Best Television Cliffhanger Moments Ever

Community paintball is legendary. The concept of a community college destroying itself in an all-out paintball war while paying homage to every action trope in the book was birthed in the show’s first season. The escapade was such a hit, they decided to do it again.

After navigating a Western-themed paintball war, “A Fistful of Paintball” ends with a cliffhanger ending, leaving everyone’s favorite study group torn apart. It also teases that the war has only just begun, revealing Storm Trooper wannabes marching into the school to kick off a Star Wars homage in the season finale.

The episode is a brilliant cliffhanger because it promises more paintball, a scope larger than the series had ever seen, and it has emotionally impactful character consequences. It is just one of the many examples of Community being way more awesome than it has any right to be.

In an homage to Dallas, “Who Shot Mr. Burns?” is a two-part cliffhanger representing The Simpsons at its best. This smartly written send-up to TV mysteries is chock-full of references to classic shows and movies that defined the genre.

The episodes feature dream sequences, Lisa Simpson playing out her own courtroom drama, and references to hits like Twin Peaks, Basic Instinct, and The Fugitive. Similar to Dallas, the Season 6 finale of The Simpsons was a cultural phenomenon that sparked much speculation. The cliffhanger arrived in the heyday of the long-running animated series and is still a clear highlight in its 750-episode run.

The Season 2 finale of Avatar: The Last Airbender leaves the series in shambles, delivering a multifaceted cliffhanger. The episode sees Aang return to the fight in the Earth Kingdom capital of Ba Sing Se, now armed with the ability to channel his past lives and enter the powerful Avatar State.

Aang ignores the warnings of his guru teacher, entering the state without letting go of his love for his friend Katara. He is then struck by the lightning of Princess Azula while in the Avatar State, threatening to kill him and break the Avatar cycle for good.

The finale leaves Aang in a coma, with the future of the Avatar in jeopardy. The Earth Kingdom Capital falls to the Fire Nation, and Prince Zuko undoes a whole season’s worth of character growth by betraying his uncle and returning to the dark pursuits of the Fire Nation.

The episode pushed the series into its darkest territory, leaving kids and adults alike on a cliffhanger for the ages.

After three seasons of seeing the cast stuck on an island, the Season 3 finale of Lost broke form by showing characters not in a flashback but a flash forward. For the first time, fans caught a glimpse of life after the island, altering the show’s trajectory and leaving viewers completely uncertain about where the show was headed.

Lost had a cliffhanger or two throughout; this winding, twisting series was built on a foundation of mystery boxes over the course of its six-season run. But mysteries can only stay potent for so long. “Through the Looking Glass” rejuvenated the series with new intrigue, introducing a new mystery box with a masterful cliffhanger ending that launched the series into new territory.

Ross’s altar mishap from Friends is definitely the most cringe-inducing of all the cliffhangers on the list. While marrying his girlfriend Emily during the season 4 finale, Ross accidentally calls her Rachel while at the altar.

The episode ends with the fate of Ross’s relationship with Emily and with Rachel up in the air, and fans were left on the hook for an entire summer. The Season 4 finale also kicked off a secret romance between Chandler and Monica, a shocker that continued to drive the fifth season.

Friends was a show full of cliffhangers, but none saw a moment blow up in anyone’s face more than this wince-worthy finale that left fans rolling up and down the aisles.

Jean-Luc Picard has had bad luck with the Borg. The Season 3 finale of Star Trek: The Next Generation left Trekkies on the edge of their seats and would not let them leave until the show resumed months later with Season 4.

The finale saw Picard assimilated by the Borg, a process that merges beings into a hive mind and infuses their organic bodies with grotesque technology.

Assimilation is a grisly process, one that laves a helpless Picard in tears. The episode ends with Picard hailing his Enterprise crew as a member of the Borg. Armed with all of Picard’s knowledge of the Enterprise, the Borg delivers a cliffhanger ending punctuated by a familiar message: Resistance is futile.

Few events in television history have reached the legendary status of the Red Wedding. From the Season 3 episode, The Rains of Castamere, the Red Wedding was a massacre of main characters that shocked viewers with its violence and ended the episode on a gut-wrenching cliffhanger.

Critics loved the episode, calling it one of the most memorable of the series. The show stacked on five more seasons after the Red Wedding, but that sentiment remained true.

The notorious cliffhanger earned writers Dave Benioff and D.B. Weiss an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series and lived up to Game of Thrones novelist George R.R. Martin’s original vision of the Red Wedding as a pivotal moment in the series.

Before there was Succession or Yellowstone, there was Dallas. The drama series about a pair of feuding family empires was a hit for 14 seasons, largely thanks to actor Larry Hagman’s portrayal of J.R. Ewing, double-crossing villain audiences loved to hate.

Dallas’s season 3 finale delivered the mother of all cliffhangers, with a mysterious figure shooting J.R. from the dark. Audiences then waited through an agonizing summer of anticipation before discovering whether J.R. survived and who the culprit was.

The mystery ensnared the entire globe, inspiring t-shirts, political campaign slogans, bets, and contests, all related to that one gripping question: Who shot J.R.?