Expository Hairstyle Change / Live-Action TV

Agent Olive before and after being promoted.

Expository Hairstyle Changes in Live-Action TV series.

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• In the 2 Broke Girls episode "And the Married Man Sleepover", Max has her hair redone in a bouffant style, coinciding with her decision to let her relationship with Deke get more serious.
• 7 Yüz: Pınar begins wearing her hair down when she regularly uses Oşa's musical trigger in "Hayatın Musikisi". Previously, she had opted for a tight high ponytail that matched her restrained demeanor.
• 24:
  • Jack Bauer's huge hair and beard growth during the time between season 1 and 2 and 5 and 6. Both eventually led to an Important Haircut.
  • A more subtle one occurs in the series in between the first two seasons. Jack's regular hairstyle in the first season is noticeably longer than the much shorter style he commonly keeps it in for the remainder of the series, fitting the new more vicious, battle-hardened Rogue Agent attitude he has from the second season onward and that's best remembered about his character.
  • Tony has his head almost completely shaved and has Perma-Stubble to showcase his Fallen Hero period in Season 7.
  • Bill also has a noticeable change in Season 7, going from the clean-cut style he had prior to a messier hairstyle and a similar Perma-Stubble look, as an indicator of him going underground to stop the latest terrorist threat.
  • Chloe changes her hair every season, but the most dramatic change occurs in Live Another Day, giving her a messy, black hairstyle with dark eye shadow. It's to reflect her Broken Bird status after her husband and son were killed in a car crash.
• Played for laughs in 30 Rock, when Judah Friedlander's character beta-tested Tracy's porn video game and three months of nonstop play felt like a few hours to him.
• Several on The 100:
  • When Octavia starts training to be a Grounder warrior, she adds braids to her hair to better fit in with the Grounders. Clarke changes her hair similarly in Season 3 as she's spending more time among the Grounders than her own people (she also dyes her hair red while trying to live anonymously, but that doesn't last long). She ends up keeping a red highlight in the back.
  • Kane and Jaha were both clean-shaven on the Ark and kept their hair short and neat. On the Ground, their hair and beards grow out and become shaggier, as they're living more rugged lives without the positions of control they had on the Ark. Jaha goes back to having short hair, and trims his beard down to a soul patch after he becomes an emissary for ALIE, while Kane looks progressively more like Jesus as he becomes determined to maintain peace nonviolently.
  • In Season 3, Jasper cuts his hair down to a buzz cut, which coincides with the development of his angst-ridden and hard-drinking persona.
• In Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 2:
  • Simmons cuts her hair to show that she has matured since Season 1. Conveniently, this also helps distinguish the real Simmons from Fitz's hallucination, whose hair naturally stays the way Fitz remembers it.
  • Skye sports a fringe (bangs) to show that she Took a Level in Badass, although this is mostly shown by her change of clothing style.
  • Ward grows a Beard of Evil or possibly a Beard of Sorrow.
  • In Season 3, Skye has cut her shoulder-length hair to neck-length, showing her growth as a character. It also serves to make her appearance look closer to her comic counterpart, and symbolizes her acceptance as an Inhuman.
  • When rewatching old episodes, you can easily tell what season you're in according to Skye's hairstyle. In Season 1, it's at shoulder-length and light brunette. In Season 2, she adds the aforementioned bangs and the color becomes a darker brunette. In Season 3, she gets the aforementioned cut to chin-length and the color goes even darker still (this is also when she switches to going by her previously unknown real name of Daisy). In Season 4, it's back to her Season 2 style, but keeping Season 3's darker coloring.
• Babylon 5 has Delenn, who changes her hairdo towards the end of season two. The change in hairstyle comes along with a new and more secure role as councelor and war leader, whereas her former hairstyle was accompanied by a feeling of insecurity regarding her new "human" features.
• Arrow:
  • Oliver had long hair in the flashbacks, a leftover of his idiot playboy persona five years ago. He cut it short upon returning to Starling City and keeps it that way for the rest of the series.
  • In the final season, Earth-2 Laurel cuts her hair drastically short and dyes it platinum blonde, showing her full transformation into a distinct Black Canary from her dead Earth-1 counterpart (in Season 7, she mostly took after Earth-1 Laurel's style, as this was right after she underwent a Heel–Face Turn and hadn't had time to craft a new identity).
• Battlestar Galactica:
  • After the Fleet in finds New Caprica, Starbuck grows out her hair. She later cuts it all off.\\\ She stopped cutting it around the time she first meets Sam Anders: on her first trip back to Caprica, it looks like her original haircut in need of a trim, and by the time she gets back, it's just long enough to tie back. Her ponytail gradually gets longer but still neat until the timeskip, after which it's long and untidy until the Important Haircut. The growth seems to parallel the erosion of her identity as a soldier.
  • After he leaves the army, Apollo starts to let his hair grow, which is very common (in real life, a lot of male soldiers are compelled to have very short haircuts, and are relieved to give up this constraining routine when they become civilians, but in Apollo's case, this change of hairstyle matches with his developping self-confidence and independence.
• Behind Her Eyes: In the past, Adele had long, flowing, wavy hair. In the present, she has a straight chin-length bob to reflect her new personality and the fact that she isn't Adele anymore.
• Flashbacks in Birds of Prey (2002) show Helena with long hair. Seven years later, after the murder of her mother and becoming the vigilante Huntress, it's short.
• In Bones:
  • The character of Zack Addy is given a significant makeover, to signify his emotional development. However, the only real change is his curly floppy hair being trimmed down to a neat short-back-and-sides.
  • Also, the hairstyles of Brennan and Hodgins changed throughout the series. Originally Brennan had characteristically frizzy hair and Hodgins sported a curly afro until her hair became more kempt and his was cut short. In the Origins Episode #100, the original styles come back.
  • Hodgins also reverts to a scruffier hairstyle and longer hair both after Zack leaves the show and during his season 11 Don't You Dare Pity Me! period after being paralyzed, but it gets neater when he starts coping better.
  • Booth is scruffy and has a Beard of Sorrow during and just after his prison stint in season 9-10. He hangs onto the look up until he is ready to take out Sweets’ murderer himself. But after Brennan breaks through to him and convinces him to let the system solve the case, he shaves, goes back to his neater hair, and goes back to work.
