To be continued? Not for these games, movies, and shows that teased us in their final moments, only to end before the ending! Pay attention because you’ll never believe what happens in the fourth segment!
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I was thinking about this recently with Agent Carter’s cancellation. Without giving it away, a character was murdered by an unseen person in the season 2 finale, and now we won’t know who did it. Unfortunately, things like like this seem to be a fact of life when you’re a media consumer. At least some are more satisfying than others (see, Hannibal).
For me I thought it was … how do I say this without being spoilerific… hmmm “You’ll go far in this organisation” I thought it was him, just saying no corpse he ain’t dead.
But we shall never know
Agent Carter could come back, if Hayley Atwell’s other ABC show gets canceled, its looks like a CSI/NCIS/Criminal Minds procedural so… it’ll last 10 seasons. Yeah… Agent Carter is perma-canceled.
this episode has PERFECT timing, because Kevin Smith just announced that he’ll be turning the Buckaroo Banzai sequel as a television or netflix style series! YES!
I loved this topic! A couple of cliffhangers popped into my head after listening: My Name is Earl’s fourth and final season ended with two big reveals regarding parentage, not to mention the overall unfinished story involving Earl’s list. Fortunately, the creator described his ideal ending in a Reddit AMA, and it’s good enough to almost make up for never seeing it.
Then there’s Hellboy 2… in particular, the part in which it is once again confirmed that Hellboy WILL bring about the apocalypse. Del Toro has revealed some of his ideas, but I doubt he’ll ever get the chance to make Hellboy 3.
Cliffhangers you skipped
TV – Reboot, Brisco County Jr.
Games – Beyond Good and Evil, Advent Rising
Another game one I could think of – Punisher (2005) has Kingpin vowing revenge on Castle for helping to screw up his empire.
Me I was into that horrid monster of the week TV show Reaper with Ray Wise as the Devil, guilty pleasure but I loved it. Now that ended on a massive cliff hanger…. The angles interfering with Sams plans and making him lose his girl friends soul to the devil as well as his own and that was it bam done, you’ll never know what happens next.
Horrid?! That show was great! I remember hearing that they were going to continue it as a comic book but I guess that never came to be.
For TV, you forgot
Blake’s 7
Brisco County Jr.
Reboot
For games you forgot
Advent Rising
Beyond Good and Evil
One unresolved cliffhanger I remember somewhat well was Advent Rising on the original xbox. It’ll probably be remembered more for the huge contest that surrounded it of winning a million bucks, but it ended when the main character used one of his psychic powers and teleports himself to a snow planet and he’s stuck wandering on it and that’s how it ended. We’ll probably never get another one, since it wasn’t that well recieved, but I enjoyed it, for what it was.
TalkRadar. Please correct me if I’m misremembering this, but I recall 198 being the last episode and you guys only alluded to it being the last episode. Chris did drop the works “Laser Time” in near the end, but it was really sad not to get to episode 200.
I don’t know how much you guys can discuss the Behind the Scenes at GamesRadar in regards to TalkRadar ending, but if you can please discuss it on Bonus Time. I know you guys recorded that podcast after hours, but who made you pull the plug on the show and why?
Great episode.
Wonderful episode. One that I never hear talked about (not just the cliffhanger, but the show itself) is Carnivale. The show was incredible and way ahead of its time, but unfortunately fell victim to not being popular/buzz worthy enough for HBO to justify the budget (reportedly $4m per episode!). Season 2 spends the entire thing building to a specific confrontation, which occurs and has huge ramifications for where the story might go later, and then…nothing. There are some reports of where the show was going to go according to the creator, but nothing really concrete, and unfortunately since HBO owns the rights and really seems to not care at all, we probably won’t get it in any form at all (tv, movies, books, whatever.)
If you have never seen the show it is 100% recommended, especially the 1st season. It is a bit slow moving in terms of the main storyline, but the atmosphere and characters are some of the best ever put on tv. If you like period pieces, there are pretty much none in tv history that can compare to it in terms of how well it creates the feeling of being in depression era dust bowl America.
Yeah that ending to Carnivale… such a kick in the gut. SPOILERS: Evil wins.
The cartoons I was disappointed that didn’t get a mention were:
-Pirates of Dark Water
-Jace and the Wheeled Warriors (it was supposed to get a movie that resolved the plot but never did)
-Exo Squad (not a huge disappointment because they did resolve up the main conflict between the Neosapians and Terrans but then a new alien race appears right in the last minute of the last episode after everything is tied up)
Also I was sad that Bryan Fuller’s shows didn’t get mentioned. Pushing Daisies, Wonderfalls, Hannibal and Dead Like Me (which did eventually get a crappy movie too many years later that didn’t resolve anything and it was a big disappointment that Delores Herbig didn’t come back for the movie).
