Cut Short in Live-Action TV.
- When 100 Deeds for Eddie McDowd was canceled, Eddie had only done 40 of his 100 good deeds, so he will remain a dog for eternity.
- After several seasons of The Future saying that the main character, Tom Baldwin, was the key that would save the world, The 4400's fourth season ends with him contemplating a Promicin injection that he was already prophesized to take. Incoming super-powered badassery? Check. Possible conclusion to the main plot thread? Check. ...And then it got canceled. Although the books Welcome to Promise City and Promises Broken follow on from the series even revealing Tom's Promicin Power to be creating force fields but still ending with a Cliffhanger of sorts.
- Agent Carter was cancelled after its second season, and while the seasonal Story Arc was resolved in a satisfying manner, several plot threads introduced earlier were left hanging. Not to mention that the final episode ended with one of the main characters getting shot by an unseen person, so with the cancellation both the fate of the shot character and the identity of the shooter remain a mystery. note
- Alcatraz ended its first (and only) season with the female protagonist dying on an operating table after getting shot. Clearly meant to be a Cliffhanger, unfortunately the show was cancelled after the season ended.
- ALF: The series' cancellation in the spring of 1990, after its fourth season, left the fate of the title character unresolved, as government agents surround the alien and he faces certain vivisection. This was all resolved in a made-for-TV movie aired several years later (he is rescued). With that said, fans hated the movie, to the point where many of them consider it non-canon.
- Alphas: Ended on a huge cliffhanger just after Stanton Parrish's attack on Grand Central Station, with Dr. Rosen (potentially) dead, and a possible new batch of enhanced Alphas. Parrish's group of terrorist Alphas were also still on the loose.
- In The Big Bang Theory episode “The Closure Alternative,” Sheldon tracks down the producers of Alphas and asks them how the cliffhanger would have been resolved - only to declare that he doesn’t like the ending. This is possibly a commentary by the show’s producers on why they are reluctant to tie up loose ends since it can just lead to a backlash (although The Big Bang Theory, itself, was not Cut Short).
- Being a Sketch Comedy, The Amanda Show itself didn't suffer from this after its abrupt cancellation, but Show Within a Show Moody's Point had ended the final season on a huge cliffhanger in which the main character learned that she'd been Switched at Birth and that she wasn't who she thought she was. Even Dan Schneider doesn't know what would have happened next, because he never got a chance to write it.
- American Dreams was cancelled after three seasons, ending on a cliffhanger. Meg ran away from home to be with her boyfriend Chris.
- American Gods suffered through Troubled Production and big gaps between its three seasons, ultimately ending in a cliffhanger as Starz pulled the plug on a planned fourth season. The producers said they are still pursuing a way to adapt what's left of the book, probably a TV movie.
- American Gothic (1995): Although, in the words of series creator Shaun Cassidy, "we saw the ending coming soon enough to wrap the story up," the last episode left a lot of unanswered questions: what did Merlyn's disappearance mean? Was her Heroic Sacrifice a failure, or not? Was she absorbed into Caleb? Does he now possess her powers and innate goodness with which to fight Buck's sinister influence? Will Gail still be under Buck's thrall, or will she snap out of her Chickification and bite him in the balls again? Will Selena ever stop going through that Heel–Face Revolving Door? Is Buck going to succeed in corrupting Caleb or not? Even for a mystery show, and one which by its very nature is cyclical, not much makes sense here.
- Angel is an odd example, the series rushed its finale as a result of Cosmic Deadline — it cuts short the resolution, but it actually worked as the grand finale for the show — "You never stop fighting..."
- Anna Liza was a Filipino Soap Opera from the 1980s that concluded with an unfinished story line due to the sudden death of its lead actress, Julie Vega, in 1985. It was later remade in 2013, but unlike its 5-year-running original, it only ran from May 2013 to March 2014; it did, however, give its own story a proper conclusion.
