9 TV twists that fans guessed way in advance

From Digital Spy

It's increasingly difficult to keep a secret in television. Even if a big TV twist doesn't leak, chances are the hive mind of obsessive fans on Twitter and / or Reddit will guess an upcoming plot turn before you've delivered the Big Reveal.

Westworld had to scrap a plot planned for its second season (before the season had even begun!) because you lot had already predicted it. You smart alecks.

Sometimes it doesn't even take the sharpest wit to guess where our favourite TV show is going. Sometimes, a twist is so glaringly obvious that we've guessed it weeks, even months in advance.

This lot were absolute shockers, but not quite in the way that the writers intended.

1. Ash Tyler is an undercover Klingon - from Star Trek: Discovery

Episode 1.11 of the latest Trek series finally 'revealed' that Starfleet officer Lt Ash Tyler (Shazad Latif) was actually a Klingon who'd taken on human form.

But fans had been onto the ruse for months, noting how major Klingon character Voq had vanished from the show, and that the actor credited with playing him – 'Javid Iqbal' – had no other screen credits to his name. What's more, 'Javid Iqbal' is actually the name of Latif's late father.

Latif tried to play down these suspicions when asked about Tyler's real identity prior to the big reveal, but it was already pretty obvious that the jig was up. Even a fake IMDb page for 'Javid' couldn't salvage this so-called twist.

2. Glenn is still alive – from The Walking Dead

Back in October 2015, The Walking Dead tried to trick us into believing that Glenn Rhee (Steven Yeun) was dead – with the fan favourite apparently being devoured by zombies in season six's 'Thank You'.

Yet, in the aftermath, no-one would definitively state that the character was dead. "We will see Glenn, some version of Glenn or parts of Glenn, again," said showrunner Scott Gimple – and fans were quick to suspect they'd been had.

In fact, when a Variety poll asked, "How do you think we'll see Glenn again?," 62.08 percent responded "Alive – his death was clearly a fake-out."

Sure enough, the rather farcical nature of his survival was revealed a few weeks later, with Yeun's character crawling underneath a dumpster to escape the ravenous undead. Of course, given that the show killed Glenn off for real a year later, the big question is... what was the point?

3. Joe Miller killed Danny Latimer – from Broadchurch

We loved the absorbing first series of Broadchurch, but the whole 'Whodunnit?' angle maybe wasn't the strongest.

Back in 2013, over 10,000 Digital Spy readers voted in a poll to name young Danny's killer and almost half (48.57%) plumped for Joe (Matthew Gravelle).

Happily, we were all too distracted by the lovely scenery and a powerhouse performance from Olivia Colman (as Joe's copper wife Ellie Miller) to care about the flat reveal.

4. Jon Snow comes back to life – from Game of Thrones

"People didn't want me to die, but he's dead. So there you go, everyone has to get used to it."

Poor Kit Harington – he did his level best to convince Game of Thrones fans that Jon was staying dead after he was betrayed and murdered by the rest of the Night's Watch.

But we didn't buy it for an instant. The only real surprise was that it took GoT's sixth season two whole episodes to bring him back.

Here's a tweet from your writer posted in April 2016 – three whole weeks prior to the 'twist'.

Not feeling smug, though. Even Maester Aemon could've seen this one coming.

5. Everyone's in Purgatory – from Lost

Now, let's be clear. Despite what many fans thought – and what some continue to think – the passengers of Oceanic Flight 815 were not dead all along.

They were, however, dead throughout part of the sixth and final season.

Sequences set in a 'Sideways' universe – apparently a parallel world featuring the show's characters – all, in fact, took place in the afterlife, with Jack (Matthew Fox) and friends finally entering a 'Heaven' of sorts in the series finale.

So your Purgatory theory was correct – just not when and how you thought it was.

6. Harrison Wells is up to no good – from The Flash

Oh, Harrison Wells – you so evil!

Despite being introduced under the guise of being a mentor to our hero Barry Allen (Grant Gustin), the sneaky Wells (Tom Cavanagh) was so obviously up to no good, even before he was confirmed to be the villainous Reverse Flash in the show's ninth episode, 'The Man in the Yellow Suit'.

In a post made weeks before that episode aired, MTV noted that "nearly every piece of evidence is pointing to Harrison Wells as the Reverse Flash" and fans were pretty convinced too.

Quick wits weren't exactly a requirement to guess this one.

7. Professor Gellar was dead all along – from Dexter

Dexter: The Most Obvious Twist Ever? was the title of IGN's review of an episode which 'revealed' James Gellar (Edward James Olmos) to be a product of the twisted mind of Travis Marshall (Colin Hanks).

"This is simply storytelling at its worst and at its laziest," fumed TVFanatic, calling the Gellar twist a "desperate, cheap imitation" of the climax to The Sixth Sense.

We bet no-one saw Dexter's last ever twist coming, though, with Michael C Hall's serial killer faking his death to lead a new life as a lumberjack. (Mostly because it was rubbish, but still.)

8. Missy is The Master – from Doctor Who

Doctor Who fans are a clever bunch, so it wasn't too much work for them to make the Missy -> Mistress -> Master leap.

Credit to series boss Steven Moffat and the whole team, though, who attempted some "skullduggery" meant to confuse fans, only for nobody to pick up on the fake spoilers.

"In one take, we had Michelle Gomez say she was a Random Access Neural Interface – 'I'm the Rani!' – we thought everyone [watching filming] was bound to overhear that. Ya deaf bunch!"

9. William is the Man in Black – from Westworld

Poor Westworld. Credit where it's due – parts of its season arc kept us guessing till the very end... and the reveal that Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) was a Host? Genuinely surprising.

But quietly heroic William (Jimmi Simpson) evolving into the cruel, obsessive Man in Black (Ed Harris)? Reddit had rumbled that after just two episodes of HBO's epic drama, which still played the transformative moment as A BIG TWIST when it aired almost two months later.

Some fans argued that the William / MiB theory was too obvious to be the truth, but to quote Dr. Ford (Anthony Hopkins), "Never place your trust in us - we're only human, inevitably we will disappoint you."

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