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  • 21 Jump Street: In the first season, the 7th episode revealed that Captain Jenko has died after being hit by a drunk driver and Captain Adam Fuller then takes over.
  • 24
    • Season 1: Jack saves his family. A second hitman arrives.
    • Season 2: Syed Ali is captured.
    • Season 3: Amador kills Ramon Salazar and escapes to LA with the virus.
    • Season 4: Marwan's next target is Air Force One.
    • Season 5: Terrorists release nerve gas into CTU.
    • Season 6: Jack discovers the terrorist plot to use unmanned drones with nuclear ordinance.
    • Season 7: Juma holds the White House hostage.
    • Season 8: Terrorists disable CTU so they can smuggle a dirty bomb into New York.
  • The 100:
    • Season 1: The Culling occurs (1x05), the Ark is virtually destroyed (1x09)
    • Season 2: Finn massacres a village (2x05), then is killed (2x08)
  • Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.:
    • Season 1: HYDRA is back, and Grant Ward -who'd been on Coulson's team since the pilot- is one of them.
    • Season 2: Skye and Raina are Inhumans, and Skye is the Marvel Cinematic Universe equivalent of Daisy Johnson, AKA Quake.
    • Season 3: Coulson kills Ward, whose corpse is possessed by Hive, allowing it to escape its prison to Earth.
    • Season 4: Coulson and most of his crew have been replaced by Life Model Decoys, and Daisy and Simmons need to plug into the Framework to get them out. Also, the Playground blows up.
  • Angel
    • Season 1 - Doyle dies. Wesley joins Angel Investigations. Kate discovers Angel is a vampire.
    • Season 2 - Angel allows Darla and Drusilla to kill Holland Manners and a bunch of Wolfram & Hart lawyers. Fires his crew. Defeats Darla and Drusilla. His ex-crew decides to form their own agency. Lindsey and Lilah, who survived the massacre, are promoted.
    • Season 3 - Cordelia becomes half-demon. Groo returns.
    • Season 4 - Angel becomes Angelus again.
    • Season 5 - Cordelia and Fred die and Illyria takes over Fred's body. Through Retcon, we discover later that it was here that Cordy showed Angel The Circle of the Black Thorn.
  • Arrow
    • Season 1 - Oliver is trounced by the Dark Archer, Malcolm Merlyn.
    • Season 2 - Malcolm is still alive, and Thea's biological father. Sebastian Blood announces his candidacy for mayor. His boss is Slade Wilson. Barry Allen gets into a Freak Lab Accident.
    • Season 3 - Thea, under mind control, killed Sara; Oliver, attempting to take the fall to protect Thea, is killed by Ra's Al Ghul.
    • Season 4 - Oliver discovers he's got a son from a previous affair, but doesn't tell Felicity. The two then get engaged, only for her to get gunned down by Damien Darhk's mercenaries.
  • Trope Namer Babylon 5 had one in every season but its fourth - that season was wall to wall arc episodes and no one really stands out. The others were:
    • Season One's "Signs and Portents"
    • Season Two's "The Coming of Shadows"
    • Season Three's "Severed Dreams"
    • Season Five's "Phoenix Rising"
  • Band of Brothers - The Breaking Point: almost half of the main characters in Easy Company are dead or maimed by the end of the episode, and the company gets a new commander.
  • Banshee - The Rabbit finds out where Lucas is. Lucas and Carrie have sex.
  • Bones tends to have several important events happen around the middle of its seasons:
    • Season 2: Bones and Hodgins are kidnapped by The Gravedigger (ep. 9), Bones's father Max returns (ep. 11), Serial Killer Howard Epps escapes from prison (ep. 12).
    • Season 3: The cannibalistic Gormogon killer returns after the team took its silver skeleton.
    • Season 4: The Gravedigger takes Booth hostage.
    • Season 6: The Gravedigger is shot dead by rogue sniper Jacob Broadsky.
    • Season 7: Genius hacker Christopher Pelant is introduced in ep. 6. The following episode, Bones and Booth's daughter is born.
    • Season 8: Pelant returns from Egypt and dumps a corpse above Hodgins and Angela's bed.
    • Season 9: Bones gets obsessed with the elusive "Ghost Killer".
