Mystery box TV shows are a tricky thing to navigate for creators, writers, and producers. They’re designed to hook audiences in with unexplained mysteries, invite viewers speculation with carefully placed breadcrumbs, and confound fan theories with clever plot twists. But if things are pushed too far one way or the other, attempts to entice those at home can backfire spectacularly.
Once-great series can be reduced to a pale imitation of themselves in the process of unravelling a mystery that feels like it doesn’t have an end in sight. On the other hand, promising mystery box shows often fall off after answering the questions they pose too early in their runs.
It’s a rare mystery series that doesn’t turn its plot into a pandora’s box of unanswerable questions or overwrought, repetitive gimmicks. Some of the very best mystery box shows, such as Dark, Twin Peaks, The Leftovers, and Fringe, manage to get the balance between intrigue and believability just right.
Yet, others, including some of the greatest TV series of all time – as we’ll explore in this list – simply go too far, or not far enough, with their mystery. In most cases, it’s because their writers apparently ran out of steam. For some unfortunate shows, however, it was because they were canceled before their mystery reached its full potential.
FlashForward
It Was Cancelled Before Anything Could Be Resolved
2009 sci-fi drama FlashForward is one such show that was canceled much too early for its central mystery to make any sense to viewers. The premise of the series is that an unexplained event causes everyone in the world to get a two-minute glimpse into their own future.
The ramifications of this event begin to play out during the course of FlashForward’s 22 episodes. But the show’s only season doesn’t get to the bottom of what the event actually was, how it happened, and the extent to which people’s future visions can actually be trusted.
At the same time, all the main characters in the series are left without their personal stories resolved at the end of the season. The show ends this way because its writers intended to develop the character arcs further across more seasons, in which the prevailing mystery of FlashForward would also be solved. Sadly, they never got the chance to.
Under the Dome
It Strings Viewers Along Unnecessarily For 2 Seasons
Plans for Under the Dome season 4 were canceled in 2015 amid dwindling viewership and increasingly mediocre critical reviews. The CBS series based on Stephen King’s novel of the same name already shows signs of running on empty during its second and third seasons, which go beyond the scope of its source material.
Fresh attempts by Under the Dome’s writers to invoke mystery and suspense in these seasons feel contrived and underwhelming, while newly introduced characters don’t have the depth of the ones originally created by King. The show actually feels as though it’s jumping the shark with multiple subplots, such as the advent of 10 plagues akin to the Bible story.
Under the Dome would have been better off wrapping up its central mystery of where the dome came from after just one or two seasons, instead of trying to string viewers along through an increasingly tiresome and outlandish set of storylines. This is certainly one mystery box show that went too far.
Westworld
The Series Plays Its Trump Card Too Early
Following arguably one of the greatest first seasons in TV history, Westworld’s problems started when it began to overcomplicate matters in its second season. In just the fourth episode of season 2, the show arguably gives us its biggest mystery box reveal, by outlining why Westworld was created in the first place.
Once we understand that the titular amusement park populated by robots was created as a front for experiments intended to develop human immortality, the series loses its trump card. Its writers then attempt to compensate with multiple interweaving timelines and spectacular action sequences, which only serve to confuse viewers.
Westworld is at its best when it’s focused on the moral conundrums around artificial intelligence, and the character-driven storylines that stem from this primary concern. When the show moves in a different direction once the “first cause” of its AI premise is established, it becomes less interesting and more superficial.
Quantum Leap
Sam Beckett Deserves Better
With Quantum Leap’s recent reboot not getting a season 3, there are now two versions of the sci-fi series with deeply unsatisfying endings. It’s the original version from the ‘80s and ‘90s that we’re concerned with here, however. Quantum Leap is an all-time great of its genre, but it has one of the biggest sucker-punch endings of any TV show.
When the series was abruptly cancelled by NBC after season 5 finished production, two title cards were added to the end of what turned out to be the final episode, “Mirror Image”. One of them reveals that Sam Beckett, the main hero of Quantum Leap, never made it home.
It’s often not enough for mystery box shows to solve their central mystery. They also need to link this resolution to a payoff for at least one of their major characters. Sam Beckett’s friend Al Calavicci gets his payoff in Quantum Leap, but it’s still galling to find that Beckett himself is trapped in a time-traveling loop for eternity.
The OA
A Cliffhanger That Only Adds To The Mystery
It goes without saying that nothing about The OA itself is disappointing. The Netflix show is one of the greatest mystery dramas ever made. But The OA’s cancellation by Netflix, which likely prevented the series from going on to achieve the level of recognition afforded to supernatural dramas like Stranger Things and Twin Peaks, is difficult to forgive.
The show takes its essential mystery about the existence of different dimensions and twists it into an ingenious ending to its final episode. In The OA’s closing moments, the characters Prairie Johnson and Hap Percy arrive in another dimension in which they have the names of the actors who play them, and are a married couple.
As long as the series isn’t revived, this extraordinary cliffhanger will never be resolved, leaving fans as frustrated as they are stunned. With any luck, calls for The OA’s return from various quarters will eventually be answered.
Lost
Too Many Mysteries
At the start of its first season, Lost is essentially a survival thriller about a disparate group of people stranded on a desert island after a plane crash. Supernatural elements, such as the Smoke Monster, do appear early on in the show, but they aren’t initially its primary concern.
As it continues, though, Lost throws up more and more questions and mysteries which it ultimately fails to answer or explain. The series is undoubtedly one of the 21st century’s greatest works of television, and it manages to keep most of its viewers hooked from the first episode to the last.
Nevertheless, its tendency to create more mysteries than it’s capable of solving becomes increasingly irritating with each passing season. It’s hard to shake the feeling that the writers of Lost ultimately bit off more than they could chew.
Gossip Girl
The Most Disappointing Reveal In TV History
As clever and funny as Gossip Girl is, most fans would agree that the show’s ending is fundamentally flawed. The revelation that its title character is none other than Dan Humphrey makes a mockery of anyone who’s been paying close attention to the plot throughout its six seasons.
The reality of just how nonsensical this twist is becomes even harsher when you rewatch Gossip Girl. Right up to the final reveal, the show handles its central mystery – the identity of Gossip Girl – with delicate precision. The idea that Dan has been the blogger all along effectively undoes just how well-written the rest of the series is.
Gossip Girl is one of the biggest examples of how not to open a mystery box. It’s painfully obvious that the show’s writers thought of its ending far too late in the day, but decided to go with it anyway for lack of better alternatives.
The Blacklist
Red’s Identity Is Never Actually Revealed
The Blacklist
7/10
- Release Date
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2013 – 2023
- Showrunner
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Jon Bokenkamp
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Diego Klattenhoff
Donald Ressler
The mystery of Raymond Reddington’s true identity in The Blacklist still generates debate among the show’s fanbase, two years after its finale episode aired. Perhaps that’s the deliberate intention behind how Red’s story is presented.
But this explanation doesn’t prevent a large proportion of those who watch the entire series from coming away extremely disappointed. The “Redarina” theory, which posits that Red was previously Katarina Rostova until he transitioned into a man, just isn’t signposted enough in the show itself to serve as the definitive answer to the question of who its protagonist really is.
No other mystery box show has managed to disappoint quite as many people so consistently as The Blacklist does throughout its last two seasons. Endings are tough to execute for series of this kind, but there’s no excuse for just how allusive Raymond Reddington’s identity ultimately proves.
