the name tag "Mel". Turns out it wasn't "Melvin", as Michael had initially thought, but "Melanie".
• In the pilot episode of Las Vegas, Danny looked all over town trying to find the mysterious casino host, Sam. He only found out Sam was female after she'd already pumped him for information, posing as her own secretary.
• In the Life (2007) episode, "Eval and His Brother Ziggy", the Vadas Brothers Corporation plans to build on a Native American reservation. Ziggy Vadas is revealed to be a woman, and the brains of the operation.
• In the first scene of the pilot of Lois & Clark, a young man with a mustache and beard enters the Daily Planet. He sits down at a desk, then removes the disguise to reveal that he is actually Lois Lane, who was working on an undercover story. Lois also cross-dresses in a season 2 episode, where neither her boss nor Clark recognize her immediately.
• No mortal peril involved (and probably no relationship, but this is MacGyver we're talking about), but a female T-38 pilot does this on an episode of MacGyver (1985) after she gives Mac a free flight. Get your minds out of the gutter...
• The Magicians (2016): Gender-flipped when Eliot and Margo meet the Princess of Loria. Or rather Prince Ess.
  Eliot: Oh my god, fuck your parents dude.
• In the less than impressive sequel to the Merlin (1998) miniseries, Merlin's Apprentice, Squire Brian turns out to be Squire Brianna.
• A textbook example, from a second season episode of Merlin (2008): We see a sorceress, played by Emilia Fox, being all sorceress-y. We then see someone in a full suit of armor waltz through Camelot, kill five guards, enter the Great Hall, challenge Arthur to a duel, then remove her helmet, shake out her long blonde hair and reveal... Emilia Fox.
• In the Miami Vice episode "The Fix", Switek is surprised to discover that the drug dealer Ortega is a woman.
• Monarch: Legacy of Monsters: Episode 2 shows Lee Shaw and Keiko Miura's first meeting in 1952. Shaw was quite surprised to learn that the Japanese Dr. Miura who he'd been assigned as a bodyguard for was not a man with a doctorate, but a woman with a doctorate, even assuming at first when Keiko approached him that she was Dr. Miura's assistant.
• New Tricks does this a couple episodes, describing hackers by their nicknames and using male pronouns until their identities are revealed. Them being women is seen as a surprise.
• Once Upon a Time:
  • Mulan is introduced this way in the Season-2 premier, initially being a mysterious armored figure.
  • In a flashback, Prince Charming is robbed by a mysterious stranger in a cloak. He pursues the stranger, and realizes she is in fact a woman, Snow White.
• Person of Interest had an episode where Shaw fought a cat burglar at a museum gala. The burglar gets unmasked and, not only is she female, she was the party planner.
• Power Rangers:
  • Power Rangers Ninja Storm: In the second part of the episode "The Samurai's Journey", Cam travels back in time to find a new power source, and sees how his parents met - his mom was the first female student at their Ninja School, a fact his dad only learned after she publicly kicked his ass.
  • Power Rangers S.P.D.: The Red Ranger of the SPD A-Squad, whose true appearance isn't shown until just before the finale. Double points for having the Tomboyish Name Charlie.
  • In RPM Dr. K was originally heard speaking with a masculine voice from a speaker. Come episode 4, and she reveals herself as a young girl who was previously using a voice modulator.
• The plot of Prison Break is kicked off when central character Lincoln Burrows is framed for murdering the brother of the Vice President of the United States; it takes several episodes before we learn that the Vice President is actually a woman. Interestingly, the show manages to pull this trope off in reverse: early in Season 1, we get several glimpses of a sweet-faced suburban woman tending her garden (listed as "Garlic Cutter" in the credits) who's connected to The Conspiracy in some way. Her identity doesn't become clear until someone addresses her as "Madame Vice President".
• In Psych, the terrifying Serial Killer Mr. Yang is revealed to be played by Ally Sheedy. The surprise of the Reveal is slightly more justified than most cases of this trope, in the defense of the main characters, what with her very clearly presenting herself in her letter as MISTER Yang, not just Yang or anything gender-ambiguous. Who says Villains Never Lie?
  • Arguably subverted/justified in the second sequel to that episode, when her loveless father and counterpart, Mr. Yin, is revealed to have been the evil one; she was reluctantly raised to comply with his commands, and was forced along for the ride.
• An in-universe one in The Puzzle Place episode "Yellow Belt". The viewers and Julie and Kiki are shown Jodi's karate instructor Grand Master Li is a woman, but Ben, Leon, and Skye do not know that. So when they refuse to accept that Jodi is better at karate then Ben even after beating him more than once, they video call Grand Master Li, who was in the middle of sparring match with a male partner and both wearing helmets. When Leon mistakes the partner for Grand Master Li and asks if boys are better fighters than girls, the man replies by introducing Grand Master Li as she removes her helmet and her long hair falls down.