    • Season 11: An explosive inside a corpse leaves Hodgins paralyzed (ep. 10), and the Puppeteer serial killer is introduced (ep. 13).
  • Breaking Bad episode 5 - Walt turns down his friend's money and keeps cooking meth to pay for his chemo.
    • Season 5: Walter quits cooking, but soon after that Hank figures out he's Heisenberg.
  • Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Season 4 - Gina gets hit by a bus.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
    • Season 1note : Angel is a vampire with a soul.
    • Season 2: Angel loses his soul and becomes Angelus.
    • Season 3: Faith accidentally kills the Deputy Mayor.
    • Season 4: Buffy and Riley discover each other's secrets. Spike discovers his chip doesn't prevent him from harming demons.
    • Season 5: Glory is a god. Dawn discovers she is the Key. Ben and Glory are the same person.
    • Season 6: Buffy finally confronts The Trio.
    • Season 7: Buffy kills the Turok-Han.
  • Burn Notice
    • Season 1: Michael learns about a dossier which is what got him burned.
    • Season 2: Carla's operation she has spent the season forcing Michael to help her with goes to hell. He is almost killed by a bomb.
    • Season 3: Michael's CIA contact is killed for looking into Strickler.
    • Season 4: Simon's bible is stolen. Michael is left for dead.
    • Season 5: Team Weston is blackmailed into helping rebuild the burned spies organization.
    • Season 6: Card accidentally killed Nate.
    • Season 7: Michael successfully infiltrates James' organization.
  • Charmed
    • Season 1: Piper and Phoebe vie for the attention of Leo
    • Season 2, episode 8: We find out how their mother died, as well as the introduction of Sam. They had an affair to produce Paige in Season 4.
    • Season 3, episode 8: Phoebe is forced to vanquish Cole after the sisters find out that he's a demon. She fakes it.
    • Season 4: Piper hallucinates that she is in a mental asylum and nearly gives up the sisters' powers. The following episode also qualifies as an "8th Episode Major Character Death" as Belthazor is vanquished.
    • Season 5: Barbas returns.
    • Season 6, episode 8: Wyatt is found to be heir of Excalibur.
    • Season 7: Leo becomes an Avatar.
    • Season 8: The aforementioned Sam returns.
  • Chuck
    • Season 1: Morgan and Anna hook up. Tommy's first appearance. Chuck and Sarah kiss. Bryce is alive.
    • Season 2: Chuck downloads a FULCRUM made Intersect.
    • Season 3: Chuck become a real spy.
    • Season 4: Volkoff is defeated. Ellie gives birth. Chuck proposes to Sarah.
    • Season 5: Last appearance of Shaw. And Sarah has a baby (sister)!
  • Cobra Kai
    • Season 1 - Miguel's fight with Kyler goes viral and helps increase Cobra Kai's membership. Robby works at Daniel's dealership. Daniel takes up karate once again.
    • Season 2 - Kreese goads Hawk and some other Cobra Kai students into vandalizing the Miyagi-Do dojo. Disgusted by this act, half of Cobra Kai defects to Miyagi-Do as a result.
    • Season 3 - Daniel and Chozen reconcile. Johnny proves that there is a chance that Miguel can still walk. A fight between Miyagi-Do and Cobra Kai convinces Amanda how dangerous Kreese really is.
    • Season 4 - The alliance between Miyagi-Do and Eagle Fang dissolves.
    • Season 5 - Kreese is revealed to be undermining Silver from prison.
  • Community
    • Season 1 - Jeff & Prof. Slater become a couple.
    • Season 2 - Chang reveals Shirley's baby might be his.
    • Season 3 - Shirley's idea for a sandwich shop at the cafeteria is sold to Subway.
    • Season 4 - Chang is faking his "Changnesia".
    • Season 5 - Jeff's feelings for Britta reawaken.
  • The Crowned Clown: Haxan kills the real king.
  • Dexter
    • Season 1 - Miami Metro thinks they have the Ice Truck Killer, but Dexter finds out it's the wrong guy.
    • Season 2 - Lila, believed to be just eccentric, turns out to be positively insane as she burns down her apartment to keep Dexter from leaving her.