• In Breaking Bad:
  • Walt gets an Important Haircut in which he shaves his head in preparation for chemo.
  • He also grows his silly mustache into a full goatee during a time skip. It shows that time has passed and also makes him look more ominous as he makes the transition from pathetic science teacher to dangerous meth cook.
  • Used again during the Season 5 premiere, when we see a flash-forward to Walt sometime in the future with a full head of hair and a shaggy unkempt beard. The change in appearance is made more dramatic because Walt has been bald with only a neatly trimmed mustache/goatee since late Season 1.
• Bridgerton: Anthony Bridgerton famously had sideburns and longer bangs in Season 1, then by Season 2 he trims them. According to Word of God, Anthony shaving his sideburns symbolizes his transition from being a playboy to a serious head of the household.
• Buffyverse:
  • A relatively subtle, constant example with Spike, whose position on the Heel/Face Index at any given time often correlates with how slicked-down or messy his hair is: the more tousled it is, the more you're meant to sympathise with him. It's almost as if he too is aware of this; when in episode 2 of season 7, he attempts to pretend he's still soulless, he slicked-down his hair, whereas the rest of the season (where he lets his softer side come out) it's pretty consistently tousled.
  • Willow starts off the series sporting chest-length hair, which she sports for the first two seasons. During Seasons 3-5, her hair gets gradually shorter and less straight as she grows more and more away from her original shy nerd girl persona and then gets longer and more straight again in Seasons 6-7 as she becomes more independent and comes into her true power as a witch. Dark Willow's hair becomes very dark, almost black, and changes back to her natural red when Xander brings her back from being evil. Conversely, Goddess Willow's hair is pure white.
  • Buffy's hairstyle changes in episodes where she's Not Herself, e.g. "Something Blue" (Love Potion), "Who Are You" (Grand Theft Me), and "Superstar" (Reality Warper). In fact, whenever Buffy's hair is curly, it's normally a sign that she's not acting herself or crazy. This goes all the way back to Xander's daydream in "Teacher's Pet".
  • In Season 6, Buffy's hair has darkened to a more strawberry blonde to reflect her trauma at being ripped out of heaven. As her toxic relationship with Spike progresses, it's marked by a drastically shorter cut at the season's midpoint. She gets over it at the end of the season, and the start of the next shows her hair having grown out again.
  • As a human and Angelus, Angel often sported either long, shoulder-length hair, either down or in a loose ponytail. After regaining his soul, he cut his hair shorter by the 1920s, occasionally slicked with a side part. In the next five decades, he kept his hair that way until the 1970s where had grew out his hair again. Since the late 1990s during his tenure in Sunnydale, his hair was consistently spiked upward at the front with styling product (a fact that he was apparently unaware of, due to his reaction upon seeing his reflection in a mirror during a trip to Pylea). The length seemed to be slighter shorter around 2002 and while CEO of Wolfram & Hart, he sometimes had his hair combed over. Around the fall of Los Angeles, Angel returned to his notable spiked look.
  • Gunn was originally bald, but he grew a short layer of hair once he got his lawyer smarts. It was not mentioned by a character until more than halfway through the season (shortly after which, ironically, Gunn returned to his original cut after the cost of keeping his new knowledge resulted in him unwittingly taking part in a conspiracy that led to the death of his ex-lover, Fred).
  • Also, when Wesley goes through his darker phases, he grows a layer of stubble. Seasons 1 and 2 Wes have no facial hair at all, while seasons 3-5 have Wes with varying degrees of facial hair.
  • In high school, Cordelia kept long, medium brown hair and had a notable fringe in the eleventh grade. In Los Angeles, Cordelia continued with the same hair length, though it appeared darker. She eventually cut her hair down to shoulder length. She then cut her hair further down into a graduated bob cut with blonde highlights after being fired. Months later, she then had short, brown chin-length hair but then changed to a blonde, layered bob cut up around the time of her ascension as higher being, but then changed brown again and short length when she was possessed. After her coma, she had a shoulder length, brown perm. As a spirit, her hair returned to its early stages as long, straight and brown.
  • For most of history, Anya's hair remained dark brown and long. While at Sunnydale High, she retained short, light brown hair while made it darker when she started dating Xander. By the end of 1999, she lightened her hair cut it down into a bob but let it grow out the following months. During the months Glory was around, she retained short, curly and blondish hair which eventually grew out the later months. After Buffy's resurrection, she kept long, sandy blond hair, similar to Buffy's the year before. In the months as a vengeance demons after Willow's attempt at destroying the world, she had long, dark brown hair and eventually cut it down and made it blond again before her death.
  • Oz's hair color continuously changed: before meeting Willow, he had light red hair; he dyed it chestnut brown after his first meeting with Willow, who noticed the change; he dyed his hair blond after his first monthly transformations; during the first months of his repeated senior year, he had dark hair with light spikes, which teenage Principal Snyder thought was "great hair"; he dyed his hair black around the time he began dating Willow again; he dyed his hair blond shortly before graduation; at graduation he had dark hair with light spikes again; during college at UC Sunnydale and in Tibet, he had auburn hair.
  • Lindsey McDonald had longer hair in the first two seasons. Midway through Season 2 when he starts feeling conflicted between his growing attraction to Darla and Wolfram & Hart's plans - leading to a Heel–Face Turn - his hair is cut short. When he returns in Season 5 as a villain once again, his hair is back to its long length.
  • During her coma, Faith's hair grew longer and became noticeably wavy and lighter.
• In Candy (2022) the story starts out on 1978, with Candy's hair in short, tight permed curls. By the time she goes to trial for Betty's murder in 1980, the perm is gone, and her hair is about chin-length, indicating the passage of time.
• In Castle Detective Kate Beckett starts season one with short, blunt brown hair. As the seasons progress and she becomes a more obvious love interest for Richard Castle, her hair becomes more stereotypically feminine, by growing longer, wavier, and getting blonde highlights. In one case, apparently overnight.
• Charmed did this a lot with the Halliwells.