• Queen Sugar: Nova and Charley attempts to track down an associate of the Landrys named Parker Campbell. Charley assumes they're dealing with a white man and is shaken to discover that Parker is a black woman — and Sam Landy's daughter.
• The 2006 series of Robin Hood tries to pull this off with the identity of the Night Watchman, but doesn't quite manage it.
  • It also does something similar with Djaq - the first confirmation the astute audience get of her gender is Will walking in on her naked (ritual cleansing pre-prayer in fact). Considering later events, it makes it a naked second impression as the two become canon.
• Scream: The TV Series: Season 1 Ghostface turns out to be Piper Shaw, Emma's half sister from out of wedlock.
• On Sliders, the team discover they're on a world where traditional gender roles are inverted when they overhear a local bar patron commenting on how he sympathizes with President Clinton for being married to "that loud-mouth". Then the TV above the bar shifts to a presidential announcement ... and it's Hillary Clinton.
• In the fourth season of Solitary, Number 3 was in their early twenties, and an ex-high school football player. And she was a girl. While the viewer knew from the start she was female, all the other numbers thought she was a boy. Number 3 eventually made it to the final three (and eventually won), which is when the other two finalist (2 and 6) found out she was a girl. They were a bit surprised.
• Stargate SG-1:
  • Vala Mal Doran is revealed this way in "Prometheus Unbound" . Downright hilarious when she starts trying to seduce Daniel while wearing the armor of an artificially engineered monster super-soldier, and with her voice masked to match... A bit of a variation in that Vala was the one who attacked the ship and captured Daniel. This is probably a Shout-Out to Claudia Black's previous role in Farscape (see above).
    Daniel: "Sorry, you're not my type, and I'm a more than a little disturbed to think I might be yours."
    *helmet comes off, revealing Claudia Black*
    Daniel: "Um...oh..."
  • In the pilot episode, General Hammond mentions that he has assigned Sam Carter, their top Stargate expert, to Colonel O'Neill's team. Col. O'Neill asks where he is transferring from. From the door, Captain Samantha Carter tells him that she is transferring from the Pentagon.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: In the episode "Rules of Acquisition", Quark works very closely with a Ferengi waiter named Pel in his bar for a job given to him by the Grand Nagus. Pel proves to be extremely talented at business, giving Quark many ideas to make a lot of money from the job. Pel later hits on Quark and kisses him, and the moment is played for laughs. But then later you see Pel in "his" quarters, taking off ear prosthetics and a garment that disguises her figure, revealing that she is actually a Ferengi woman. She disguised herself as a male because in Ferengi society it is illegal for females to earn profit. Incidentally, Pel is portrayed by a woman in ALL appearances, including the ones where she is disguising her voice to sound male, but you can't really tell under the Ferengi prosthetics.
• S.W.A.T. (2017): In "Never Again" all the diamond robbers wear body armor which conceals them completely, so the team are surprised to learn they're women.
• Titans (2018). At the start of Season 3, Dick Grayson returns to Gotham and goes to see Commissioner Gordon. Who turns out to be Barbara Gordon, her father having been Killed Offscreen.
• In one episode of Chris Titus', um, Titus, his girlfriend's niece and ward Amy is distraught over her breakup with "Charlie." After an episode-long flashback to the title character's high school days, Titus' girlfriend shows "Charlie" in. It's a girl.
  Titus: [smiling confusedly] Ch-Charlie. That's one of those trick names. So that means...
  Amy: -I'm a big fat dyke? Yeah.
• According to Word of God, Dark Faust is this in Ultraman Nexus. It doesn't help that she is voiced by Tetsu Inada.
• Utopia (US): The hulking homeless person who punches Ian turns out to be a woman.
• Van Helsing (2016): The Dark One, the first and most powerful vampire, is only ever referred to in vague terms and by title, leaving the characters not in the know (and the viewers) to assume that they're male. Instead, it's eventually shown that the Dark One is in fact a woman (and is actually Dracula, making this also a case of Gender Flip).
• Season 2 of Warehouse 13 features Helena G. Wells.
• In Westworld, the central character of Ford's new narrative is a mysterious host by the name of Wyatt, an Army sergeant who supposedly came back from the wilderness with "some strange ideas" before massacring his old unit and recruiting other hosts to his cause. In reality, Wyatt is one of Dolores' personalities, originally uploaded by Arnold so she would kill all the hosts in the park and then Arnold himself to force the park to shut down. 30 years after that plan failed, the Wyatt personality resurfaces as Dolores gains true consciousness (with some secret assistance from Ford) and leads the hosts in an uprising against humans.
• The opening of the Witchblade TV show had a figure going about his day - putting on his boxer shorts, putting on his leather jacket, and getting on his motorbike, before 'he' takes off his motorcycle helmet and it's a woman. Doesn't help that women's boxers exist.

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