- Atlantis was axed after two series, although there had been plans for up to five. The final episode ends with the villainous Pasiphae returned from the dead and regaining control of Atlantis, and the heroes about to go in search of the Golden Fleece (setting up a third series that would explore the legend of Jason and the Argonauts). The whole thing was left unresolved, as were other major questions (the consequences of Jason's heart being "blackened" by evil, and whether he would end up with Ariadne or Medea) as well as the Foregone Conclusion of Atlantis eventually sinking into the sea, and the entire issue of Jason having come from the future.
- The original series of Battlestar Galactica got cut short after the final episode "The Hand of God", although it did get a follow up of sorts with Galactica 1980, which original series fans prefer not to talk about. Then it got re-imagined into the Retooled 2003-2009 Battlestar Galactica.
- The Black Donnellys ends on a major cliffhanger with many dangling plot threads and the central question (exactly what the cops want to know from Joey "Ice Cream") completely unanswered, or in this case, as it's a question, unasked!
- Blade: The Series only ran for one season because of Spike TV deciding that the show was too costly to continue production. As a result, the series ended on a cliffhanger where Marcus Van Sciver started attacking Krista due to becoming wise to the fact that she was infiltrating the House of Chthon to enable Blade to track Marcus down and kill him.
- Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future was canceled before it could resolve its Season Finale Cliffhanger.
- The last episode of Carnivàle left multiple plot threads unexplained, as well as introducing a Face–Heel Turn and a resurrection in the last few minutes.
- Class (2016), spin-off of Doctor Who, was cancelled after one season due to low ratings, mixed reception and creator Patrick Ness leaving the show. This effectively ended the show on two cliffhangers: the Governors staging the invasion of the Weeping Angels and April coming back to life in the body of Corakinus.
- Cliffhangers, from 1979, a game attempt by NBC to popularize the concept of old-time movie serials in a weekly television series format. Each week had three installments:
- "Stop Susan Williams", inspired by the old The Perils of Pauline serio-dramas of the 1930s. Here, the "Pauline" character is filled by model Susan Anton as the title character, a journalist who, while investigating her brother's murder, discovers that the killing was part of an international conspiracy.
- "The Secret Empire", a U.S. marshal who discovers a futuristic underground city. This installment was based on "The Phantom Empire" movie serial starring Gene Autry.
- "The Curse of Dracula", about the famous Bram Stoker character taking the guise of a college professor, in an attempt to achieve mortality.
Only one of these — "The Curse of Dracula" — reached its conclusion within the 10-week run. Low ratings and the absurdity of the storylines, plus ABC's one-two punch of Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley, turned "Cliffhangers" into a show that truly left the viewer hanging after cancellation. As a postscript, the "Stop Susan Williams" and "The Secret Empire" installments were re-edited into two-hour "made-for-TV" movies for later re-airing by NBC, and included their intended conclusions.- In a rare double-tap of the trope, "The Curse of Dracula" episodes were re-edited into two two-hour movies for syndication. Only the first ever aired.
- Constantine originally planned to have multiple seasons adapting various characters and storylines from the comics, but was cut down to only 13 episodes and ended without any resolution to the story arc.
- Coronet Blue was not renewed after its 13-episode run in the Summer of 1967. Therefore, viewers never got to find out (1) Michael Alden's true identity; (2) who was targeting him for liquidation; (3) why he was being targeted; and (4) the true meaning behind the titular phrase.
- Cowboy Bebop (2021) was cancelled by Netflix two weeks after its premiere, leaving the plot threads presented in the finale — namely, the Bebop crew separating, Julia betraying Spike and taking over the Syndicate, and the appearance of Radical Edward — completely unresolved.
- Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior ends on a particularly cruel Cliffhanger—barring a miracle, either one main character is dead or another killed a man in cold blood, and we'll never find out which it was.
- CSIMiami was one despite being the most popular series in prime time at one point. It was abruptly cancelled after 12 seasons and ended on a cliffhanger to boot.
