10 Recent Movie Plot Twists Nobody Saw Coming

Though Conclave's mystery-thriller narrative was clearly hiding a big twist up its sleeve, who expected it to be this? 

While it would've perhaps been giddily plausible that Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) was a secret Machiavellian mastermind or that the mysterious Cardinal Benitez (Carlos Diehz) was an impostor, that's not quite what it had in store.

Rather, we find out at the end that Benitez, the newly elected Pope, is intersex, having been assigned male at birth but recently discovering that he has a uterus and ovaries.

The prior, now-deceased Pope covered this up and is implied to have helped plot Benitez's rise to power, while Benitez offers Lawrence some fascinating food for thought as he tells Lawrence, "I am as God made me."

Coming at the end of a drum-tight, brilliantly twisty thriller, this was a superbly left-field surprise which only further deepened its already trenchant, provocative examination of the Catholic Church's politics.