  • Phoebe went through five hair changes in the fourth season. She started off with blonde highlights that disappeared into a caramel brown as Paige was welcomed into the fold. It was dyed brown for one episode and then darker still when Cole proposed. After he is possessed by the Source she has cut it to shoulder length. Then when she becomes his queen it darkens to an almost black hue. Notably in Season 5 when she's trying to distance herself from Cole her hair is longer. Her drastic short haircut in Season 6 was a case of Alyssa Milano wanting to do something for her 30th birthday, but it does overlap with Phoebe gaining empathic powers. Her hair growing longer in season 8 coincides with her desire to find love as opposed to just having a baby. Before that she first dyed her hair blonde in Season 3 which coincided with her romance with Cole. The colour softened and darkened the more the romance developed. When she starts having visions of her future self in Season 7, she has long hair.
  • Paige's hair turned red in Season 5 when she jumped into her duties as a witch. The other characters joked that her hair turned that color after a potion blew up on her. She goes strawberry blonde in Season 6 when she starts working temp jobs and she has gone back to her natural brown when she stops going to the jobs.
  • Prue's hair starts off in a bob at the start of the series but grows longer as her powers grow. It's noticeably nearly waist-length in Season 3 when she's at her most powerful.
  • Piper is notable in that her hair doesn't change much in the series. Her hair grows to waist length in the third season and stays that way for the whole series. She does start off in the series having bangs which she gets rid of early on in Season 2; they return for a bit in Season 6, coinciding with the drama between her and Leo.
  • In the episode "Morality Bites" the sisters visit the future and all have different hairstyles. Prue's normally black hair has turned blonde, to show that she's a powerful businesswoman now. Phoebe's shoulder-length hair has grown to waist-length along with her powers increasing. Piper's hair is curly, reflecting that she's a mother now. Amusingly this becomes prophetic of the other actresses changing their hair a lot on the show (the episode is in Season 2) while Piper's wouldn't change much.
  • Phoebe, Prue and Paige reverting to their teenage selves in different unrelated episodes is accompanied by them getting thick bangs.
  • When Chris is a morally ambiguous figure in Season 6, his hair is at its longest; in a messy, curtains style. His self from a good future has much shorter, neater hair.
  • As an adult, Wyatt's alignment is reflected in his hairstyles. If he's from a future where he's good his hair is short, but if the episode deals with a version from a Bad Future where he turns evil his hair will be shoulder length.
• Chuck:
  • The titular character grows a huge Beard of Sorrow and sits at home moping at the beginning of season 3, because he quit his job, lost Sarah AND didn't pass spy training. Later, he tries to buy more junk food at the Buy More and does so looking remarkably like the Dude with morning coat, beard, hairstyle, and sunglasses.
  • His hair also gets shorter as he becomes more professional, and embraces becoming a spy. It's quite shaggy in the first two seasons, gets a little shorter and much neater in season 3 until by season 5 it's very short.
• In the City Guys episode "Frisky Business", Chris returns from spending the summer in Europe, with a shorter haircut. He states the reason he did it was because his long hair got him mistaken for a girl and while touring Italy, he was hit on by men who threw him "pick-up vowels" ("aaay, oooh, eeee!").
• Cobra Kai:
  • Miguel Diaz starts with relatively neat hair in season 1. By the end of the season, when he becomes more of a jerk thanks to Cobra Kai's teachings, he styles it in a pompadour. Like the attitude, he lets it go later. By season 4, he's grown his hair out a bit similar to Xolo Maridueña's natural hairstyle, which also gives him a bit more of a resemblance to Daniel.
  • Robby Keene sports longish center-parted 90s' hair during season 1, which he ties back in a ponytail to fight in the All-Valley Tournament. After joking with Sam about his hair in Season 2 and getting mistaken for "Dan Johnson", he cuts it all off at the beginning of Season 3 while he's on the run after injuring Miguel in the school brawl. In season 4, after he joins Cobra Kai, he begins styling his hair in a way that gives him a strong resemblance to Mike Barnes.
  • To "flip the script" and illustrate that he's embraced the Cobra Kai way of being a badass, Eli shaves the sides of his head and styles the middle into a blue mohawk, and begins going by "Hawk". Partway through season 2, Hawk redyes the mohawk red, marking his transformation into a vicious bully who goes after his friends over perceived slights.
  • Samantha LaRusso constantly wears her hair loose in season 1, during a time when she's avoiding karate and trying to fit in with the popular kids at school. In season 2, when she gets back into the swing of karate, she starts pulling her hair back, the only notable exceptions being at Moon's party (where she has her season 1 hairstyle again) and in the school fight, when she really could have used it during her fight with Tory. In season 3, when Sam is dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder in the aftermath of the fight, her hair is much messier, suggesting that she hasn't been taking much care of it.^note This is actually how Mary Mouser normally styles her hair when she isn't shooting Once Daniel helps her work through her fear of Tory and she gets back together with Miguel, she starts to pay more attention to her hair.
  • Yasmine wears long Regina George hair in season 1, when she's the top mean girl at school. When she returns in season 3, she's sporting a slightly less-flattering choppy bob, reflecting how she's been brought down a notch after being humiliated by Aisha, as well as her openness to get together with someone as offbeat and "uncool" as Demetri.
• Community "Remedial Chaos Theory": In the tag set in the "dark timeline" where Pierce is dead, Annie went insane, Shirley is drunk, Troy lost his larynx, Jeff lost an arm and Britta...
  Jeff: Britta, you put one wash-away blue streak in your hair and I lost an arm.
  Britta: Exactly! Life got dark!
• CSI :
  • Grissom's beard got to be this and it was lampshaded once how he seemed to shave it when Sara was there and he was happy and then she left and the beard came back. (although he wore it between season 4 and early 7 while she was there.)
  • Nick Stokes started out with a longer hairstyle but by the end of the series, he’s gone through a lot and become more of a leader and he sports a buzz cut and stubble.
• The last episode of the 1980s adaptation of The Day of the Triffids gave the protagonist much longer hair and a Time-Passage Beard of epic proportions as visual shorthand for their hardscrabble daily existence as subsistence farmers after the not-so-Cosy Catastrophe.
• Degrassi: The Next Generation:
  • In season 7, Darcy's hair goes from wavy to straight right before she is raped. Then goes back to wavy after the storyline is resolved.
  • Anya ceases to wear her hair in ponytails when she stops being Holly J's lackey and starts to come into her own story. Holly J stops wearing ponytails on a daily basis when she stops being the Alpha Bitch at the end of Season 8.