- The Culture Vultures ended after only five episodes were filmed. This was due to Leslie Phillips suffering from an internal haemorrhage early in production, which made him too ill to work.
- Dallas:
- The 14th season finale, "Conundrum", also was billed as the series' finale of the original CBS version. However, the episode itself was not unlike the other season finales (a massive plot development to entice the audience into tuning in that fall). Here, J.R. fears he has lost his empire and everyone that means everything to him, and contemplating suicide, is visited by an angel(?), who, in an It's a Wonderful Plot-type dream, shows him how others would have fared without him. In the end, J.R. trains the gun at his own head; Bobby, concerned for J.R.'s welfare, arrives at Southfork just in time to hear gunfire coming from J.R.'s bedroom, rushes to the door and says, "Oh my God!" Viewers are left to wonder whether J.R. killed himself ... a question that wouldn't be answered for another five years and the first of the reunion movies.
- The 2012 reboot was cancelled abruptly at the end of the third season, leaving numerous unresolved plot lines, although given how many Aborted Arcs there were from the first two seasons, there's no guarantee they would have been resolved anyway.
- Dark Matter (2015) was planned from the beginning to run for five seasons, with the arc of each season sketched out, but Syfy cancelled it after three, leaving the show with a cliffhanger ending in which one main character is possessed by aliens, another main character is seemingly killed, and aliens from another universe invade the main universe.
- Dead Like Me: a rare inversion of this trope. Although the series was cancelled abruptly after only two seasons, the show's somewhat unique storytelling format, which resulted in most episodes ending in such a way that they could almost all stand as finales, allowed it to end in a satisfying manner (so much so, a later revival TV movie was seen as superfluous).
- In the UK original version of the series Dear John, its star Ralph Bates died in 1991, so plans to continue the series were scrapped.
- Defying Gravity, after being Screwed by the Network, ends just as everything appears to be reaching a climax of sorts. The sets were destroyed by the time the episodes were shown, dashing all hopes of a revival. While by that point, the identity of Beta was revealed, this raised more questions than it answered. Word of God helped fill in some of the blanks but not enough to get an idea of where the show was going.
- Drive (2007) only lasted 6 episodes with the final episode showing the main characters robbing a bank and one of them getting shot and bleeding badly.
- Enemy at the Door was set in the German-occupied Channel Islands during World War II. It was cancelled after two seasons without any kind of wrap-up, stopping halfway through the war with the Germans still in occupation and the ultimate fates of the individual characters unresolved.
- Farscape; canceled on a cliffhanger (due to being cancelled after the producers were assured of renewal), which was later resolved in the miniseries Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars.
- Firefly was cancelled with no clear conclusion, but was later able to wrap up several important plot points in Serenity.
- FlashForward (2009) - with only one season, it was never really given a chance to prove itself, so the viewers were left to wonder what might have been, what D. Gibbons' wall of crazy said, and why 2016 meant "The End".
- Friends from College: The show was canceled after its second season due to poor reception, leaving the show with a number of unended plotlines and a cliffhanger ending. The show ends with Lisa and Ethan seeing their child that Lisa is bearing, which Ethan went to see instead of going with Sam to France, in order for them to make their relationship work, leaving all relationships stranded.
- Gilligan's Island never got a finale in the show itself. You can blame that on Gunsmoke's fanbase; the series was very popular and wouldn't have been cancelled if the Gunsmoke fandom wasn't so invested in keeping that series on the air. If Gilligan had been solidly renewed for a fourth season instead of falling victim to the Gunsmoke fanbase, the castaways probably would've succeeded in getting off the island during the fourth season. There were, however, a few TV movies that tried to wrap up the series. Lampshaded in numerous later references to the castaways forever being stuck on that island. "Those poor people..."
- Heroes ended with a cliffhanger that had clearly been intended to set up another season.
