"What Now?" Endings in Live-Action TV series.
- 24, by its nature, is quite heavy on these.
- The A-Team ended on this (though one episode later aired out of order). At the end of "The Grey Team", the team discusses the possibility of getting pardoned earlier than they thought, as Hannibal was thinking what they would do after getting pardoned.Hannibal: Well, I was thinking, like Bernie and George, what are we gonna do when this thing's over? I mean, what are we really qualified to do?
- However, they soon imply that they might likely continue doing what they did in their fugitive days - go after the bad guys.
- Band of Brothers ends the dramatization with a baseball game between the men - wherein Dick Winters narrates the post-war fates of most of them - but afterwards the end of the war is announced. The men look at each other as if to say, "now what do we do?"
- Blake's 7 ended two of its three seasons like this: season 3 ends with the crew stranded on Terminal and the Liberator destroyed. Season 4 ends with Scorpio destroyed and the crew apparently dead. Season two is a near miss: it ends on an actual Cliffhanger with the Liberator staring down an invading armada, but the next season seemingly skips to the end of the war, with the Liberator crew abandoning ship and only returning much later.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer was the Queen of these:
- The second season ends with Buffy running away from Sunnydale.
- The third season ends with her going off to college.
- The fourth season ends with a dream episode that sets up a significant subplot of the fifth season.
- The fifth season ended with Buffy dead.
- The sixth season ended with a Prophecy Twist across both Angel and Buffy.
- The seventh and final season, ended with the question, "What are we going to do now?" Of course, Buffy's easy smile in answer to that question implied that it is not always a bad thing to lack an immediate threat.
- Heck, even "Once More, With Feeling" ends with the song "Where Do We Go From Here?"
- Buffy's Spin-Off, Angel, had its fair share of these, too.
- The first season ended with the revelation that Angel might have a chance to become human again.
- The third season ended with Angel trapped at the bottom of the ocean, Cordelia being taken off to a higher plane of existence, Wesley in exile, Lorne moving to Vegas Baby, and only two characters left back at HQ, completely unaware of what's happened to Angel and Cordy.
- The fourth season ended with Angel and company taking over the LA branch of Big Bad Wolfram and Hart.
- The fifth season ended with a Bolivian Army Ending.
- The first season of Burn Notice ends with Michael boarding a truck that will supposedly take him to meet the people who burned him.
- In the second season, We see a very similar situation with a helicopter instead.
- Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future is the quintessential example, as Season One (the only season it had before cancellation) ended with the death of Jeniffer "Pilot" Chase after she self-destructed the Powerbase's reactor, both to keep the base's sensitive information from falling into Lord Dread's hands, and to destroy Blastarr. The Five-Man Band was effectively broken up, leaving Power, Hawk, Tank, and Scout destitute and hopeless in the wilderness.
- Community episode Pascal's Triangle Revisited ends in the spring of one school year, and the next season premier picks up with the first day of school in the fall.
- Cowboy Bebop (2021) ends its first and only season with Spike and Jet having a major falling-out, and Faye leaving to pursue her own goals.
- Frasier had its fifth season end with Frasier accidentally getting the entire staff at the radio station he worked for fired.
- Friends has its second season conclude with Monica breaking up with Richard while Chandler gets back together with Janice after falling in love with her for real, with the following season picked up a while later. Notable for being the only time a What Now? conclusion was used rather than an outright cliffhanger that had to be immediately resolved next season.
- The season 5 finale of Highlander: The Series ends with Richie dead at Duncan's hand, and Duncan abandoning his katana and walking off into the night.
- House has had quite a few.
- In the second season finale, House gets shot, and discovers that as a result of a coma induced in order to allow him to heal, his chronic pain is gone. While that turns out to be a hallucination, he does, at the end of the episode, decide to try to fix his leg using the method suggested in the hallucination. It works, for a while.
- In the third season finale, House fires his entire staff (or they resign, depending on member).
- In the fourth season finale, Wilson's girlfriend dies as an indirect result of House's destructive behavior, and
Dr. HadleyThirteen finds out she does have the gene for Huntington's Disease. - In the fifth season finale, House finally kicks the pill habit and scores with Cuddy, only to discover that it was all a hallucination. He ends the season in a psychiatric hospital.
- In the seventh season finale, House drives his car through Cuddy's house, Cuddy is applying for a restraining order against him, and House is hiding from the police on some undisclosed Caribbean island.
- VH1's first I Love the 80's ends with a talking head asking "What do we do now?" after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
- Season 4 of Lost ends with the Oceanic Six getting off the island and the island vanishing, leaving viewers to wonder what the structure of the show will be in season 5.
- Season 5 ends on more of a Cliffhanger, but as much as we're worried about the fate of almost every character on the show, most of us are more concerned with how the hell the show is going to keep going if what we just saw really happened the way it was implied to.
- The Mandalorian ended its second season by resolving the main story arc of the show by having Mando return Grogu to Luke Skywalker, leaving him without a quest and many fans wondering how the show could even continue. There were also a bunch of loose ends such as Mando accidentally winning Bo-Katan's Darksaber, Gideon claiming to have extracted Grogu's blood, and Boba stealing Jabba's palace in a setup for what is presumed to be a spinoff that hadn't even been announced prior to the episode's airing.
- Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers infamously ended its third season with the Command Center annihilated, the Rangers without their powers and helpless against the bad guys.note
- The Others (2000) ended its first and only season with the entire cast apparently dead thanks to the machinations of an evil force. A cryptic comment by Einer as he dies points to the possibility that, had the series been renewed, the whole thing might have turned out to be a complex plan.