• Doctor Who:
  • The First Doctor companion Steven Taylor shaves off his beard (offscreen) after the Doctor agrees to take him on as a companion, signifying his decision to join the crew, not to mention his decision to rejoin civilisation as he'd been marooned on a planet populated entirely by spherical robots for two years.
  • Both Liz and the Doctor sport different haircuts in "The Ambassadors of Death" to the ones they had in the previous story, "Doctor Who and the Silurians". From this and a few other details (like the Doctor now having a fully-decorated and quite worn-looking living room), we can surmise that a reasonably long time has elapsed between the end of "Doctor Who and the Silurians" and "The Ambassadors of Death", somewhat helping to explain the Angst? What Angst? after such a harrowing adventure and that the Doctor seems to have mostly forgiven the Brigadier for committing a genocide of defenseless thinking beings at the end of the last story.
  • The Third Doctor's hair gets longer and increasingly elaborate and curled as his relationship with UNIT softens up.
  • Mike Yates is kicked out of UNIT at the end of "Invasion of the Dinosaurs". By the time of his reappearance in "Planet of the Spiders", his hair has grown out into a (then) fashionable long cut rather than the military haircut he'd sported up until that point.
  • In "The Invasion of Time", the Fourth Doctor wears his hair differently — with a side parting, and straightened at the root — to give him a darker, crazier look.
  • Leela was intended to start wearing her straight hair in Victorian-esque curls to mimic the Doctor's curly hair and indicate his growing influence on her, but due to the season being re-edited to make K-9 a companion she reverts to her old hairdo after that story.
  • The Fourth Doctor goes through a few subtly different shapes and cuts for his mop as he goes, reflecting the show feel. In S12, when he's still going for the scruffy "eternal student" aesthetic, it looks like a short cut that has been grown out due to neglect (the actor had just grown out a short cut he'd had for a previous role); in the darker Seasons 13-15, it becomes deliberately layered long cut with long sideburns, giving him a Byronic look; in the goofy S17, he has it in a rounder Funny Afro cut with short, precisely-groomed wedge-shaped sideburns. It looks most different in Season 18, where it is visibly greying and has a different texture to match the Doctor's more subdued and dark personality. This was something of a Written-In Infirmity as the actor was seriously ill and it had made his usually glossy and curly hair dull and straight (he'd had to have it permed before resuming filming). In the same season, after Romana leaves the TARDIS, he alters his short fringe into a sort of bouffant style with the fringe combed off his face.
  • Generally speaking, any Doctor who returns after a significant timeskip will do so with a different haircut. Specific examples include the long-haired Seventh Doctor in the TV Movie, the short-haired Eighth Doctor and long-haired War Doctor in "The Night of the Doctor" and the short-haired Curator in "The Day of the Doctor".
  • While all of the Doctors have different hair each regeneration, all of the Classic Doctors seem to prefer relatively long hair, generally hovering somewhere between earlobe and shoulder, with the Eighth Doctor, the most recent at the time, getting Byronic flowing hair. Therefore, when the series got a huge Retool after a hiatus of over a decade, media commentators at the time were genuinely shocked that the costume department had decided to give the new, Ninth Doctor a buzz cut. This was to distinguish the new series from the old one, as well as a way of indicating that the Ninth Doctor was going to be the most moody, no-nonsense Doctor yet seen — definitely no scarves or frilly shirts in sight! (It should also be noted that the shaved-head-and-leather-jacket look was thoroughly associated with gay communities in the UK at the time, which served as a Mythology Gag to the producer's last work and also fit the new interpretation of the character.) All of the modern Doctors so far have also had rather short hair.
  • "The Night of the Doctor" shows that the old Eighth Doctor has cut off his iconic pretty-boy long hair, indicating that he is now much older and much less of a pretty boy, and has been living as a soldier for some time. He also has started wearing Perma-Stubble, despite having been clean-shaven in his typical appearance.
  • In "The Day of the Doctor", we meet the incarnation between the Doctor's Eighth and Ninth, who does not go by the name "The Doctor" due to a desire to disown his actions in war. One of the main indications that he's not like his other selves is that he is the only one who wears facial hair, when every other Doctor, regardless of age and taste otherwise, seems to prefer being clean-shaven (a few habitually wear small, tidy sideburns, and the Second and Tenth Doctors have perma-shadow, but that's it — this preference is briefly lampshaded by the Tenth Doctor in "Time Crash"). This is further emphasized by the fact that the newly-regenerated War Doctor, as he has not yet participated in the War, is clean-shaven as he checks out his reflection and goes to pick up a gun.
  • The Tenth Doctor spent this episode with a much longer, shaggier haircut than usual, which Eleven calls his "grunge phase". Since the episode is presumably set between "The Waters of Mars" and "The End of Time" in his part of the timeline, it may reflect his despair at nearly crossing the Moral Event Horizon, as well as his impending death. Returning to the closer cut would in turn reflect at least some acceptance of what's coming, even if he still takes it rather badly when it's time to regenerate.
  • Clara's hairstyles during Season 8 are used to indicate the length of time passing between each trip, due in part to one of her gimmicks as a companion being that she doesn't actually live with the Doctor. It fluctuates wildly in terms of length — super-long in "Robot of Sherwood", bobbed in "Mummy on the Orient Express", longish with a blunt fringe in "The Caretaker", etcetera. The Doctor's haircuts differ more subtly but are similarly inconsistent — longer in "Time Heist", shorter in "Deep Breath", very short at the sides with a longer bit on top in "Flatline"...
  • Also averted a couple of times due to problems. For instance, the Chief Scientist in "The War Games" grows a beard between several episodes that are only a few hours apart diegetically, which can be a pretty confusing Time-Passage Beard Red Herring seeing as the plot involves villainous use of time machines. Similarly, the Doctor's hair has been cut noticeably between "The Dominators" and "The Mind Robber" even though the two stories lead straight into each other, and everyone's (the Brigadier's, Sarah Jane's and the Fourth Doctor's) hair has grown out significantly between the cliffhanger at the end of "Planet of the Spiders" and "Robot" even though they link directly to each other, bad enough that the cliffhanger had to be reshot to make it less noticeable (although justified in the case of the Doctor, who is still regenerating).