- Hogan's Heroes was cancelled after six seasons, when the producers had been intending to end the seventh season with the liberation of Stalag 13 to give the show a proper finale.
- Hotel Babylon: While not having many, if any, continuing stories over the show's run, the final episode was something of a Wham Episode, leaving one main character forced to make a choice between two potential love interests and a decision affecting the entire future of the hotel. No ending was ever produced because the series was cancelled due to low ratings.
- The Hour ended its second season on a massive cliffhanger (Freddie was left beaten senseless outside Lime Grove Studios) and was canceled soon after.
- How I Met Your Father: The season 2 finale ends with Sophie and Jesse getting back together while Sid laments the state of marriage after discovering his wife kissed her co-worker. Valentina hooks up with Drew though Older Sophie says to her son that it didn't go well and Valentina and Charlie eventually would get back together and have a son, removing Charlie as the potential "Father". Then, the show got canceled, meaning the viewers would never get to know who the father is.
- How to Rock: Only got a season, the show ends on the Christmas episode, nothing more. Not because of ratings, but because the channel it airs on was on transition.
- Intelligence was cancelled abruptly after two seasons. The last image of the series, therefore, was the main character lying in a pool of his own blood after being shot repeatedly, with no resolution.
- iCarly (2021) unexpectedly got cancelled after three seasons. The third season ended on a hell of a cliffhanger, with Carly and Spencer's Missing Mom appearing for the first time in the series' history.
- JAG: The last episode of the first season, ”Skeleton Crew”, ended on a cliffhanger with Rabb arrested as a murder suspect. At the same time JAG was cancelled on NBC but soon got uncancelled on CBS. The story was eventually resolved in third season episode ”Death Watch”.
- Jekyll and Hyde (2015) suffered from this; while plans for season 2 were made, the series stopped at season 1 on a cliffhanger, ending with everyone apparently dead.
- Joan of Arcadia ended with her meeting the mysterious Ryan Hunter, who apparently either also spoke to God in the past or spoke to the Devil or was the Devil.
- John Doe. The last episode before the cancellation reveals that one of the leaders of the Phoenix Organization appears to be John's best friend. Word of God claims that this is false, though, and the man was supposed to have been revealed an impostor who underwent plastic surgery.
- Julie and the Phantoms ends in a major Cliffhanger that never got resolved because Netflix did not renew the series for a second season.note
- Keen Eddie only got thirteen episodes, and only a handful were aired before it was canceled. Watching the rest of the episodes, especially the last, shows they were building up to something, and while there thankfully wasn't a cliffhanger, none of the character arcs were even kinda resolved.
- Season 2 of Krypton ended with Brainiac at large having kidnapped baby Jor-El and Nyssa-Vex discovering an Omega symbol on a planet just as winged humanoids fly by.
- Kyle XY ended with Kyle uncovering a nefarious plot and discovering the identity of his mother. It's left on a cliffhanger with Kyle only partially stopping the plot. It's left unresolved who his true love interest is. Word of God described the rest of the series in broad strokes. Very annoying as the series was cancelled halfway through the season and no moves were made to provide even the slightest hint of a better resolution.
- Las Vegas. The Writer's Strike resulted in its season finale being very abrupt, ending with To Be Continued.... Unfortunately, the show was not brought back for another season, ending the story on a total cliffhanger.
- After the third season, Lie to Me wasn't renewed. So the series basically concluded on the season ender, which included Lightman admitting to his daughter that he loves Foster.
- Lois & Clark ends with them finding a baby that does not belong to them. There would have been more explanation of the baby's origins had the show continued. This was the same episode where they were told that Kryptonians are genetically incompatible with humans (or, at least, Clark and Lois aren't), destroying their hopes of starting a biological family.