    • Season 3 - Dexter helps family friend Camilla kill herself as she is dying of cancer
    • Season 4 - Dexter accidentally kills an innocent man
    • Season 5 - Dexter and Lumen discover the identities of Lumen's captors/rapists
    • Season 6 - Dexter discovers Trinity's son is killing using his father's MO
    • Season 7 - Deb relents and asks Dexter to kill Hannah, who Dexter is presently sleeping with.
    • Season 8 - Dexter, Deb and Evelyn kill the fake season's Big Bad. Hannah returns to Miami.
  • Doctor Who
    • Episode eight of classic Season 23 ("The Trial of a Time Lord") has the sudden death of companion Peri, sending the Doctor into a Heroic BSoD.
    • Interestingly, despite normally having 13-episode seasons in the revived series, Episode 7 is often the least impactful episode of the season, except...
    • Series 1, "The Long Game" — The new companion, Adam, is rather quickly fired for stealing future-tech, and Satellite 5 (the stage for the finale) is introduced. The episode's title doesn't even get dropped until the finale, which is fitting, given what trope it named.
    • Series 6, "A Good Man Goes to War" — River Song's identity as Amy and Rory's daughter is revealed.
      • Although thanks to British Brevity, the seventh episode (where this is revealed) is also the mid-season finale.
    • Series 7 is also split, and although it's not quite halfway through, the part one finale, "The Angels Take Manhatten", ends with Amy and Rory getting Trapped in the Past, with the Doctor having no way of getting to them. The Christmas Episode, "The Snowmen", that aired in between the two parts has Jenna Coleman showing up again as Clara, who then dies, just like Oswin. Then we find out that Clara's full name is Clara Oswin Oswald, and there is another Clara in present day.
  • Dollhouse — we find out that Caroline was investigating Rossum (the company that owns the Dollhouse) before she became Echo.
  • Eerie, Indiana — "The Lost Hour" ends with the revelation that Marshall will never escape the craziness of Eerie.
  • The Flash (2014):
    • Season 1: The Reverse-Flash is "Dr. Wells".
    • Season 2: Zoom uses the fact that he's holding Harry Wells' daughter hostage in order to force him to steal Barry's speed for him.
    • Season 3: Alchemy is Julian Albert, and he has been possessed by Savitar.
    • Season 4: The Thinker uses his chair to Body Surf into one of the new metahumans, and uses his original body to frame Barry for his own murder.
    • Season 5: Nora West-Allen is secretly working with Eobard Thawne in the future.
  • On Fringe, episode 4 of any given season is a game-changer.
    • Season 1, "The Arrival": The first Observer-centric episode, and also the episode that marks Peter's transition from the Agent Scully to a full-on member of the team.
    • Season 2, "Momentum Deferred": The Charlie shapeshifter is outed, Olivia and the audience learn what William Bell's mission is, and the Big Bad of season 2 is introduced.
    • Season 3, "Do Shapeshifters Dream of Electric Sheep?": A US Senator is outed as a shapeshifter, the Big Bad of season 2 is killed, Walter figures out how the shapeshifters work, and Peter and Fauxlivia begin a relationship.
    • Season 4, "Subject 9": The first cortexiphan-centric episode in the new timeline, Walter finally leaves the lab, and Peter returns.
    • Season 5, "The Bullet That Saved the World": The team resolve to use previous Fringe events to fight the Observers, Broyles is revealed to be a resistance leader, and Etta is killed.
  • Game of Thrones:
    • Season 1: King Robert decides to have Daenerys killed, He and Viserys die, Eddard is arrested.
    • Season 2: Melisandre's creature kills Renly, Theon captures Winterfell, and Daenerys' dragons are stolen.
    • Season 3: Lord Karstark is executed. Robb decides to capture Casterly Rock with help from House Frey. The Hound captures Arya. Tyrion is engaged to Sansa.
    • Season 4: Sansa and Littlefinger arrive at the Eeyrie where it is discovered that it was Baelish who had Jon Arryn killed, Daenerys decides to stay in Slaver's Bay, Tyrion demands trial by combat.
    • Season 5: Stannis marches for Winterfell.
    • Season 6: The Three Eyed Raven, The Children of the Forest, Summer and Hodor are killed by the White Walkers.
    • Season 7: Arya comes home to Winterfell. Daenerys ambushes and crushes the Lannister army with the help of Drogon and the Dothraki horde.
