Lara Solanki / Netflix; Karen Neal / CBS; Disney+ / Hulu
It’s that ending we can’t help but dread and love equally: the cliffhanger. What better way to ensure that fans return for the next episode or season than an ending that leaves a character’s fate up in the air, teases a big change, drops shocking news, or puts a character in a position that seems impossible to escape? Well, 2024 had episodes that did all that and more.
For example, both Rivals and Criminal Minds: Evolution left major characters potentially bleeding out. NCIS: Hawai’i and When Calls the Heart teased shocking news for main characters—and only for one of them will we get to see what’s next. The Lincoln Lawyer and The Big Door Prize left characters in questionable positions. Found gave us reason to check our closets to see who might be hiding inside.
Below, we’re rounding up the biggest cliffhangers of 2024. Let us know your picks in the comments section.
Colleen Hayes/PEACOCK
Matt framed Nathan as the Westside Ripper (Based on a True Story)
Matt (Tom Bateman) tried to steer clear of killing in the second season, only to fall back into old habits—and it turned out he was doing much more than that all that time. Sure, he saved Ava (Kaley Cuoco) and Nathan (Chris Messina) from the copycat killer—the sister of one of his victims—and said he’d turn himself in, but once the couple stepped outside the podcast studio to the police waiting, that was when everything turned. Matt was MIA, and Nathan was arrested; the serial killer had framed him!
“I would like a prison storyline,” Messina told us of his hopes for what’s next. “I want to be in prison and [would not] want to get out because I have a new identity in there as the Westside Ripper.”
Apple TV+
What is the next stage Dusty reached? (The Big Door Prize)
After Dusty (Chris O’Dowd) inserted the Guide card into the Morpho machine, it read, “To achieve your potential you must discover who you are.” He then saw himself and the rest of the town’s residents as video game characters and, after he hit continue, a blue butterfly with rapidly flapping wings. Then, suddenly, Dusty was seemingly transported somewhere—into the machine?—and as he pressed his hand to the glass in front of him, someone approached from the other side in the fog. But where exactly was he? We won’t know because the show was sadly canceled.
“Dusty goes on probably the biggest emotional rollercoaster of anyone in the show because he starts out being the most opposed to the machine, the most scared of the machine, the most anxious about the machine to, in some ways, the most obsessed with the machine in the second season,” creator David West Read told TV Insider. “And it just felt fitting that Dusty would be the first person to enter whatever that next, next stage is, which we want to leave really open to interpretation right now.”
Prime Video
The Boys were kidnapped (The Boys)
Talk about leaving a lot up in the air! At the end of the Season 4 finale, most of The Boys—Hughie (Jack Quaid), MM (Laz Alonso), Frenchie (Tomer Capone), and Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara)—were kidnapped (Erin Moriarty‘s Starlight just managed to get away) after escaping from Butcher (Karl Urban), who gave in to his darkness in quite the murderous fashion.
It was in that moment that Kimiko found her voice. “I’ve always thought that if she were able to speak, it was going to be a guttural reaction to something,” Fukuhara told us. “I love the way we did it on our show. It’s coming from a place of like, I can’t help Frenchie because I’m being pinned down by Asa. And I thought that this fairytale ending was happening… They had the kiss and they were going away together. They at least have each other, and even that is being taken away and god knows what’s going to happen to Frenchie. So it was a really devastating moment for Kimiko, and the only thing that could potentially stop them from getting away was her voice.”
George Burns Jr / NBC
Will Sharon die? (Chicago Med)
The fall finale cliffhanger left us very worried about Sharon Goodwin (S. Epatha Merkerson)! After dealing with a stalker for the first part of the season, Sharon, in the last episode of 2024, found the wife of a patient who died due to a blood shortage and a very tough decision that had to be made in the season premiere. Cassidy stabbed her, but Sharon took the opportunity when it presented itself—Archer (Steven Weber) dropping off his resignation letter—to try to escape. She hit Cassidy in the head and managed to escape her office … only for Archer to not see her trying to get his attention until the elevator doors were already closing and her attacker had caught up to her. But Chicago Med isn’t about to kill off Sharon Goodwin, right?! The hospital can’t run without her!
Michael Yarish / Paramount+
What happened to Voit? (Criminal Minds: Evolution)
At the end of the Season 17 finale, Voit (Zach Gilford), in prison, was attacked and his fate unclear. Showrunner Erica Messer has already said that Gilford is around for Season 18, so it’s not so much a matter of if he’ll survive but what this will mean going forward. Plus, there are a couple of questions about that attack. The people who went after him knew who he was even though he went in under his birth name and he’s the one who wanted to be in gen pop.