  • The Twelfth Doctor's hair changes throughout his era rival those of his Third incarnation's. The difference between the very, very short close-cut in "Deep Breath" to the wild, flowing hair in the 2017 Christmas Special is staggering, and it reflects the Doctor's change from a grumpy, stern old man to his much more lax, goofy and younger-acting personality he developed later on in his era. It's a change you don't really notice if you watch episode-by-episode as it's very gradual.
• Farscape:
  • Aeryn Sun generally wore her hair somewhat past her shoulders, and usually tied up in a neat little braid, which only made sense as she was an Action Girl. She softens slightly as the show progresses, and when John first encounters her at the beginning of the fourth season she has a possibly terminal condition — and a sheet of very long, thick, and unbound black hair (which somehow manages to fit in a coldsuit like Scorpius'). Her hair returned to something approximating its original length some time after she got better, but she rarely (if ever) has her hair braided or even in a ponytail from that point on — because even in her most badass moments, she's generally being badass because someone she cares about is in trouble.
  • Whether it's before or after his Hazy-Feel Turn, the state of Crais's hair is a good barometer of his metal state. If it's a neat Samurai Ponytail, he's in control of himself. The stragglier his hair gets, the more his level of sanity is slipping.
• In La Femme Nikita, the three top people in Section One, Operations, Madeline, and Michael, all get dramatic new haircuts at the beginning of season 3, signaling that Section has taken a level in badass. Partly enforced because the actor playing Madeline had lost her hair due to chemotherapy and the actor playing Michael couldn't stand the long mane anymore and just got his hair cut between seasons. The actor playing Operations went from gray to platinum, presumably in solidarity with Section's sleek new look. Nikita kept her long blonde tresses.
• Firefly had a flashback with a mustache-wearing Wash that disturbed more than one viewer. And, it's implied, his future wife.
• Fringe has a version of this: Fauxlivia always wears bangs, even when she's pretending to be Olivia, and Olivia only wears bangs when she has been brainwashed into thinking she's Fauxlivia, and stops wearing them when she gets back home.
• Game of Thrones:
  • After Margaery takes up residence in King's Landing, her signature style gradually takes over the capital's fashion from Cersei. Thus the many noblewoman extras ditch their flamboyant updos in favor of Tyrell style intricate ponytails.
  • Likewise Sansa Stark starts wearing a Southern hairstyle to match what the Royal Court is wearing. Her Tomboy Princess sister stubbornly maintains her Northern look. When she pretends to be Littlefinger's niece, she dyes her hair black until she has to be identified as one of the Starks.
  • Jaime grows an appropriately leonine one while in Northern captivity in Season 2 and he keeps it thick into the rest of Season 3. His hairstyle changes to a shorter, simpler cut in Season 4 to indicate his new-found humility and a disconnect with his earlier self.
  • Arya gets an Important Haircut to disguise herself as a boy at the end of Season 1, and the hair gradually growing back corresponds with her character development. Notably, it gets to shoulder length when she begins her Faceless Man training. Fittingly it has returned to its original length when she finally returns home to Winterfell.
  • Cersei's Traumatic Haircut at the end of Season 5 wouldn't count - except the short hair she keeps for the remainder of the series is a reflection of her growing insanity.
  • Missandei is introduced with her hair tied up in a bun. When she willingly becomes Daenerys's handmaiden, the hair is worn looser to show that she's a free woman.
  • Daenerys herself begins the series as Naïve Everygirl with her hair fully down. As her confidence and power grow, she begins to wear her hair in a series of braids that get more elaborate.
  • Kit Harington confirms that Jon's switch to a man-bun starting in Season 6 is meant to echo Ned's hairstyle and show Jon's growth.
  • Sam becoming a Maester corresponds with him wearing his hair brushed back and slightly longer.
  • Podrick sports longer hair in Season 8 as a sign that he's grown up.
  • Tyrion's hair darkening is half-practical - as continually dyeing it blond was too taxing for Peter Dinklage - and also symbolic of his status. After murdering Shae and Tywin, and then fleeing King's Landing he's also grown a Beard of Sorrow.
• House of the Dragon: After defeating the Triarchy and getting named "King of the Narrow Sea" for it in the namesake episode, Daemon Targaryen now has traded his long hair for a shorter hairstyle. He lets his hair grow back over the rest of the first season, however.
• On Glee:
  • Quinn cut her hair into a bob at the end of season 2 in the hopes that it might make her happier. It doesn't work, and when she appears at the start of season 3, she's dyed her normally blonde hair pink◊ and wears it messily to show how she's lost interest or any sense of caring (she's actually really depressed). When she wants to re-enter her daughter's life, she dyes it back to blonde and wears it in neat waves to show that she's regained a sense of (false) stability.
  • Sam's hair goes from long throughout most of season 4-5 to a sleek haircut when he decides to try and take his modelling seriously.
• Crowley in Good Omens has hair that changes with the times, from long with braids at Noah's Ark to a man-bun in the mid-20-teens. By contrast, Aziraphale's is always a halo of short curls.
• On Gotham, the length of Barbara Kean's hair is usually inversely proportional to how evil she is at a given point in the story. In the first season, where she's not a villain until the last episode, it's quite long, but she cuts it to about neck-length in the second season to coincide with her Face–Heel Turn, and it gets shorter and shorter as she grows in her independent villainy, to the point that it's a pixie cut in the fifth season. Then in the finale, after she makes an against-all-odds Heel–Face Turn, it's once again long, not to mention a comics-accurate bright red, when she'd previously always been a blonde.
• In Grey's Anatomy:
  • You can literally tell when the plot for Izzie Stevens is shifting—her hairstyle changes. From consistent ponytails to long, straight hair, to long, beautiful curls, you know some angst is coming.
  • Lampshaded, temporary example from the same series:
    Meredith: Good Morning!
    Derek: [double take] ...you're wearing an alarmingly high pony tail.
    Meredith: [with forced cheerfulness] Your mother is coming!
• Heroes:
  • Future-Hiro's long hair (and soul-patch!) is used to show that he Took a Level in Badass.
  • At the beginning of season 2, Nathan sports a thick beard during his drunken depression inspired by Peter's supposed death.
• Duncan MacLeod cut his hair after Richie's death in Highlander: The Series.