    • Season 8: Arya kills the Night King ending the Battle of the Long Night ends with the death of several characters such as Jorah, Edd, Theon, and Melisandre.
  • The Good Place:
    • Season 1: Eleanor confesses to the whole neighborhood that she shouldn't be there.
    • Season 2: Episode 7 as aired.note  Shawn's back.
    • Season 3: Episode 10 as aired. Chidi and Eleanor kiss, Jason learns about Janet's past marriage to him, Michael learns that no one has gotten into the Good Place, and the episode ends with the group having arrived in the real Good Place.
  • Gotham: The end of "Penguin's Umbrella" reveals that Cobblepot has been working for Falcone ever since he was outed as a snitch in the pilot, and everything he's done since then has been to aid Falcone in weakening and eliminating his enemies.
  • H₂O: Just Add Water:
    • Season 1: Zane is saved from drowning by Emma. His need to find out how he survived turns him into a mermaid hunter.
    • Season 2: The Moon Pool is discovered by Charlotte.
    • Season 3: Lewis departs from the show.
  • Head of the Class: The original premise had Charlie as a substitute teacher to a "gifted" class. Episode 6 featured the return of the original teacher and a permanent change in Charlie's status — specifically, since this wasn't the last episode, he becomes permanent. The show does act as though he will leave until the literal last minute of the episode.
  • Healer episode 10: Mun-sik is tapped as the new mayoral candidate. Jeung-ho discovers that his father was murdered. Jeong-sin contacts Healer. Mun-ho begins to suspect that "Bong-su" is Healer.
  • Heroes second season. It takes until the 7th episode for all the plot threads to finally come together and make sense.
    • Claire's true parentage is revealed in the 14th episode of the (23-episode) first season. (It's a First-Episode Twist that she's adopted, but not the fact that Nathan Petrelli is her biological father.)
  • Homeland Episode 7 was a game changer that not only brought Carrie's and (most of) Brody's secrets out into the open but revealed that Brody's fellow POW Tom Walker was alive and working for the terrorists.
  • Hotel del Luna episode 8: Chan-sung stops Man-wol from harming his girlfriend for killing her brother in their past life. Chan-sung wakes up to find that Man-wol and the hotel have both vanished.
  • House of Cards (US) Episode 6 ends the education reform arc, episode 7 gets Russo's bid for governor into full swing.
  • House of the Dragon:
    • Season 1: Alicent and Ser Criston Cole turn against Princess Rhaenyra.
  • How I Met Your Mother
    • Season 1: Ted meets Victoria and Robin's feelings for Ted are revealed (this occurs in the 13th episode of the season, but since the season was 22 episodes long, this is only just over halfway through).
    • Season 2: Marshall and Lily get back together.
    • Season 3: Marshall and Lily buy a new apartment.
    • Season 4: Marshall and Lily first consider having children.
    • Season 5: Barney and Robin break up.
    • Season 6: Zoey appears. Also, in episode 13 (around halfway through the season), Marshall's father dies.
    • Season 7: Robin finds out that she's infertile.
    • Season 8: Barney and Robin get engaged.
    • Season 9: Marshall (finally) arrives to Farhampton Inn. Ted unknowingly saves The Mother's band.
  • It's About Time: Halfway through the first (and only) season, the astronauts repair their space ship and travel forward in time, only to find some of the cave people had stowed away on board, effectively reversing the show's Fish out of Water premise.
  • Jericho (2006): Gray returns with news that the federal capitol has been destroyed. He also becomes suspicious of Robert Hawkins.
  • Kamen Rider:
  • Leonardo Season 2: The Duke is killed at the very end of episode 6; episode 7 sees Florence move to a war footing, while Piero convinces Leo he needs to build weapons to protect the city.
  • Life
    • Season 1: Crews discovers a link between Dani's father and the Bank of LA shootout.
    • Season 2: Jack Reese is working for a Greater-Scope Villain.
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power:
    • Season 1: The origins of the Orcs is revealed (they are former Elves from Beleriand and enslaved by Morgoth), Halbrand accepts his role as the king of the Southlands and Orodruin erupts, thus, creating Mordor.
