It’s tricky to pull off a season 1 finale, because you want to reward the viewers who came that far with some closure, but you also want to keep them on the hook, excited for a potential season 2. It’s not uncommon for season 1 finales to end on a big twist to keep audiences hooked for the next season. This can backfire if you save the coolest part of the show for a season 2 tease — like when The Acolyte introduced Darth Plagueis in its finale — because season 1 still has to be strong enough to earn a season 2 renewal.
The best season 1 finales strike the perfect balance between closure and anticipation. At the end of Lost‘s first season, the raft was finally launched, but they hit trouble on the high seas. At the end of The Bear‘s first season, Carmy finds a pantry full of tomato-drenched cash.
The Sopranos – Tony’s Mother Is Trying To Have Him Killed
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The Sopranos‘ season 1 finale sees Tony scrambling to stay one step ahead of Junior after realizing he’s trying to kill him. He has Junior’s co-conspirators killed, he kills the guy he suspects will be sent after him next, and he cooks up a gung-ho revenge plot against Junior himself.
But then, he hears something quite disturbing: the hit wasn’t Junior’s idea; Tony’s own mother is trying to have him killed. The FBI has a tape of Livia convincing Junior to put out the hit. After seeing Tony bend over backwards to look after his mother all season, this betrayal felt like a knife in the heart.
The Bear – Carmy Finds Mikey’s Money
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So much of The Bear‘s first season is focused on all the problems that Mikey left his surviving brother. After Mikey takes his own life, Carmy is forced to give up his classy culinary career to come and run a failing greasy-spoon sandwich shop in his hometown.
But in the season 1 finale, Carmy is surprised by a posthumous blessing from his brother: a bunch of mysterious wads of cash, hidden in cans of tomatoes. The excitement of what they could do with that money, paired with the skepticism about where it came from, made this a great hook for season 2.
Lost – Jack Gets The Hatch Open
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There were lots of shocking twists and turns in Lost‘s season 1 finale: Michael launches his raft, Walt gets kidnapped, we see a brief glimpse of the monster, and the Others are coming. But the one that got people talking all summer was the mystery of the hatch.
After several episodes of trying to get the hatch open with no luck, Jack and Locke finally blew it open in the season 1 finale. The possibilities of what could be in that hatch had the water coolers abuzz all summer, and the season 2 premiere didn’t disappoint with the revelation that there was a charming Scottish man living down there.
Mad Men – Don Is Too Late To Join His Family
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After using photos of his own family for a slide projector pitch, Don Draper has a change of heart. He’d previously abandoned his wife and kids to spend Thanksgiving without him, but after seeing all their precious memories back-to-back, he decides that he does want to go away with them.
But when he comes home to an empty house, he realizes he’s already missed them. This final image is symbolic of Don’s failures as a husband and father; it’s much too little, much too late.
Game Of Thrones – The Mother Of Dragons
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After losing her husband and her baby, Daenerys Targaryen was at her lowest point in Game of Thrones‘ season 1 finale. But after taking her dragon eggs into the flames of Drogo’s funeral pyre, Daenerys survives the night and emerges from the ashes with three freshly hatched baby dragons, as Jorah and everyone around him all kneel before her.
This is when Daenerys became “The Mother of Dragons.” It was the beginning of her empowering journey from helpless concubine to fearsome monarch.
Yellowjackets – Jackie Freezes To Death
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Yellowjackets‘ present-day timeline has been dragging down the show for the past couple of years (mainly because all the best characters have already died), but the dual-timeline structure was a great source of tension in season 1. The series splits its time between a girls’ soccer team stranded in the wilderness following a plane crash in the ’90s, and all the survivors trying to move on with their lives as middle-aged women in the 2020s.
Some of the teen characters in the ’90s timeline didn’t have an adult counterpart in the present-day timeline, foreshadowing a very grim fate. In the season 1 finale, we finally saw why there’s no adult Jackie in the future: she froze to death during a fight with Shauna.
Arcane – Jinx Fires The Rocket Launcher
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The first season of Arcane ends with a devastated, grief-stricken Jinx picking up a rocket launcher and firing it at the Piltover council, just as they’re about to begrudgingly approve Zaun’s independence. This whole thing could’ve had a nice, peaceful ending, but Jinx’s rageful irrationality ensures the rest of this story will be written in blood.
This is the midpoint of the entire saga; the point of no return. It affirms that Jinx is embracing her dark side; it’s essentially her supervillain origin story. While Vi maintains moral limits to how far she’s willing to go in the name of the revolution, this final twist proves there’s no line Jinx won’t cross. It was a haunting way to end the season; it left me in a stunned silence on my first watch.
The Boys – Becca Is Alive, Raising Homelander’s Son
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Until the season 1 finale, the biggest twist in The Boys was the revelation of exactly why Billy Butcher is so determined to kill the Homelander. Homelander sexually assaulted Butcher’s wife, Becca, who’s presumed dead, and he wants to kill Homelander to avenge her.
But in the season 1 finale, we find out that Becca is alive, and she’s raising the son that resulted from Homelander’s assault. This was a shocking dramatic development that raised the stakes even higher ahead of season 2.
Severance – Helly’s Outie Is The Daughter Of Lumon’s CEO
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The first season of Severance began with Helly’s innie waking up in the offices of Lumon Industries, with no idea who she is in the outside world. In a poetic full-circle moment, the season ended by revealing who Helly’s outie is: she’s the daughter of Lumon’s own CEO.
The day-to-day mysteries of Severance revolve around the tug-of-war between the innies and outies in each character’s fragmented psyche. But the overarching mystery is exactly what Lumon is up to, and the revelation of Helly’s identity was one of the biggest developments in that larger mytharc.
The Good Place – They’re In The Bad Place
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All throughout the first season of The Good Place, we’re led to believe that Eleanor Shellstrop has been mistakenly admitted into “The Good Place,” a secular stand-in for Heaven, when, really, based on the life she led, she should be in the Bad Place, or Hell. But in the season 1 finale, Eleanor realizes that she is, in fact, in the Bad Place.
This was an incredible rug-pull, because it completely recontextualized everything that came before it. When you rewatch The Good Place season 1, it’s like you’re watching a whole new show for the first time, because you have the context you didn’t have before. Like all the best twists, the Bad Place reveal was completely unexpected, but felt inevitable.
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