We even wondered if maybe Rossi (Joe Mantegna) let slip who Voit really is, and all Messer would say is, “That is definitely a working theory.” And Gilford told us it would be “really manipulative if [Voit] plans his own attack,” adding, “I think he believes Rossi probably set it up.”
Paramount+
Was Kristen’s baby really the Antichrist? (Evil)
This is a point that Evil creators Robert and Michelle King disagree about: Is baby Timothy, now being raised by Kristen (Katja Herbers), the Antichrist in the sense that the 60 shouldn’t move on from him? At the end of the finale, his eyes and teeth suggested yes, but Michelle thinks that the baptism “did clear the way for a primarily angelic baby” and the 60 should move on, while Robert argues, “That to me is the punchline at the end of the joke, that we love Kristen, but also is she the mother of the living Antichrist? Did Leland get his way in the end?”
Kristof Galgoczi Nemeth / CBS
If Vo dies, will Wes kill Csonka? (FBI: International)
The Fly Team may be about to lose one of its own—Vo (Vinessa Vidotto) was shot in the midseason finale, after Csonka’s (Beau Knapp) trial went sideways. Eventually, they got him to take a deal, but it was during transport that he escaped. Wes (Jesse Lee Soffer) and Vo followed, and she was shot in the process. The episode ended with her still in surgery, but she’d gone into shock, and “it doesn’t look good,” Raines (Carter Redwood) relayed from the doctors. Earlier, Tyler (Jay Hayden) had told Wes that he’d do whatever it took, and while the team leader hadn’t been on board then … “We’re going to go find Csonka. I promise you that. And when we do, we’re taking our badges off,” he promised. But how far will Wes go, especially if Vo doesn’t make it? Something tells us he’ll need Smitty (Eva-Jane Willis) to hold him back if it gets to that point.
Steve Swisher / NBC
Sir was in Lacey’s apartment (Found)
Gabi (Shanola Hampton), for most of the first season, had turned the tables on the man who kidnapped her as a teen, Sir (Mark-Paul Gosselaar), and kept him captive in her basement. But then he escaped, and she had to tell her team at M&A what she had done in the finale. Soon after she arrived home, Gabi realized that Sir was the one responsible for poisoning Lacey’s (Gabrielle Walsh) dog and she tried to reach her (Sir had also kidnapped Lacey when she was a kid). But Lacey didn’t answer … and didn’t realize that Sir was actually hiding in her apartment!
Bertrand Calmeau / CBS
Isaac was dragged into the dirt (Ghosts)
The Season 3 finale was not an easy one for Isaac (Brandon Scott Jones), who first realized he couldn’t marry Nigel (John Hartman) then had a decision from his past come back to haunt him. He’d left Patience, a Puritan ghost, behind in the dirt—he sneezed and let go of her hand—and in the final moments of the episode, she pulled him into the dirt!
“I do think after that episode, it’s kind of nice to see him get his ‘just deserts’ from my perspective. You know what I mean?” Jones told us. “He’s left somebody in the dirt and he abandoned them.
Lara Solanki / Netflix
There’s a dead body in Mickey’s trunk (The Lincoln Lawyer)
Just as it seemed like things were going Mickey’s (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) way—he was planning to take a vacation!—he was pulled over by a cop for a missing license plate—and during the stop, the body of his client Sam Scales (Christopher Thornton) was found in the trunk. That set a potential Season 4 to adapt Michael Connelly’s The Law of Innocence, co-showrunner Ted Humphrey confirmed to us.
“We’re really proud of Season 3 and just as we were making it, we just felt like we did that book justice, that this season does that story justice, that we were able and in many ways, as we always do, obviously to expand it,” he shared. “And so we just thought, ‘What could top this?’ Well, what tops it is obviously Mickey is now the client, the jeopardy that his clients have been in up until now, now he’s in, and it’s truly the toughest case of all. And if you think back over the course of three seasons, what is the mantra that his father taught him and that Legal Siegel [Elliott Gould] has reminded him of? There’s no worse client than an innocent man. Well, what happens when you’re that innocent man and how do you handle that? And how do you deal with the fact that traditionally a lawyer who represents himself is a fool for a client?”