• How I Met Your Mother:
  • This happens all the time to Lily. Admittedly, she changes her hair color over every summer so it has to change in flashbacks, but we've also seen her with Hillary Clinton hair in the future. It's used as shorthand to remind viewers what year the flashback takes place (because the show is an absolute sex shop of Continuity Porn) because having "the year 2006" or something up on the screen for more than a few seconds would be annoying. So, straight, black, goth: 1996-2000; fiery red, short, curly: 2002-summer of 2006; dark, no bangs: summer of 2006-summer of 2007; dark with bangs: summer 2007-spring of 2008; dark, layered: spring 2008-summer 2009; auburn, wavy: summer 2009-summer 2010; light red, shorter, wavy: summer 2010-summer 2011; summer 2011-summer (we assume, from flashforwards) 2012: light red and straight; 2020-2029: red, Hillary Clinton-ish.
  • Averted, or rather ignored with her husband, though. Marshall's hair tends to stay the same in flashbacks, which was quite noticeable when it was comparatively long in season 4. The only notable exception is the rat tail he had as a 15 year old, which he expected to still have as a 30-year-old.
• Interview with the Vampire (2022): How the vampire Claudia styles her hair along with how she dresses illustrates her maturing further into adulthood since she does not physically age from fourteen.
• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: As the seasons go on, Frank Reynolds' hair becomes increasingly longer and unkempt, symbolizing his descent into depravity.
• Kamen Rider:
  • Tsukasa, the titular Kamen Rider Decade is a multiversial traveler. Whenever he travels to another universe, he automatically takes on a role in said universe, i.e. violinist, lawyer or high school student. Each role comes with its own haircut.
  • After Kaito from Kamen Rider Gaim turns himself into an Overlord Inves, he wears his hair more unkempt, symbolizing his weakening grasp on his humanity.
  • Gentoku Himuro from Kamen Rider Build has several hairstyles at different points of the series. During the first arc, he is largely a Corrupt Politician and has a short parted haircut. After reappearing as the top enforcer for the villains, he has long unkempt hair, showing he recently went through hell. Following his Heel–Face Turn, he still has long hair, but gells it backwards.
• In the Lost season 3 finale they make use of this. In the end, we find out that Jack's hair growth (beard) indicates that the episode flash back is actually a flash forward.
• Lucifer:
  • If Lucifer's normally well-groomed hair is messy, it indicates either one of two things: he has just gone out of bed, or he is too upset to bother grooming it. The second variant is seen in a couple of episodes, notably after he kills his brother Uriel, and when he learns that Chloe wants to send him to Hell.
  • "City of Angels?" has a few of these. Maze has long, straight black hair instead of the colorful and constantly changing hairdo she is known for, as she has recently arrived on Earth and has yet to learn human culture. Charlotte also sports a long bob instead of the flowy long hair seen in the present, as this takes place when she was still an Amoral Attorney.
• Every main character from Married... with Children with the exception of Steve, Buck, and Lucky went through this:
  • As Al's hair got thinner, he became angrier and more misanthropic.
  • The bigger and more red Peg's hair became, the more obnoxious she was.
  • Kelly became noticeably stupider as soon as she cut her hair.
  • Once Bud started growing facial hair, he became more pathetic and perverted.
  • When Marcy started cutting her hair shorter, she became more shrill and antagonistic, especially towards Al/men in general and her feminist qualities got cranked up.
  • After Jefferson cut his hair and let it go a darker brown, he became lazier and more of a reflection of the other members of NO MA'AM.
• Merlin:
  • Merlin's hair gradually shortening as the series progresses is a reflection of his character development.
  • Gwen's hair is typically just past her shoulders and curly — emphasizing her Unkempt Beauty status as a servant girl. After she is crowned Queen her hair is now waist-length and straightened.
  • Morgana's normally perfectly conditioned and styled hair becomes slightly more unkempt in season 4 after she has been exposed as a traitor and is in hiding.
• Micky Dolenz's naturally curly hair in the first season of The Monkees was styled straight and combed to resemble The Beatles' "moptop" look, as the Monkees were Beatles Expies. In the second, more psychedelic season, Dolenz grew out his hair and kept it curly. To a lesser extent, Mike Nesmith's sideburns were wider by season 2.
• Briefly in season 2 of Mystery Science Theater 3000, Tom Servo has his dome shaved down to a cyclical shape. This was done, meta-wise, to lower how much Tom's dome obscures the screen, but the creators hated it and preferred his old look.
• In The Newsroom, Maggie cuts her hair short and dyes it red after a traumatic experience in Uganda. Also crosses over into Important Haircut when the audience finds out why she did it.
• Night and Day's Roxanne Doyle dyes her hair black when she reverts to her given name of Helen, while Natalie Harper adopts a World War II hairstyle during one of her (many) personality crises.
• In NUMB3RS, the most recent season premiere had several characters suddenly grow facial hair or at least a significant amount of stubble. Colby at least had the excuse of having been in jail, but was like the "Everyone Grows a Beard" episode. Colby and Charlie had shaved by the next episode, but Larry kept the stubble.
• Once Upon a Time:
  • Regina in Storybrooke begins with Power Hair. In Season 2 when she attempts a Heel–Face Turn her hair grows a little longer. When she sides with her evil mother, the hair is back to its shorter length. When she undergoes a Heel–Face Turn for good, her hair grows with it. By the end of Season 4 when she's fully on the side of good, her hair is much longer. In Season 6 when she actually separates her evil self into a separate entity, her hair is back to its shorter length in Season 1.
  • Emma begins the series as an Agent Scully with curly hair. As she's exposed to the nature of the curse, her hair is worn straighter.
  • Ursula the sea witch had dark hair in her youth when she was good. Now that she's evil, her hair is now blonde.
• At the start of season five of One Tree Hill, Nathan grows a shoulder-length mane and unkempt stubble to symbolise his dark emotional state, and later shaves/gets a haircut to signify that he's no longer tempted to throw himself into his mansion pool.
• Joannie Trotter changed her hairstyle four times: the first time was in the pilot episode of Only Fools and Horses Prequel Rock and Chips, modelled after Marilyn Monroe; the second time was in the second episode "Five Gold Rings", modelled after Elizabeth Taylor; and the third and fourth times were in the third episode "The Frog and the Pussycat", modelled after Audrey Hepburn and Jane Fonda.