- This is how season 2 of Phil of the Future ended... forever. Phil's family goes back to the future, right after he and Keely finally admit their feelings for each other. Problem was, they left Curtis back in the 21st century. Obviously this was meant to pick up in season 3, or a movie, or something, but no. There was No Ending, unless you were to interpret it a one-off gag and that the family really just needed to quickly pick up Curtis before heading back for good.
- Police Procedurals, such as Law & Order and CSI tend to have these.
- Scrubs actually has a few of these. Season one ended with Jordan revealing everyone's personal secrets to each other, putting them all in very uncomfortable positions, season three ended with J.D. telling Elliott he didn't love her, and season four ended with J.D. moving out and recognizing he was at a crossroads in his life (with him literally wondering "what now?").
- The Shield and Rescue Me's first seasons both ended with the wife of the protagonist leaving him and going into hiding because their spouse had become dangerous.
- The Shield's finale is also a bit of a "What Now?" ending, as even after being reduced to a permanent desk job in return for immunity, the last shot of the series leaves what happens next to Vic unclear.
- Sliders ended with Rembrandt sliding alone to his homeworld, despite a (very accurate) seer's warning that doing so would be fatal. The others are left standing there, asking, "Now what do we do?"
- Smallville season 2: While this is very much a Cliffhanger for Lex, for Clark it's a "What Now?" Ending to a T - he's destroyed his only link to Jor-El, directly causing his mother to lose her baby, alienated Lana and Chloe, and is in so much emotional turmoil that he ends the season riding away from Smallville self-medicated on Red Kryptonite. The next season premiere picks up months later.
- Space: Above and Beyond ended its first and only season with two members of the 58th squadron safe and sound, two more in the cockpit of a transport falling toward a planet with one of them already unconscious from a head wound, and the fifth one most definitely dead after the wreck of a destroyed enemy fighter hits him head on. Meanwhile, Earth's attempt to strike the enemy homeworld ended in disastrous failure, and we've just learned that their genocidal war might have been provoked by a human corporation that knowingly treaded all over their holy ground. With or without a second season, it was decidedly downbeat and any sense of victory was pretty small-scale.
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine did this a lot (probably as a deliberate contrast to The Next Generation, which usually had more traditional cliffhangers):
- Season two ended with the threat of a future Dominion invasion.
- Season three ended with the revelation that there are Changeling spies everywhere.
- Season four ended with the revelation that the Klingon chancellor was a changeling spy. He wasn't. The real spy was his right-hand man, General Martok.
- Season five ended with the Federation having to evacuate Deep Space Nine and the beginning of a war with the Dominion.
- Season six ended with Jadzia Dax dead and Sisko leaving the station.
- The last season ended with the crew going their separate ways (and occasionally ascending to a higher plane of existence).
- Season 5 of Stargate SG-1 ended with Daniel Jackson dead (and ascended), the Tok'ra devastated and scattered, Thor's mind trapped in the controlling computer of Anubis's abandoned mothership, and Anubis himself rapidly gaining power and influence. But at least Earth and the SGC weren't in any immediate danger. The "mood of despair" was even more obvious at the conclusion of the two-parter "Summit/Last Stand" in the latter half of the season, but it wasn't the season finale.
- The Stargate Atlantis series finale "Enemy at the Gate" ended with Atlantis landing near the Golden Gate Bridge.
- Stargate Universe ended on a big one. Destiny goes into an extended FTL jump to escape the drone armada, with the entire crew entering hypersleep for the next three years, possibly to be set adrift forever. Eli volunteers to stay behind with the single damaged pod, with two weeks to fix it before the life support fails and he dies.
- Supernatural loves these:
- Season Two ended with Azazel dead but still succeeding in opening the gates to hell and releasing numerous demonic entities and spirits. Dean meanwhile has sold his soul to bring Sam back to life and only has a year left to live.
- Season Three has Dean getting killed, leaving Sam mourning over his body.
- Season Five sees Sam getting sucked into Hell and a distraught Dean giving up on being a hunter and settling down with an old flame. And then it's revealed unbeknownst to Dean that Sam has somehow escaped Hell. Season 6 picks up a year after this.
- Season Seven concludes with the brothers killing the head Leviathan, but Dean getting trapped in Purgatory while Sam has no idea what to do to free his brother.
- Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles second season ends with one of these, which is made even worse since the series has been Screwed by the Network.
- Torchwood:
- The first season ended with Jack hearing the sound of the TARDIS and leaving the team to wonder where he went. The answer was only mentioned in the next season. You had to watch DoctorWho to find out what actually happened.
- Torchwood: Children of Earth has a major character dead, Torchwood non-existent and Jack having left Earth.
- Torchwood: Miracle Day ends with everybody mortal again but with the world economy likely severely impacted. The Families have other plans to take control. Rex is shot by The Mole but comes back to life à la Jack with everybody shocked at this.
- Veronica Mars ends it's third season on an abnormally frustrating note. It's obvious that the writers assumed there was going to be a fourth season to make everything better.
- The Wire season 3: Stringer is dead, Avon Barksdale along with the rest of his crew other than Bodie and Slim Charles are in prison, McNulty decides to quit Major Case Squad and become a beat cop, Colvin is forced to retire and Hamsterdam is torn down.
- The X-Files:
- Its fifth season ended with the titular department closed and Mulder and Scully reassigned. The Movie picked up with this, ending when Mulder and Scully's adventure leads to the re-opening of the X-files, but, surprisingly, when the sixth season starts, though the department is open, Mulder and Scully haven't been returned to it.
- The series itself ended with Mulder and Scully alive and together but on the run and the Myth Arc essentially unresolved, with extraterrestrial colonization of Earth supposedly proceeding on schedule for 2012 and no obvious way to stop it. The 2008 movie provided no further information about the Myth Arc.