In games:
-Bulletstorm
-Enslaved
-Bionic Commando (2009) (Spencer is falling to the ground from an impossible height dreaming of his wife, “I’ll always be by your side”)
-Telltale “episodic” games (They all basically end in cliffhanger and they even call their games “seasons” as if it’s old school TV)
-Freddy Vs Jason and a ton of other horror movies leave with the killer coming back to life or showing that he’s still out there.
-Major League 2 ends with them going to the World Series, I guess only a partial cliffhanger since it does end on a good note.
Also, is it just me or does it seem like there’s a lot of Vietnam movies that end before we win Vietnam, right?
Exosquad was so good. The new alien threat would have made it an interesting viewing. It’s too bad that there isn’t much info about the potential third season. I’m also disappointed that only the first season is on DVD. What
Great episode! One movie I could think of that I think counts as a cliffhanger was the American Godzilla movie. It ended with them showing one last egg hadn’t be destroyed. I think that’s a cliff hanger?
Anyway! Great episode!
The Animated Series continued using that one egg. The newborn believe Nick Titopolus to be it’s Parent.
LOL @ Henry describing Alf as “a show about an alien who lives with a family who hates him”.
That family loved Alf! Even Willy…deep down, I believe he loved Alf. At least, I want to believe….
Also: Big O holds up! Sort of. I recently saw some of the Blu-ray; it has a definite Batman the Animated Series vibe. It looks great, at least.
….and Holy shit those Evangelion dub voices! Yikes.
why dost thou commenting system always delete my line-breaks ;( everything’s smushed together
Regarding Big O, first of all, the music from the series is so darn catchy. it is the strongest aspect from the series. The second season did not hold up as well as the first season. The mystery from the first season was just too difficult to maintain through second season. even so, the series was more entertaining than most of the other anime that aired on Adult Swim.
The biggest unresolved cliffhanger for me was Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. It ends with teenage John Connor time travelling to the future where he runs into his father and no one has ever heard of John Connor. They weren’t sure if they were getting renewed or not. The announcement didn’t come until months later that they were cancelled. WHY?!? It was the best Terminator media since T2.
Can’t believe ya’ll missed the Roughnecks Starship Troopers animated series! That one literally ends with the bugs invading Earth and on a serious downer 🙁
Does Twin Peaks not count for a mention since it’s finally getting a follow-up next year? 🙂
ReBoot will always be the biggest cliffhanger for me. Megabyte returns to exact revenge! “Prepare yourselves… for the hunt!”
and now Tony Jay is dead.
Am I taking stupid pills? This is the second time someone on the show has corrected another’s description of the Super Mario Brothers movie by saying Peach is in the cliffhanger, only this time it’s said Peach tells Mario, Luigi, AND DAISY that shit is going down. Hey, guys, the movie ends with Daisy staying behind to seal the dimensional space rock portal/get to know her father/fix her world, then she surprises Mario and love-interest Luigi by saying “you’re not gonna believe it…” and oh my god why have I seen this enough to recall this by memory?
Great episode guys. I once suggested in the forums a failed franchises episode but now you kind of covered the topic with this episode. I feel being an unresolved cliffhanger gives something a bit of weird mystique. You see some ambition by the creators, for better or worse, like in the Amazing Spider-Man series or some really obscure ones like Too Human, or Haven Call of the King (I bet you’ll have to Wikipedia that one).
On a related note, specifically for Henry I recommend checking out the blog Comics Should Be Good and their ongoing series called Left Unresolved that looks at comic plotlines that were left unresolved:
http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/category/left-unresolved/
If two shows defined my teenage years and who I became as a result it would be Red Dwarf and Evangelion, and as such, I get really on edge when people start to talk about them because I don’t want to hear anything negative said about them because I still hold them so close to me personally. So when I heard Chris scoff at the mention of Red Dwarf I braced myself, and then Henry handled the discussion of the show beautifully.
THEN I hear cruel angel thesis play coming back from break and I have to brace myself all over again. haha. But you guys were all pretty positive about Eva, which I was glad to hear. Eva used to be held in the same regards to anime that Citizen Kane is to film, but there has been a big backlash against it lately with millennials and their shit taste. 😛
But in regards to Red Dwarf. There has actually been new episodes the last few years. The first miniseries wasn’t very great, until the end. It has an amazing twist, right up there with Back to Reality. The newest season is the best the show has been in a while, maybe since season 3, and probably funnier. They have two more seasons in development as well.
Evangelion was my religion for a time. I was in a bad state and the series was all too relatable me by showing the flaws of the major characters from the series. thankfully, I am in a much better place now and even though I don’t quite put Evangelion in such high regard as much as I used to, it is in one of my favorite anime series
Cannot believe Berserk was left off of the anime list. Though I suppose it continued in Manga form. On second thought, it’s totally appropriate since about half of the cliffhanger endings you mentioned on this list did get resolved in other media! Also, you forgot Angel in lieu of Firefly. 😉