- My Name Is Earl. While it was a comedy and therefore didn't have a huge Myth Arc or anything, it did have Earl's karma list. Also, for four seasons, viewers had never known who Dodge's father was (though Earl was not a likely candidate for several reasons) and had assumed that Darnell was the father of "Earl Junior" (given that they're both black, while Joy and Earl are white). The last episode reveals that Earl is Dodge's dad (which makes some jokes in the episode "Guess Who's Coming Out Of Joy" Harsher in Hindsight), and proves that Darnell isn't Earl Junior's dad. The episode ended just as Joy was about to begin explaining, and then the series got canceled. We don't even know how far along on his list Earl was, or what he had left to do.
- A Shout-Out in Raising Hope, Greg Garcia's next show, has a news anchor saying that Earl has finished his list "and you'll never guess how it ended!"
- According to Word of God, they originally planned for the series to end with Earl encountering someone with a list of their own with him on it, and when he asks them where they got the idea, they reply that they got it from someone else with a list. Earl then realizes that his list started a chain reaction of other people with lists trying to right their own wrongs, and he tears up his own list and walks into the sunset a free man, after realizing that he's finally put more good into the world than bad. Also Earl Junior's father was planned to be someone famous that came to town on tour, like Dave Chappelle or Lil Jon.
- My Own Worst Enemy was cancelled after half a season on an episode which introduced several new plot threads and ended on a Cliffhanger.
- My So-Called Life ended on a cliffhanger that would have been answered in Season Two.
- Mystery Science Theater 3000 had an odd one. In season one, eight of the first ten episodes had them deal with the serial Radar Men from the Moon. However, part way through the ninth chapter, the film breaks, forcing Joel and the Bots into watching that episode's movie, Robot Holocaust. They never go back to finish that chapter nor the remaining three chapters. According to Word of God, they got bored trying to riff the entire serial and they didn't want to try again. Season two and season four would also have serials riffed, The Phantom Creeps and Undersea Kingdom, but they are equally abandoned after a few chapters.
- Canadian series MythQuest ended after 13 episodes. The final episode, despite introducing a new, potentially important recurring character, has elements of And the Adventure Continues. It's not clear whether it was a half-season that wasn't renewed, or an outright cancellation.
- Night Court ended with an episode that seemed part cliffhanger and part Wrap It Up, with roughly one third of the cast electing to stay in their current jobs and half the cast moving on to some new life outside the courthouse. While some of these career changes seemed poised to start a spin-off series (Christine is elected to Congress) most of them seemed poised to continue the series. Perhaps the strangest of these was bailiff Bull Shannon being persuaded to leave Earth by humanoid aliens who needed a tall guy to reach the things on their high shelves...
- An episode of 30 Rock was built around shooting a proper finale for Night Court.
- Now and Again was cut short after one season. The show ended on an extremely major Cliffhanger. In the making-of documentary on the DVD set released in 2014, show creator / executive producer Glenn Gordon Caron revealed that this was a deliberate ploy aimed at CBS to keep the show on the air and he never would have done it if he didn't think it had a good chance of working.
- Nowhere Man ended on a huge cliffhanger. Gets extra points since it was one of UPN's most-watched and most critically acclaimed shows. It was replaced by a show that was so horrible that it didn't even last 10 episodes.
- The 2002 sci-fi series Odyssey 5 ends with astronaut Angela Perry abducted by the AIs and scientist Kurt Mendel being arrested on suspicion of killing her. Plus the mysterious Cabal, which the team assume has something to do with the AI's and the impending destruction of the Earth, turn out to be a government force trying to stop the AI's and who believe that the Odyssey 5 team are the traitors.
- Oh, Doctor Beeching! ended without resolving the question of whether or not the railway station at Hatley, and with it the jobs of the central characters, would fall victim to the Beeching Axe, as The BBC decided not to renew it for the third series that would have answered this question.
