10 WTF TV Episodes That Came Totally Out Of Nowhere
There's no explaining these episodes.
TV is often seen as a safe haven of familiarity for audiences, whereby a hit series is basically expected to adhere to a set style and tone across its seasons. Occasionally however, showrunners will dare to change things up to dizzying, often controversial effect.
These 10 TV episodes, all from hugely popular series with firmly established expectations of what they should deliver, decided to ditch the typical formula and offer up something completely different instead.
The result in each case was inevitably divisive with each show's fanbase, some dismissing these episodes as failing to give the fans what they wanted, or perhaps even being botched attempts to experiment with something new.
Equally, though, many of these episodes were indeed praised by fans for daring to try something different, even if they didn't necessary move the plot forward in the way most fans had hoped.
If you were prepared to accept bold, outside-the-box storytelling, these 10 episodes offered something totally left-field, though in fairness not all of them quite hit the desired mark...
10. "Chapter Seven: The Lost Sister" - Stranger Things
Stranger Things' hotly-anticipated second season was largely well received by fans and critics alike, though just about everybody agreed how utterly out of place the season's seventh episode, "The Lost Sister," truly felt.
Both the worst and weirdest episode in the show's history, The Lost Sister saw Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) travelling to Chicago where she met Kali aka Eight (Linnea Berthelsen), a fellow test subject from the Hawkins Lab.
Stylistically, tonally, and thematically, the episode was a major departure from everything viewers had seen up to this point, ditching the nostalgia-soaked '80s kitsch vibe in favour of a grittier, darker outing set in downtown Chicago.
Many fans suspected that the episode was effectively a backdoor pilot for a Kali-starring spin-off series, though creators the Duffer Brothers later stated that this wasn't in fact the case.
Even so, many were miffed that Eleven was ripped away from her pals and taken out of her element for an entire episode, not to mention how goofy and unappealing Kali's gang of young cronies were.