  • Maria Clara at Ibarra (Netflix version): Klay tells Maria Clara that they are characters in a book.
  • The Mentalist: While the show usually introduces a Game Changer with a season finale, the murder of Todd Johnson in season three's ninth episode "Red Moon" kicks off a plot to uncover Red John's mole in the CBI that isn't resolved until the season finale. Season six ups the ante further by killing off the Big Bad in episode eight, "Red John."
  • Missing (2012): The abduction of Rebecca's son Michael has something to do with her late husband Paul. She has an encounter with a hitman she may have known in the past.
  • Moonlight (2007): marked the reappearance of Mick's supposedly dead wife, as a human.
  • Mr. Queen: Hwa-jin believes that So-yong had her lady-in-waiting killed. So-yong's attraction to the King begins to affect Bong-hwa.
  • Mystery Science Theater 3000: In Mitchell (episode 12 out of 24 in season 5), Joel escapes the Satellite of Love, and gets replaced by Mike.
  • New Girl: Nick Love, and Schmidt get into a fight. This is the first time we see drama in the show.
    • Season 2: Nick and Jess kiss for the first time in "Cooler", also known as the series' biggest Wham Episode.
  • Nikita
    • Season 1: Nikita and Amanda's first time face to face. Alex becomes a full time Division agent by killing Thom.
    • Season 2: Alex returns to Nikita.
    • Season 3: Ari turns himself in.
  • Once Upon a Time:
    • Season 1 Episode 7: Regina remembers the Enchanted Forest, has somehow kept her collection of hearts from those she enslaved, and kills Graham.
    • Season 2 Episode 11: An outsider crashes literally into Storybrooke.
    • Season 3 Episode 11: Regina reverses the curse, thus eliminating Storybrooke, and everyone goes back to the Enchanted Forest... except for Emma and Henry, who stay and are given new memories. Rumple kills himself in order to kill Peter. And at the very end of the episode, Hook arrives at Emma's house announcing that something terrible has happened. She, of course, doesn't recognize him and shuts the door on his face.
    • Season 4: Ingrid destroys herself and reverses the curse of Shattered Sight. Belle exiles Gold. He arrives in New York weeks later and meets Ursula.
  • Orphan Black:
    • Season 1: Helena makes contact with Sarah, the Neolution movement is revealed as the clone-makers, Paul is given the opportunity to sell out Sarah and chooses to remain loyal to her, Sarah leads Helena to Olivier, the cops restart their investigation from scratch and link Katja to Sarah and learn they resemble Beth.
    • Season 2: Rachel reunites with her father, she and Leekie have a showdown in DYAD and Leekie loses. Alison discovers that Vic is selling her out to Angela, so Felix and Sarah help her deal with him. Donnie discovers about the cloning experiment and Alison is finally able to confront him with everything on the table. Cosima discovers that Kira's cells are the cure for the clone disease and Sarah and Kira decide to help her. And Donnie confronts Leekie and accidentally kills him.
    • Season 3: Sarah has a dream vision of Beth that convinces her to seek the origin of the programs. The same genetic defect that attacks the Castor clones' brains is what causes the Sterility Plague in Ledas, only it's contagious to the women the Castor men sleep with. Sarah's immunity could be the cure for the Castors. Dr. Coady is doing research to weaponize the defect. Paul moves to shut down the research but gets double-crossed by his superiors. Felix terrorizes Rachel in an attempt to find Castor and Sarah. Paul helps Sarah escape captivity and confesses to her, "Beth wasn't the one I loved." He then blows himself up in a Heroic Sacrifice to destroy Coady's bio-weapon research. Helena comes back for Sarah.
  • Person of Interest:
    • Season 1: Carter finally meets Reese & Finch and begins working with them.
    • Season 2: Stanton uploads something into The Machine. Reese and Finch first encounter Decima.
    • Season 3: Carter takes down HR at the cost of her own life. The head of the Intelligence Support Activity reveals herself. There is a second Machine.
    • Season 4: Decima captures Shaw.
    • Season 5: Fusco discovers the bodies of the missing people he's tracking but he gets caught in a demolition. Shaw meets Samaritan (or rather it's avatar Gabriel).