- Nickelodeon's The Other Kingdom gets abruptly cancelled not only with Astral's main plotline of making a decision for the crown, but also with Astral's boyfriend Tristan revealing to be the lost fairy prince of Spartania, forcibly getting taken to his homeland of Spartania and Astral being forced to make a choice between her world and the other world. The season finale was clearly suggesting there was much more to come with the show's lore and Spartania's history. Not to mention all of the various additional unresolved plot points that never had a chance to properly get resolved or answered. More on that in Left Hanging...
- The Others (2000), a midseason show on NBC in 2000, ran for thirteen episodes and ended in truly brutal fashion: almost every main character apparently dies in a cliffhanger that was never resolved, since the show was not renewed for a second season.
- The Pretender was canceled at the end of season four on a cliffhanger. There were two made-for-TV movies that continued the story, but didn't finish it. (There were supposed to be 4 movies made, but the last two were also canceled.)
- While Primeval managed to wrap up most of its story arcs, its spin-off show, Primeval: New World, didn't. Its first and only season ends with Evan killing the Albertosaurus, only for the anomalies to start disappearing because something changed. The show ends with Evan and Dylan running towards an anomaly, and we have no idea why the anomalies began to disappear—or even if they made it back to the present in time.
- The '90s AMC series Remember WENN ended with an unresolved cliffhanger after the network's new management abruptly canceled the show.
- Reunion ended before its murderer could be revealed. A small but dedicated group of fans asked the producers to reveal the murderer, causing the producers to admit that they hadn't ''decided'' yet.
- Riget ended after two seasons with many loose ends due to deaths of two leading actors, the risk of this having been heightened due to the lengthy gaps between seasons and the advanced ages of several characters. Eventually subverted, when Lars von Trier confirmed that a new season would be released in 2022, promising a Grand Finale to the show after 25 years of silence.
- The BBC's Robin Hood introduced several elements in its final episodes that were supposed to set up a planned fourth series: Archer taking over the mantle of Robin Hood, and King Richard being captured. But the show was cancelled and so none of these were ever resolved. However, as with the Sliders example, most of the original cast had already moved on and the fanbase subsequently felt it had long since jumped the shark.
- Roseanne was renewed for a full 11th season (after the 2018 revival made the show the highest rated comedy and 3rd highest rated show for the season) with scripts being written and pre-production in full swing. Then Roseanne tweeted some racist, Islamophobic, and anti-Semitic remarks about Valerie Jarrett and Chelsea Clinton and the show was cancelled. The cancellation came only two weeks after Roseanne was personally introduced an ABC executive at the Upfronts with a joke about her tweets. The series was subsequently Un-Canceled as The Conners, the first episode of which revealed Roseanne Connor died in the interim.
- Santa Clarita Diet Ends on a cliffhanger concerning the aftereffects of Sheila biting her husband Joel, turning him into the undead. This is especially given that it immediately follows Mr Ball Legs crawling into his head and it unclear if it Joel or the ball in control. There are also more minor dangling plot threads concerning the Cult of Sheila, and Abby and Eric's potential Relationship Upgrade.
- The Sarah Jane Adventures ends before resolving the identity of the suspiciously Time Lord-like Shopkeeper or resolving the UST between Clyde and Rani because of the untimely death of Sarah Jane's actress Elisabeth Sladen. The last episode was edited to include a tribute montage of Ms. Sladen in the role, ending with the line "and the story goes on... forever", however.
- Sense8 was canceled a month after Netflix released season 2. The series was clearly planned to have a third season as many plotlines remain unresolved to be a hook. Such as the fate of Wolfgang, Whispers, and Jonas (or every character really, it just kinda cuts to credits in the middle of the climax of the arc). Fortunately MASSIVE fan backlash worldwide, (and accusations of Netflix cancelling it for phobic reasons rather than financial ones), convinced Netflix to announce a 3-hour series wrap-up movie, which went live on Netflix in June 2018 and wrapped everything up pretty nicely, with only a few nitpicky details not answered.
