Cliffhanger

In practice

A cliffhanger ends at the worst possible moment for the character and the best possible moment for the storyteller. Instead of resolving the question a scene has raised, it cuts away just as the danger peaks or a secret comes out, leaving the audience with a question strong enough to bring them back for the next scene, episode or installment.

The name is often traced to Thomas Hardy's serialized novel A Pair of Blue Eyes, published in installments in 1872 and 1873, in which one installment leaves a character hanging from a cliff. Silent film serials such as The Perils of Pauline made the device famous on screen, ending each chapter with the heroine in danger. Today it's most common in television, where it drives viewers past commercial breaks, through episodes and across seasons.

A cliffhanger works because people want to close open questions. The device holds back a resolution the audience has been made to care about, and the stronger the stakes, the stronger the pull. But it creates a promise: the next part must resolve the moment fairly. A cliffhanger that's undone by a trick, such as a dream or a cheat the audience couldn't have seen, can damage trust in the whole story.

A cliffhanger at an act break

The scene builds a question, who is inside and what they want, and cuts away the instant it becomes urgent. In a television script this would sit at an act break, holding the audience through the commercials. The next act has to answer it fairly, using what the audience has already seen.

Types of cliffhangers

The most familiar cliffhanger is physical danger: a character trapped, falling, held at gunpoint or caught in a disaster as the scene ends. It's direct and visual, which is why film serials relied on it. Its weakness is that audiences know the hero will probably survive, so the suspense has to come from how they escape and what it will cost them.

A revelation cliffhanger ends on new information that changes everything, such as a betrayal, a hidden identity or a discovery about the past. It often hits harder than physical danger, because it raises questions the audience can't answer by assuming the hero survives. A decision cliffhanger ends just before a character makes an impossible choice, leaving the audience to wonder which way they'll go.

Cliffhangers also differ by scale. In television, an act-out is the small cliffhanger before each commercial break, an episode ending pulls viewers into the next episode, and a season finale cliffhanger has to hold them for months. In streaming, where the next episode starts automatically, episodes are often built to end on a hook that makes viewers keep watching.

Famous cliffhangers in film and TV

The Empire Strikes Back ends with Han Solo frozen in carbonite and carried off by Boba Fett, and with Luke reeling from Darth Vader's claim to be his father. The film resolves its immediate battle but leaves both questions open, giving audiences three years to wonder before Return of the Jedi. Few sequels have ended on a stronger pair of unresolved questions.

The 1980 season finale of Dallas ended with J.R. Ewing shot by an unseen attacker, and the question Who shot J.R.? became a cultural phenomenon over that summer. When the answer aired in November, it drew one of the largest audiences in American television history, showing how a well-built cliffhanger can turn a season break into an event.

Back to the Future resolves its story completely and then adds a cliffhanger in its final moments: Doc Brown returns and tells Marty they have to go to the future because something has to be done about his kids. The joke works as a closing button, and it became the opening of the sequel, which picks up from exactly that scene.

How to write a cliffhanger

Cut at the peak of the question, not after its answer. Build the scene so that tension rises to a single unresolved point, then end there. If the scene shows the outcome, even partly, the pull is gone. Every element before the cut should sharpen the question the audience will carry forward, such as who's behind the door or what the character will choose.

Make the payoff honest. The next scene or episode has to resolve the cliffhanger with logic the audience can accept, ideally using something already set up. A cheat, where the danger turns out never to have been real or the hero escapes through a device we've never seen, makes the audience feel tricked and weakens every later cliffhanger. Plan the resolution when you write the setup.

Match the cliffhanger to the form. In a TV script, place cliffhangers at act breaks and episode endings, where the structure expects them. In a feature film, resolve the main story before the end, because an audience that has paid for a whole story expects one; save cliffhangers for secondary questions or a final beat that opens a door without leaving the main plot unfinished.

Common questions