  • Power Rangers:
    • Power Rangers in Space: Toward the middle of the season, Astronema discovers that her and the Red Ranger are long-lost siblings, and a couple episodes later, she defects to the side of good. Unfortunately, a very short time later, she is captured by Dark Specter and brainwashed into being even more evil than she was before. This lasts for the remainder of the season, until she's finally freed in the Grand Finale.
    • Power Rangers RPM: Episode 11 out of 32, "Doctor K", reveals the titular character's backstory and how she created the Big Bad Venjix in order to escape a government facility.
    • Power Rangers Dino Charge: Season 1, episode 11 out of 22, "Break Out", reveals that the golden figure trapped within Fury is actually Ivan the Gold Ranger, and not Tyler's father as had been suggested.
    • Power Rangers Ninja Steel: Episodes 8 and 9 work as the midseason finale and premier in season 2, and see the Rangers summarily trounced by Odious' new forces and perform a Secret Test of Character in order to obtain new powers—but more importantly, the figures testing them are revealed at the end to be previous Rangers, leading directly into the Milestone Celebration "Dimensions in Danger".
    • Power Rangers Beast Morphers: "The Cybergate Opens", midseason finale of season one, sees Nate become the Gold Ranger and Steel created as the Silver Ranger. The season 2 finale, "Secret Struggle", ends with the rangers discovering Evox possessing Mayor Daniels.
  • Pretty Little Liars does this on every mid-season finale:
    • Season 1: Hanna is ran over by a car and left for dead on the road. Emily, Spencer and Aria find her and all get a text from A: "she knew too much".
    • Season 2: The Liars are framed for murder by A and arrested by the police.
    • Season 3: Nathan is revealed to be Maya's killer, and tries to kill Emily and Paige. He shoots Caleb and is finally killed by Emily. Also, Toby is working for A.
      • Halloween special between season 3A and 3B: Garrett is killed. Byron is implied to be involved in Alison's murder.
    • Season 4: Alison is alive.
    • Season 5: Mona is killed by "A". ( Though we later find out she was just kidnapped.)
    • Season 6: Cece is A and killed Toby's mom.
    • Season 7: Noel and Jenna have been working with A and Mary is Spencer's mother.
  • Primeval: The seventh episode of series 4 (which like Doctor Who is the finale thanks to British Brevity) reveals that Matt Anderson is from a future Earth that is a sterile wasteland (except for a few lifeforms), and that he and his father came to the present to prevent the disaster that destroyed the Earth. Connor also finds out that the anomalies are growing more frequent.
  • Primeval: New World: The episode "Truth", while technically Episode 8, qualifies. It starts out reasonably normal with a Pachycephalosaurus coming through an anomaly. But then after that is quickly resolved, Evan starts having flashbacks of his wife's death, thanks to the contents of a sneeze from the Pachycephalosaurus. In the following chaos of him hunting down an Albertosaurus that isn't there, it is revealed that the frozen ARC soldier who saved Evan when his wife was killed is Mac from an alternate timeline. By the end of the episode, Ange has quit and it seems that Dylan is the only one left by Evans' side.
  • Quantum Leap (2022): Ben remembers his reason for working with Janis and leaping: it's not to find Sam Beckett, but to save Addison's life.
  • Revenge: Frank discovers the real Emily Thorne, whom Amanda Clarke switched identities with, and is stopped from revealing this to Victoria when "Amanda" kills him. In the wake of a disastrous silver anniversary party, Victoria kicks Conrad out of Grayson Manor.
  • Robin Hood
    • Series 1: Marian agrees to marry Gisborne.
    • Series 2: Marian's father Edward is killed and she joins Robin and the outlaws in the forest.
    • Series 3: Gisborne is outlawed after failing to carry out Prince John's orders.
  • Rome:
    • Season 1: Pompey is defeated and murdered.
    • Season 2: Octavian is made Consul and allies again with Mark Antony. Vorenus' children still harbor a grudge against him.
  • Sanctuary:
    • Season 1: Helen's history with John Druitt and the rest of the five is revealed; Henry is a werewolf.
    • Season 2: Big Bertha is mentioned for the first time.
    • Season 3: Introduces Adam Worth.
  • Sleepy Hollow: Crane meets Moloch face to face.