• Person of Interest. After a Happy Flashback, we Smash Cut to our protagonist John Reese as he is now, drunk and wearing a Beard of Sorrow in the subway, though still badass enough to take down some thugs who try to attack him. After deciding to take Finch's offer, Reese shaves his permastubble, cuts his hair, and puts on a nice suit, greatly confusing the thugs when he runs into them later.
• In The Pillars of the Earth miniseries, Prior Philip is shown with a beard during the final scene to show that a great deal of time has passed and he is much older.
• Power Rangers:
  • In Power Rangers: Dino Thunder, the two Evil Minions are fighter Zeltrax, able to take on any Ranger, singularly or all together (as long as one isn't Tommy) and monster-maker Elsa, who is typically put out of a fight if she gets hit once. Then Zeltrax "dies." Then Elsa changes her hair. Suddenly, she's able to handle the entire team without breaking a sweat.
  • While Astronema from Power Rangers in Space has plenty of non-expository hairstyle changes, the scene where she sheds her long, curly, royal blue wig (and heavy makeup) pretty much scream out that she's no longer the Big Bad but The Hero's cute sister. Then she dresses up as Astronema again, with a very, very short tomato-red bowl cut, and becomes a creepy and even more bastardly Emotionless Girl, thanks to brainwashing cybernetic implants—although more dramatic in this case was the fact that pre-implants Karone-disguised-as-Astronema wore very colorful makeup, while post-implants Astronema was ghostly pale.
• Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin: Having associated straight hair with beauty and success in ballet, Faran stops straightening her hair after accepting that she will have to take a break from ballet for her recovery, embracing her natural hair and that she can only be the best version of herself which is good enough.
• In Primeval, Connor and Abby went through this while they were stuck in the Cretaceous. Connor sprouted a beard, while Abby's normally short hair became unkempt and neck-length. Connor lost the beard, but Abby's hair remained long.
• Sabrina the Teenage Witch:
  • Zelda's hair is short in Season 1 but grows out in Season 2. This also marks a shift in characterization; initially portrayed as a stern disciplinarian, Season 2 softens her and plays her status as the Only Sane Man for laughs - giving her much more Not So Above It All moments.
  • Harvey's hair shortens in Season 2 when he and Sabrina decide to take a break from their relationship. At the start of Season 3 when they agree to go steady again, it's longer.
  • Sabrina's hair turns red in Season 5 showing how she's experimenting with life in college (and her actress Melissa Joan Hart had done the same).
  • Josh spending a summer in Prague - and Sabrina worrying that he's changed - is marked by him growing facial hair.
  • Roxie's hair growing to waist length across the series also matches her softening and becoming a better friend to Sabrina.
• Scrubs:
  • One episode sees Elliot Reid have her long blonde hair cut into a short, layered style with a fringe (or "bangs"). She then marches into Sacred Heart dressed in black, finally able to tell people what to do. Her badassery is also emphasised in the haircut montage, in which she rips her poster of a kitten. However, she tapes it together shortly after. Some things never change. It's shown that maintaining the look is hard for her but by Season 4 she's found a balance.
  • The season seven premiere is only a week or so after the season six finale, but either a chance to use this trope is avoided or Dr. Cox's hair started growing REALLY fast. It had barely grown out from his head-shaving breakdown, but became a full head of sproingy locks in the new season.
• Parodied on Seinfeld. Season 9 opens with George, Jerry, and Kramer all sporting moustaches, explained as George (out of work and extremely bored) having suggested they grow them to take "a vacation from ourselves". All three of them quickly decide they hate the moustaches and shave them off less than five minutes after the start of the episode.
• Sherlock:
  • John Watson devoted the years following Sherlock's apparent suicide to growing a Moustache of Grief. It is magnificent.
  • In "The Empty Hearse", Sherlock has gained bedraggled long hair and a beard due to being held captive by Serbian terrorists. After his rescue, we cut to a scene where John is being criticised for his incredibly unflattering moustache by Mrs Hudson, who tells him that he can't escape middle age. We then cut straight back to Sherlock lying in an impromptu barber's chair in Mycroft's office, being shaved with a straight razor and having his hair restored to the same style he wore in previous seasons while telling Mycroft that he has no interest in reaching middle age himself. This is all obviously done to highlight the differences in their attitude - John is trying to move on, even if it doesn't suit him, while Sherlock cannot move on and sees no reason why anyone might want to.
  • Later that episode, despite ignoring large amounts of criticism of his moustache, John eventually shaves it off because Sherlock Scanned his fiancée Mary and determined that she secretly hates it. John attempts to explain to her later that he shaved it for her benefit, but both Mary and the audience know it's because Sherlock was the one who suggested he do so.
  • When Sherlock has been living for months in a squat doing heroin, he grows a rubbish beard and wears his curly hair in a neglected mop. Even though he cleans himself up afterwards and gets his life back on track, as indicated by him reverting to his usual clean-shaven look, he only starts wearing his hair in the tidy, flowing style he used to at the point when the audience knows for sure that he'd only been doing it as part of a cover, and not because he's succumbed to his junkie impulses again.
• Spartacus: Blood and Sand:
  • Agron in Season 1 sported long braids. His brother Duro is killed in the finale, and in the Season 2 premiere he has now cropped his hair. It's not explained why, but it does coincide with him taking a more prominent role in the resistance.
  • Crixus begins the prequel series as a recently forced slave, and sports shaggy long-hair and a beard. After he becomes the champion gladiator, his hair is shorn into a military-type haircut. As the seasons progress, it grows out longer to reflect his freedom, until Season 3 where it resembles a more grizzled version of his original long hair and beard, showing his maturity and return to his roots.
  • Naevia is first introduced with her hair usually tied up, and only being worn down as her romance with Crixus blossomed. It's all cut off in a Traumatic Haircut by a jealous Lucretia, and she's not found until months later in Season 2 when it's still growing back. She has become a proper Dark Action Girl by Season 3, where it is now longer but worn in various styles of braids.
  • The prequel series shows that Lucretia's decision to start wearing red wigs was to honour her friend Gaia who was cruelly murdered by Titus. This marks the start of her Face–Heel Turn into becoming one of the villains of the parent series.