CBS
That chilling note from Lily (NCIS)
Since the Season 21 finale, we’ve had questions about who Lily, the young girl Parker (Gary Cole) saw while bleeding out on the ship, is. Well, she popped up again in Season 22 Episode 8—in one instance, his visions caused him to swerve while driving—and Grace (Laura San Giacomo) encouraged him to welcome her from now on. That was what Parker tried to do at the end of the episode when he saw her sitting at a table outside NCIS HQ. She ran off when he approached but left a note behind: “You can’t tell anyone.” He was left, alone, holding, nothing.
“There’s two trains of thought on this. One train of thought is, let’s just go there and get there and do it. And the other train of thought, which I’m more partial to, is there are really so many interesting layers to this that each new layer is its own sort of—imagine if ‘you can’t tell anyone’ was the Act 1 out and then we just burned through all the cool mystery in one episode. I don’t know that it would be as enjoyable if we did that,” executive producer Steven D. Binder explained to us.
Karen Neal / CBS
Jane’s next mission (NCIS: Hawai’i)
The CBS drama had already been canceled ahead of its Season 3 finale, so going into the last scene, we knew that we wouldn’t get to see what would have come next. But it certainly set up quite the mystery: Jane’s (Vanessa Lachey) former mentor-turned-fugitive, Maggie (Julie White), was waiting in her home and ominously told her, “You’re probably going to need a drink for what’s coming next.”
Disney+ / Hulu
Is Tony dead? (Rivals)
This was a book change we were glad to see: Rather than Tony (David Tennant) beat up Cameron (Nafessa Williams) and it play out like it did on the pages, in the show, a fight ensued after he learned about her and Rupert’s (Alex Hassell) relationship. It ended with her hitting him hard with the award they’d won—and he went down.
But is Tony dead? There was a lot of blood, but head wounds do bleed a lot. “There are so many possibilities about what could happen but what we do know is revenge is a dish best served on television,” was all executive producer Dominic Treadwell-Collins would say. (For Cameron’s sake, even though it will be bad for her either way? We hope he’s alive.)
Jason’s free (The Rookie)
Just as Nolan (Nathan Fillion) and Bailey (Jenna Dewan) were considering expanding their family by adopting, a bombshell was dropped: her ex-husband, Jason (Steve Kazee), was free, having broken out of prison with Oscar (Matthew Glave) after he made a deal with Monica (Bridget Regan).
“Jason was sort of a later discovery of, oh, that would be good. You go down different roads and maybe they’re not working. And then you’re like, oh, what would be good? You know who else is in prison?” executive producer Alexi Hawley told us after the finale of the foe he called “the most immediate problem” of the three on the loose.
Paramount+
Dwight has a new boss (Tulsa King)
Being kidnapped in the middle of the night is one thing. Being kidnapped in the middle of the night and being told by masked armed men and then thrown for a loop about your future is another. Such was the case in the Season 2 finale when Dwight (Sylvester Stallone) and Margaret (Dana Delany) were taken and he was told he worked for those unknown people now.
Hallmark Channel
What’s the news about Jack? (When Calls the Heart)
Don’t you just hate interruptions as you’re sharing a nice moment? Such was the case for Elizabeth (Erin Krakow) and Nathan (Kevin McGarry) in the Season 11 finale. Superintendent Hargraves (David Lewis) approached the couple in the episode’s last moments to reveal he would explain why he was there in private, to Elizabeth—because he had something to share about her late husband!
“I hope they’re able to deal with that news and move forward,” McGarry told us at the time. “We’re not going to pretend that conversation never happened, so we will come back in Season 12 and address it,” Krakow teased, adding that there were “a few different versions of the cliffhanger and we shot a few different versions of it.” McGarry noted that “all of those endings were in the same world. It was just variations of different things. It was always going to be the idea that they’re getting pulled apart.”
Disney / Daniel Delgado Jr.
Will arrested Angie (Will Trent)
Oh, what could have been! That was what the Season 2 finale showed for Will (Ramón Rodríguez) and Angie (Erika Christensen) after he realized that she’d lied—she didn’t kill her abuser, Crystal (Chapel Elizabeth Oaks), who was also the spree killer, did. Angie was arrested for tampering with evidence and making false statements.
“We really liked that Angie did something last year that she really thought was for the best, and she really thought she was not allowing her former foster father to claim another victim’s life and to ruin another person’s life, and she thought by taking the blame for killing Lenny last year that she was righting a wrong, and that came back to haunt her,” executive producer Liz Heldens told us. “Because I think what’s so nice about the way it ended up is you can really understand everybody’s point of view in the story. I think anybody would understand why Angie did what she did, and people can understand why Will has to do what he does. And so it just seemed like a really great long arc to pay off for us.”