  • Smallville: Season 8 has been building up Doomsday as a briefly glimpsed but always mysterious serial killer of the kryptonite-fuels freaks of the week. Then, at Jimmy and Chloe's wedding, we see Doomsday, in the flesh, tear a bloody path right through the wedding party, seemingly kill Jimmy, throw away Clark with one punch, and kidnap Chloe, taking her to a corrupted Fortress of Solitude to be possessed by Brainiac. This marked the shows transition from freaks of the week to the more comic-booky villains and more conventional superhero fair.
  • Stranger Things:
    • Season 1: Hopper breaks into Hawkins Lab, and Jonathan discovers the Demogorgon.
    • Season 2: The Mind Flayer takes over Will, and Dustin's pet is a baby Demogorgon.
    • Season 3: The Mind Flayer possessing Billy throws off the Party's exorcism attempt, and almost kills all of them.
    • Season 4: Eleven must reawaken her powers with the help of Dr. Brennan who is not dead after all.
  • Supergirl (2015): Season 1 episode 7 reveals that Hank Henshaw is actually a disguise, his true identity is J'onn J'onzz, aka Martian Manhunter.
  • Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles season 2: Cromartie finds out where the Connors live.
  • Terriers
    • Season 1, episode 5: After spending the first part of the season trying to figure out the mystery about the Montague real estate development, Hank and Brit find a document that states there are toxic chemicals in the ground, only to end the episode with the discovery that the report is fake and the people bankrolling the development want people to think that the site is dangerous so the land can be marked uninhabitable.
  • Twin Peaks revealed the identity of Laura Palmer's killer (i.e. the entire premise of the show) rather haphazardly before even the halfway point of it's second season. Not exactly David Lynch n' Co.'s fault, though
  • The Vampire Diaries: Vicki's death in the first season.
    • Also, halfway through season 4, Silas is awaken from his eternal slumber by none other than Katherine, which kills Jeremy in the process.
    • And in the following episode, Elena switches off her humanity.
    • Season 5 "Death and the Maiden", Silas, Amara AND Qetsiyah are all killed and Bonnie is brought back to life, plus Katherine finds out that she's dying and can't be cured by vampire blood.
  • WandaVision: The Big Bad responsible for the events of the show is revealed, and it's Wanda's neighbor Agnes, who is actually a powerful witch named Agatha Harkness. The Reveal even comes complete with a Villain Song, titled "It Was ______ All Along".
  • White Collar:
    • Season 1: Corrupt FBI agent Garrett Fowler is introduced as an enemy targeting Neal and Peter. Neal's girlfriend Kate's captor is revealed to be an FBI agent. Peter meets with Kate in a hotel room to talk about Neal.
    • Season 2: Neal goes after Fowler (the top suspect for killing Kate) with a gun, and almost kills him, before Peter talks him down; however, Fowler is revealed be innocent after all. Mozzie cracks the music box code, but is shot by an assassin, who steals it from him.
    • Season 3: Neal and Mozzie pull a con on Peter and the FBI to hide the fact that they have the Nazi treasure; however, Keller (an old adversary of Neal's), who wants the treasure himself, kidnaps Peter's wife Elizabeth as leverage to get it.
    • Season 4: Neal and Peter learn that Sam Phelps, Ellen's old friend, is actually dead, and the man they know who's been assuming that identity is really Neal's father James.
    • Season 5: Tamer than the previous ones, but Peter finally finds out about Neal stealing the coins to get him out of jail, and realizes that Neal can't fully change his ways.
  • The Wire
    • Season 1: Orlando wants to sell dope on his own. The phones in the Pit get ripped up.
    • Season 2: Horseface is Identified as the one who makes the cargo containers disappear from the dock.
    • Season 3: Avon declares war on Marlo. Stringer's foray into legitimate enterprise starts hitting snags.
    • Season 4: Marlo puts a hit on Omar.
    • Season 5: Herc gives Marlo's phone number to police.
  • Xena: Warrior Princess
    • Season 1: Xena's relationship with Ares is revealed.
    • Season 2: Xena's past with Caesar is revealed.
    • Season 3: Gabrielle's daughter Hope kills Xena's son Solan.
    • Season 5: Xena gives birth to Eve. Hercules kills Zeus.
    • Season 6: We are first introduced to the Norse gods.

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