- Sinbad was cancelled after only one season, which more or less gave all the characters and storylines some closure, though a mild cliff-hanging finish (a young woman they had just rescued from the Land of Dead appeared to have carried an evil parasite back with her) demonstrates there was certainly the expectation of more episodes to come.
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World: The final episode, "Heart of the Storm", ended on a cliffhanger where everyone was stranded in different timelines and in danger while Veronica attempts to fix everything with a magic talisman, only to discover she has no idea how it works. The show was canceled due to a lack of budget. However, the producers eventually released their plans for the show's proper ending.
- Sliders was canceled at the end of its fifth season on a Cliffhanger. A Psychic tells the heroes Everybody Is Going To Die, requiring one to go on one last slide to save everything. Not every fan was broken up about the finale; for many, the show hadn't been worth watching for years. The producers did a cliff hanger because they were hoping the fans would convince the network for another season
. In-universe, the last episode is set on an Earth where Sliders is a hugely popular TV show. - Soap. Creator Susan Harris had written out a five-season arc for the show, but it was yanked by the network after season four, leaving several unresolved cliffhangers.
- The second season of Sonny with a Chance ended with Sonny taking a job as a musician at a restaurant, and something of a reconciliation between Chad and Sonny, but no real ending for the series, nor if Sonny and Chad dated again after that, as the show was retooled in 2011 as the defictionalized Show Within a Show So Random! after star Demi Lovato decided not to return following their stint in rehab for bulimia and cutting. So Random! itself was Cut Short, only lasting for one season and 26 episodes before being cancelled in 2012.
- The final episode of Son of Zorn ends with Zorn getting kidnapped, making it unclear if he ever reunites with his family.
- The final episode of the sci-fi war series Space: Above and Beyond sets up a great cliffhanger, with two of the main characters trapped behind enemy lines, another main maimed and possibly near death, the battle plan Earth Forces had pinned all of their hopes on compromised...and then it's over. We never even find out if Earth wins the war or not. Thanks, FOX!
- Space Cases ends before any of the various mysteries could be solved or before the characters made it home.
- Stargate:
- Stargate Atlantis ends with the Wraith still being a major threat to the Pegasus (and possibly the Milky Way) Galaxy. The war with the Wraith was supposed to have been wrapped up in TV movies similar to how SG-1 was finished, but the failure of Stargate Universe and MGM's financial troubles basically torpedoed any chance of new Stargate-related content for the foreseeable future.
- The spinoff Stargate Universe was unceremoniously cancelled midway through its second season. The series ends on something of a Cliffhanger, with no resolution whatsoever to any major plot arc. Almost the entire main cast goes into stasis pods for a projected three-year bypass of the galaxy that the Destiny is in. However, the crew is short by one (1) stasis pod, and whoever remains outside it would have only two weeks to live and attempt to repair it; if he or she leaves the life support on for any longer than that, Destiny will not have enough power to make it to the next galaxy for 1,000 years or more. Eli Wallace, of all people, elects to show that he has indeed undergone Character Development, and remains outside the stasis pod. Whether he repairs it successfully or not, and the ultimate fate of the crew of the Destiny, are left completely indeterminate.
- Star Trek: Enterprise: An example of an unresolved story arc. The first two seasons centered around a Temporal Cold War. The storyline didn't impress fans, so it was dropped in favor of the year-long Expanse arc, and then the fourth season consisted of a number of mini-arcs. Had the series not been cancelled, it likely would have returned to the Temporal Cold War arc and wrapped it up (given past precedent of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager all more or less going full-circle in their finales). Despite the fact the Trek franchise has a healthy literary and comic book component, so far Conclusion in Another Medium has not applied.
- Supernatural has an In-Universe example. Turns out that the adventures of the Winchester brothers were unknowingly recorded by a Prophet of the Lord, who had been publishing his writings as a series of urban fantasy novels. Unfortunately, the publisher goes bankrupt and the last book ends with one of the main characters dragged off to Hell.
- Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles ended its second season with a cliffhanger where John is sent into the future with a T-1001, a future where Kyle is the leader of the resistance and nobody has heard of John Connor. Sarah also remains in the past, Cameron's human double is alive, and John Henry the computer program - which was apparently built to help the resistance - has gone missing.
- Terra Nova's first season wrapped up the major plot arc and seemed set to start a new direction, but ended on a pretty epic cliffhanger about an old boat. Alas, the show was mercilessly (or thankfully, was mercifully) cancelled, but a make-your-own-comic internet game was created to fill up some of the sadness over the abrupt ending.
- The third and last season of Tetangga Masa Gitu ends without fully resolving both plotlines of the two-part finale (each couple's plan to move out and Adi—Bastian conflict), but with a promise of a new season. No such season was made.
- The Upstairs Downstairs spinoff Thomas & Sarah was supposed to have a second series, but this was wiped out by a technicians' strike at ITV. The first series ended on an unresolved cliffhanger.
- The Time Tunnel: Executive Meddling canned the show, in spite of its success (the show aired in the Friday Night Death Slot, but had excellent ratings), in favor of the far less successful The Legend of Custer.
- The 1970s UK sci-fi show The Tomorrow People was cut short due to a strike at ITV. It was meant to end properly with an epic two-parter, but plans had to be scrapped.
- Tru Calling, sadly for its unluckily small cult fanbase, not only was the final episode never actually aired, but even the network's initial episode order for the second season turned out to be only 6 episodes... when the writers had not only obviously been settling in for the long haul by setting up an epic-level Myth Arc, but, according to the writing staff, they had already planned through episode eight of that season. Not to mention, the series was cut directly after the episode with extremely important plot lines - namely that Tru had just learned that others have the same powers as her, including her own father and Jason Priestley's character, although they both try to do the opposite of what Tru does i.e. make sure people stay dead.
- Twin Peaks: The series does resolves its initial premise ("Who killed Laura Palmer?"), but then goes on with the related plot of dealing with the one behind it (Killer BOB) and a new antagonist (Wyndom Earle), which reaches what can potentially be seen as a conclusion (Cooper saves Annie from Earle and gets possessed by BOB) but is really more of a Cliffhanger. A theatrical film follow-up, Fire Walk with Me, ended up being a prequel rather than resolving any remaining story points from the TV series. The Return finally picked up the main plot 25 years in-show and 26 real life years later.
- Underground was abruptly cancelled after season two, leaving multiple plot lines unfinished and creating an Accidental Downer Ending to the series.
- V (1983): Both the 1984 version and the 2009 version were canceled, ending on massive cliffhangers.
- Victorious: For some reason, Nick decided to cancel the show despite it getting ratings, thus it has no proper series finale. It also led to the Fandom Rivalry of Victoria Justice and Ariana Grande (which destroyed their friendship) to boot. The renewed friendship between Victoria and Ariana (along with some likely joking comments from Matt Bennett) have given some fans a glimmer of hope, but there are no known plans to continue the show in any form.
- Voyagers!: Due to the show's cancellation, the plot ended with Bogg and Jeff wrapping up another case successfully (of course, there will always be another one) but failing to capture Drake.
- HBO cancelled Westworld after its fourth season which ended with most of the main cast dead and anyone outside the Sublime would die as well, leaving sentient life's fate into Dolores's hands who rebuilds the park in the Sublime by memory. The show's creators have said the story was supposed to end with the fifth season.
- NBC cancelled Young Rock after its third season, right when it was about to begin covering Dwayne Johnson's movie acting career (more specifically, his Breakout Character role as the Scorpion King in The Mummy Returns).
- Zoey 101: The popular show was cancelled supposedly because of Jamie Lynn Spears' pregnancy and the resulting controversy around it, though Nickelodeon later claimed the ending of the show was planned from the beginning and her pregnancy occured after the final filming.