• On Stargate SG-1, Daniel's hair goes from long hair similar to what he had in the movie to much shorter styles as he becomes more action-oriented around his military friends. Teal'c, usually shaven bald, grows hair in later seasons as he becomes more like Earth humans. And time-travel or alternate-universe episodes often featured wigs to give clues about how the alternate character is different — for example, alternate-universe versions of Carter get conspicuously long, flowing hair in any world where she didn't join the military.
• In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
  • Sisko shaves his head and grows a beard in order to mark his promotion from Commander to Captain in the fourth season. Behind the scenes, this was also a concession to Avery Brooks, who was prevented from shaving his head when he first landed the part so that he would look distinct from his previous character Hawk from the Spenser adaptation "Spenser: For Hire."
  • Kira Nerys, who spends six seasons with close-cropped hair.◊ During the seventh season, after her Relationship Upgrade with Odo, her hair becomes much sleeker and more feminine.◊
  • In "In Purgatory's Shadow" when it's revealed that Bashir is in the Dominion internment camp (and thus, the version of him on the station is a Changeling), Garak, Worf and the audience instantly know he's been in there for a while from his heavy stubble and looser, curlier hair.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation:
  • The Trope Namer for Growing the Beard, William Riker, did this in the second season to show that he had outgrown simply being a Kirk clone, and this is also when the show was thought to have hit its stride.
  • There is also Deanna Troi, who had two of these early in the series. In response to viewer complaints that her character was too peppy and cheerleader like in the pilot, her hair was worn in a Prim and Proper Bun (along with her adopting most of the corresponding personality traits, most notably being much more emotionally reserved) for the remainder of the first season. After it was decided that her character had gone too far in the opposite direction (becoming too reserved), the second season had her Letting Her Hair Down, which stuck for the rest of the series and the four subsequent movies.
  • In the first 2 seasons of TNG, Worf wears short hair to contrast himself from other Klingons that have Wild Hair, showing he's much more stoic than them. Then, from seasons 3 through part of season 6, Worf starts wearing longer hair◊, which was also when he started connecting more with other Klingons, although this particular hairstyle drew humorous comparisons to Prince Valiant. Starting in season 6's "Face Of The Enemy", Worf starts wearing his hair in a Sailor's Ponytail, which he sticks with through the rest of the franchise.
• Star Trek: Discovery:
  • Michael Burnham's hair has changed repeatedly throughout the series. In flashbacks to her childhood and when she first joins Starfleet we see her wearing a Vulcan-esque bowl cut, which makes sense given that she grew up immersed in Vulcan culture; in the first two-part story "The Vulcan Hello" when she's a lieutenant in Starfleet she has a more human hairstyle, more relaxed than the Vulcan cut but still worn straight; fast forward a few months following her imprisonment for mutiny after the first story, and for the rest of the first two seasons, she wears a more natural short curly cut. In season three she grows this out, first into a longer spiral bob and then into box braids while waiting for the Discovery to arrive in the 32nd century.
• Star Trek: Picard: On Star Trek: Voyager, Seven of Nine wore her hair in a French twist after being liberated from the Borg, distinctly human though still reserved. On Picard, she has Wild Hair, showing her more in touch with her humanity by this time.
• In Supernatural, Castiel grows a beard while in purgatory and Kevin Tran gets a short hair cut after being captured by Crowley. Similarly, when Dean is posessed by Michael the most evident change is that his usual casual brush cut is now combed, parted, and slicked back. When we see it without the newsboy cap, anyway.
• Super Sentai:
  • In the second arc of Tensou Sentai Goseiger, three of the heroes get one: Moune gets a bob in place of her wavy shoulder-length hair, Agri's hair becomes shorter and light brown instead of blond, and Eri stops wearing a ponytail (although it had returned by the end of the show.) This made Moune look less like her yellow ranger predecessor Kotoha, who had a similar hairstyle.
  • In most team-ups, the previous year's team will have different hairstyles, known as "Vs Hair" in the fandom. This serves the effect of making them looking like the more experienced team, since the actors usually change hairstyles after the end of the show in an effort to prove they can do more "grown-up" roles.
• In The Thick of It, Malcolm's hair is white in the final season. This was Peter Capaldi's own hair, but was left in as it reflected how the character had experienced a mental breakdown before then - it serves to remind the audience that even though he's functional now, the experience has left him permanently scarred.
• In the Korean Drama Twinkle Twinkle, the two female leads change their hair length/curl/color ever time they make an important decision. Every. Single. Time.
• In Twin Peaks, Leland Palmer suffers some serious Wangst when he finds out his daughter Laura has been murdered. After he kills Jacques Renault (one of the murder suspects) at the end of the first season, his hair turns white and he acts unnaturally cheerful. It also signifies that he's possessed by Killer BOB, the show's Big Bad.
• In Veronica Mars, the sweet, naïve Veronica of years past is recognizable not just by the blur-effect and blue-green lens used to indicate flashbacks, but also by her long, golden, angelic hair. Pre-season one she becomes disillusioned and shortens her hair significantly. She starts growing it out in season 2 and it's quite long by the end of the year, and remains that way next season, which may be symbolic of her softening up a little with having solved Lily's murder; alternatively, Kristen Bell may have wanted to wear her hair long. However, there is a certain innocence in her earlier long hair that her later long hair lacks — her earlier hair is straight as an arrow, her later hair very wavy and even curly.
• Vikings: About two decades pass across the first four seasons, so some male characters change their hairstyles to show the passage of time. Ragnar crops off his mohawk/braid and eventually shaves his head bald while also steadily growing out his beard. Floki's hair also gets sparser and his beard longer, until he too is bald and long-bearded. Meanwhile, Bjorn grows a braid and a beard to achieve a look similar to Ragnar's youthful style, showing that Bjorn is taking his father's place.
• Xena: Warrior Princess - Gabrielle is a Technical Pacifist Action Girl with long Red Hair. In season 4 she becomes an Actual Pacifist following an involuntary haircut and then falling under the influence of Crystal Dragon Jesus Eli. Although in the immortal words of Monty Python, "she got better."
• On The X-Files, Scully's usually short hair is grown out during Mulder's abduction of season eight and gets even longer in his absence of season nine. She retains this long hair though revival seasons, until the mid-point of season eleven when she cuts it short again.

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