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What Does the Mystery-Box TV Show Look Like in 2022?

The genre audiences can’t stay away from.

Credit (L-R clockwise): ABC, HBO, Showtime, Apple TV Plus

As much as the TV landscape has shifted in the last two decades, one thing has stayed the same: the presence of mystery-box TV shows.

What is a Mystery-Box TV Show?

In television, a ‘mystery box’ is a storytelling tool influencing the audience’s perception of and relationship to a story. It’s a drawn-out question that the audience wants the answer to. As ‘Lost’ co-creator JJ Abrams says in his TED Talk “The Mystery Box,” a closed box represents “infinite possibility.” As viewers, we naturally want to know the answer to a question, especially if it’s being withheld. We want to know what’s in the box. And so, we’re going to keep watching.

The Internet has always been intertwined with the mystery-box TV show. One of the earliest, most famous, and most significant examples of this type of TV show is the aforementioned show ‘Lost’. It was about a group of survivors of a plane crash who found themselves on a mysterious and sinister island. ‘Lost’ had many mysteries throughout its six-season run, including the mystery of the seemingly magical island itself. In Season 1, it even had almost a literal mystery box – a hatch in the jungle that both the characters and the audience wanted to know the contents of. ‘Lost’ ran from 2004 to 2010, coinciding with the mainstream spread of the Internet. Fans of ‘Lost’ used forums to discuss and theorize about the show – which can be seen as a precursor to contemporary Reddit discussions of mystery-box shows.

Credit: ABC

Murder Mysteries

Nowadays, the majority of mystery-box shows are murder mysteries. This is a simple kind of mystery-box: who is the killer? The nature of murder mysteries – where clues are deliberately left for audiences to decipher in real-time along with the characters – makes them ripe for collective discussion. The recent ‘Broadchurch’-style of the murder mystery (after the 2013 TV show), wherein there is a wide cast of characters who can be or are all suspects at one stage or another, only adds to their suitability.

Last year, the HBO miniseries ‘Mare of Easttown’ captivated audiences for seven weeks. It quickly became a phenomenon on Reddit, with hundreds of threads posted weekly as fans theorized about what secrets may be revealed and who the killer could be. Interestingly, even though fans were deeply invested in the show and poured over each episode trying to decipher all its clues, not many correctly guessed who the killer was. This balance is tricky to pull off in the contemporary TV environment. TV shows can gain a lot more attention and viewers through Internet popularity. Still, the dedication and persistence of online communities can lead to them figuring out a show’s twists well in advance, which means that its reveals can end up disappointing for some viewers.

Credit: HBO

The Mystery-Box Show in 2022

This year, two new TV shows marked somewhat of a return to the original, ‘Lost’-style mystery-box show format while redefining it. Showtime’s ‘Yellowjackets’ is in conversation with ‘Lost’ in more ways than one – it too follows the survivors of a plane crash. But they’re in the wilderness, not an island, and they’re (almost) all teenage girls. And while their surroundings are also spooky and mysterious, the biggest threat to the survivors (starving and/or freezing to death) is each other.

While the strange markings on the trees and the (literal) skeleton in the attic are a source of speculation for viewers, the show’s most significant questions are about its characters. The core mystery, which the audience is deeply invested in, is asked in the pilot’s opening scene: who becomes the creepy Antler Queen, and which one of their own do the other survivors chase into a pit to her death? And, above all, what could possibly happen to drive these characters to this point?

Credit: Showtime

‘Yellowjackets’ takes place during two timelines: the plane crash occurs in 1996, and we also see how it haunts several of the now-adult survivors in 2021, long after they’ve been rescued. This extra timeline doubles the potential for mystery, and the writers make the most of it. In addition to the main secret of what happened in the wilderness, the audience is presented with several more mysteries and questions in the 2021 timeline.

Creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson have planned for the show to have five seasons, so naturally, we didn’t get all the answers at the end of Season 1. The success of this mystery-box show is evident in the fact that the conversation around it is ongoing. The ‘Yellowjackets’ subreddit is still active, even though the season finale aired in January, and Season 2 isn’t expected to premiere until 2023. This is a mystery-box show that has effectively captivated its audience.

Apple TV Plus’ ‘Severance’ is another incredibly unique mystery-box show. It’s set in Lumon Industries, where several employees have undergone a procedure ‘severing’ their work and home selves. They have no memory of their outside lives when they’re at work, and vice versa. Lumon is a deeply mysterious, shadowy corporation whose actual purpose is unknown, as is the extent of their nefarious deeds. ‘Severance’ is a different kind of mystery-box show because we viewers both know as little as the characters and more than them. We’re familiar with both their selves and their daily lives, but when it comes to Lumon, we’re in the dark too – for the most part, at least. This mixture of mystery and dramatic irony combined to create the outstanding season finale, ‘The We We Are’, wherein we both learn answers to some of our questions and desperately wait for the characters to find out information we already know.

Much like ‘Yellowjackets’, ‘Severance’ inspired fierce discussion on Reddit each week after the episode premiered. Looking back on all of the shows I have discussed here, a core component of the mystery-box show becomes clear: a weekly release schedule. The binge model that’s popular nowadays removes the ‘watercooler conversation’ element from shows – people watch it at different paces, so they’re never really discussing it all at the same time. Mystery-box shows rely on viewers’ thoughts, questions, and theories, and for them to share those with others. There’s not much point in a show asking questions if you’ll find out the answer immediately. Mystery-box shows also involve one of the best aspects of watching TV: talking about it with other people.

Credit: Apple TV Plus

Not every mystery-box show is as successful as the ones I’ve mentioned here. Co-creator of ‘Lost’ Damon Lindelof described creating a mystery-box show as “a porridge problem…it’s either too hot or too cold, and it’s almost impossible to get it right. […] the longer you wait to resolve a mystery, the better the resolution has to be.” It’s a tricky balance and one that not every show strikes. But looking at shows such as ‘Mare of Easttown’, ‘Yellowjackets’, and ‘Severance’, it’s clear that in 2022, the mystery-box show is stronger than ever.

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I'm an Irish college student studying English. I love analysing and reading about films and TV shows, and, of course, writing about them too.

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