5 TV Shows That Left Fans Hanging Forever

A good story needs a beginning, middle, and end. However, with TV series that have uncertain futures and are basically open-ended for most of their runs, an ending isn’t always on the cards.

Getting invested in a TV show is always a risk, because you might be left hanging, just like these five shows left us.

5

Twin Peaks (Original Run)—a Cliffhanger That Lasted 25 Years

Created by the late, great David Lynch (whose work I adore), Twin Peaks is one of the most culturally-impactful TV shows of all time. A mystery show infused with an (un)healthy dose of surrealism.

This show’s second season ends with a major cliffhanger, and it took 25 years for a third season to make it to screens. The last episode of the second season had several unresolved cliffhangers. There was a movie called Fire Walk With Me about two years after the show’s end and another called The Missing Pieces, but that and some other tie-in material only touched on some of the unresolved stuff and these were prequels.

It was only in 2017, with the debut of the third season, that the surviving fans of the show could get at least a little closure. Now, I don’t actually want to talk about any of the details here, because this is a show where spoilers are a big no-no, but if the third season never happened, this might have been the greatest example of being left hanging in TV history. Also, the third and final season is anything but a cash-grab. It’s critically acclaimed across the board, and anyone who hasn’t seen Twin Peaks can now experience the whole fever dream sans the quarter-century intermission.

RIP David Lynch.

4

My Name Is Earl—“To Be Continued” Forever

My Name is Earl is one of those shows that feels like it shouldn’t have legs on paper, but somehow the premise of a dirtbag trying to fix his bad karma ran for four seasons and over 90 episodes.

In each episode, Earl tries to make up for another bad deed from his past, and that makes for a great formula with each episode being its own little adventure, but the show also had plenty of overarching storylines and, of course, we expect that at some point Earl will finish his list and then—well, we’ll never know!

The last episode ended with a literal “To Be Continued”, and writing for the fifth season had already started when the network canceled the show over apparent creative differences with the showrunners. There was some talk of tieing it up with a movie, as some canceled shows have done in the past, but that never happened and everyone moved on. So did Earl fix his karma? Who was the real father of Earl Jr.? I guess we’ll all have to go to our graves without resolving any of it.

3

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles—a Setup for a Season That Never Came

This one hurts me more than most, because I am heavily invested in the Terminator franchise and I do mean the entire thing. From video games, to comics, to all the different timelines in the films, I like it all.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles was a fantastic TV show that told the story of what happened with Sarah and John after the events of Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Lena Headey plays Sarah, which means that two actors from Game of Thrones have now played the role.

This show introduced all sorts of new and interesting lore to the Terminator universe, including a mysterious faction of machines that are against SkyNet but not necessarily on the side of the humans. The show ends on a massive cliffhanger which will simply never be resolved, and they have the audacity to still sell the show on DVD…

2

Terra Nova—Dino Future Forever Unfinished

I think if Terra Nova were made today, it wouldn’t be canceled for a number of reasons. First, it would be cheaper to make because special effects have advanced, and second, audiences are much more open to sci-fi shows that have more complex premises.

Terra Nova has an awesome premise–humans travel back in time to restart civilization during the age of the dinosaurs. Technically, it’s a “parallel” timestream, which neatly steps around erasing or altering the future and perhaps even a certain extinction event being a problem at some point.

The settlers, well, settle into life in this “new land” and opposing factions arise while someone also figures out how to make the trip between the parallel past and future two-way.

The whole season builds up several future conflicts, and even introduces another unknown time rift, but the series wasn’t renewed for a second season. Which means we get lots of setup, but no dinosaur-driven frontier drama followup.

1

Travelers—They Canceled 9/11, but Now What?

Travelers is one of the best sci-fi TV shows I have ever seen. The premise is that the future is screwed and humans aren’t going to make it because we destroyed the environment, but we did develop a lot of borderline-magic technology. We figure out that we can send the minds of people into the past, erasing the minds of the original target person, and use this technology to try and avert major disasters.

The show follows one team of travelers who try their best to carry out the missions they receive from the future, but, of course, every time they succeed, the future changes, and new people arriving from the future don’t serve the same masters.

The show is absolutely mind-bending, and one you can’t put down until you watch it all. Technically, it did end and the show wasn’t canceled or anything, but the ending teases so many possibilities and the revelation that 9/11 was averted, presumably by powers from the future, is a big thing to leave hanging. So really it felt like there was at least one more season in the show.

While I know that TV show creators don’t ower us a satisfying ending, there are few things that are as hollow as a story where you never get to see the end. These are probably far from the last shows where an invested audience will end up disappointed, but maybe I should focus on the positives we did get from each of these series instead?