Death to the Penultimate Flashback Episode

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A frustrating trend has become common in TV dramas, especially on streaming services. Just when a show reaches its most exciting point – with mysteries about to be solved and tension building to a climax – the second-to-last episode often grinds everything to a halt. You’ll often see a shocking reveal at the end of episode six – a secret identity, a discovery, or a character returning from the dead. But instead of continuing the story and letting the drama unfold, the next episode throws in a lengthy flashback. It forces you to watch the backstory before you get to see the consequences of the reveal or what happens next, delaying the satisfying payoff viewers are eagerly waiting for.

The practice of using a flashback episode right before a season finale has become so common in TV dramas that it’s time to stop. It’s been done so many times that it’s lost its impact. But more importantly, this trope highlights a frustrating trend in recent television: characters are often reduced to simple puzzles. Instead of complex individuals, we get predictable explanations for their behavior – she’s mean because of loss, he’s violent due to childhood trauma. These explanations feel lazy and rob the characters of depth.

Stories often focus less on a chain of events and more on uncovering past traumas – things like death, abuse, or neglect. While there might be a central plot – like someone seeking revenge – the real energy goes into understanding why things are the way they are. This approach treats the plot like a person brought in after a traumatic event. The story prioritizes finding the root cause of the problem, rather than what happens after it’s resolved or who the person affected actually is. It’s all about identifying and removing the initial source of pain, as if that’s the only thing that matters. Flashbacks to the past feel less like adding depth and more like a signal that the story is nearing its end – the pain has been found, and it’s time to wrap things up.

I’ve noticed a pattern in TV shows where, close to the end of a season, an episode will suddenly flash back to explain a character’s backstory or how things began. It feels like it started with shows like Glee or The Crown, which both had episodes revisiting the very beginning of the story. While those episodes can be good on their own, they sometimes feel like a distraction when you’re already invested in the current plot. This also reminds me of Ozark, where a flashback explained the villain’s motivations, or even older shows like The West Wing, which would rewind to show how characters first met or their childhoods. It’s not always the second-to-last episode, and it feels a little different with shorter streaming seasons compared to longer network TV seasons, but the idea is the same: a sudden dive into the past when you’re nearing the end.

Regardless of where it started, a certain storytelling structure has become incredibly common in TV shows of all kinds. Shows like Agatha All Along and WandaVision both feature major flashbacks right before their big finales, which focus on intense emotional journeys. This isn’t limited to superhero shows, though. Serious dramas like Escape at Dannemora and Fleishman Is in Trouble, as well as popular shows like HBO’s The Leftovers, Apple’s The Morning Show, and the sci-fi adaptation Fallout, all use this technique. In fact, many shows planned for 2025—including Paradise, The Last of Us, The Hunting Wives, All Her Fault, and The Beast in Me—are all set to reveal crucial backstory in the final few episodes. (Alien: Earth also does this, though its flashback arrives earlier in the season.)

Look, I don’t mind a flashback episode now and then. Some are terrible, sure, but others – like in shows like The Last of Us and The Crown – are honestly the highlights of the whole series! What really bothers me is when an entire season is structured around a big reveal in the past that’s supposed to suddenly fix characters who felt flat before, or explain why things are happening. Why can’t characters be complex from the beginning? And trauma can be a powerful part of a backstory without it needing to be this huge, pivotal thing the whole story revolves around. If the story in the flashback is good enough to be in the show, why isn’t that just…the show? Why bury it as a flashback?

Two recent shows, All Her Fault and The Beast in Me, suffer from being overly similar despite having different premises. This makes them feel repetitive and diminishes their individual strengths. All Her Fault, streaming on Peacock, presents a cautionary tale, as Roxana Hadadi points out, about women struggling with the pressures of their careers and failing to notice problems within their marriages. In contrast, Netflix’s The Beast in Me is a much darker, more intense serial killer thriller, reminiscent of You. It features shocking scenes—like Matthew Rhys tearing apart a chicken with his hands and a character being held in a secret torture chamber—and hints at a disturbing connection to the classic film The Bad Seed.

Both shows, which started airing around the same time, follow a predictable pattern. Just before the finale, they interrupt exciting cliffhangers to flash back and introduce new characters we don’t care about. This is done to explain the backstory and emotional pain leading up to the season’s ending. What makes it even worse is that both shows center around the same tragic event – a child’s death in a car accident – making these flashback episodes feel like lazy and obvious copying.

These days, flashbacks feel predictable and overused, making us forget that stories don’t need to be told this way. The show Adolescence is so compelling because it unfolds in a single timeline, avoiding flashbacks altogether. A flashback would ruin the show’s carefully built suspense by offering easy answers. The Lowdown skillfully unravels a complex mystery without getting bogged down in explaining the detective’s personal history. And The Gilded Age smartly avoids a lengthy explanation of Bertha and George’s marriage, as their motivations are already clear through what’s happening in the present – they’re attracted to each other and driven by ambition!

Flashbacks aren’t necessarily a negative addition to the show. Even with a fast-paced, present-day storyline, The Pitt cleverly incorporates brief flashbacks as moments of on-screen PTSD. However, these flashbacks aren’t used to reveal a hidden past; we quickly learn Dr. Robby’s trauma stems from COVID. The show’s central conflict isn’t what the flashbacks reveal, but the fact that Dr. Robby experiences them. Flashbacks can be effective without always being crucial to character development. But when they consistently appear late in the season, they lose their impact. What once felt compelling becomes a predictable and unsatisfying delay, suggesting that complex human behavior can be easily explained by simply looking to the past.

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2025-11-19 17:57