People are really calling the ending to the Watchmen TV series a cliffhanger? That’s like calling the ending to Inception a cliffhanger. Or saying that Total Recall ends on a cliffhanger because it never resolves whether it’s all dream or reality.
@baldur It was the definition of a cliffhanger: "noun: an ending to an episode of a serial drama that leaves the audience in suspense" :). I suppose that feeling doesn't happen as quickly in feature films.
@jack I disagree. Cliffhangers in serial storytelling always imply continuation, even when an actual continuation isn't on the cards. Ambiguous endings don't imply further stories but instead refuse to resolve specific threads in the story, leaving it up to the viewer/reader.
You could do ten more seasons of Watchmen without ever resolving the question left by this ending, if you wanted to keep the mystery. You don't need to resolve it to continue the story in that world. It is intentional ambiguity and you could choose to maintain in future stories. That usually isn't an option with cliffhangers.
This has much more in common with the ending to Sopranos than a cliffhanger.
IMHO, and all that :-)
@baldur Well you've obviously thought about this more than I have. Perhaps I don't understand the difference between ambiguous and implied continuation. My reaction of "I need to see the next episode NOW to see what happens" felt an awful lot like a cliffhanger to me. I can live without knowing, but I don't want to :)
@jack @baldur For me, the difference between an ambiguous, open ending (e.g., the Sopranos series finale or Total Recall) and a cliffhanger ("Who shot JR?” or Mulder blown up in the buried boxcar at the end of the X-Files season 3 finale) is that the former, while not declarative, provides some sort of narrative closure to the overall story, whereas a cliffhanger does not (and is not intended to).
