Byte Size: What's in the Mystery Box?
Answers may include frustration, rage, and perpetual disappointment.
I started watching Outer Range last week. It’s billed as a “science fiction neo-Western mystery thriller,” and that description alone pretty much sums up the visual media consumption habits of my entire life, so I was already on board from the jump. The show’s premise is simple enough: Royal Abbott (Josh Brolin) is a cattle rancher who discovers a mysterious black void in his pasture:
Over the course of the season, weird new characters arrive, others disappear, and Royal ends up having to fight his longtime rivals to protect his home and family.
However, soon after the first episode finished, I had the sneaking suspicion that the show might be preparing to dive headfirst into “mystery box” territory. If you know what that means, then I’m already deeply sorry for you. And if you don’t, well, read on—if you dare—and you might just find out how this ends…
Lost (2004–10)
Synopsis: “The survivors of a plane crash are forced to work together in order to survive on a seemingly deserted tropical island.”
While certainly not the first type of media to embody the principles of “mystery box” storytelling, Lost and its creator J.J. Abrams are ground-zero for discussing the phenomenon and its effect on film and television throughout the twenty-first century. As Sophia Stewart writes for Film School Rejects:
“Most mystery box shows can be summed up with the question, What’s the deal with ______? This narrative style – characterized by narration that unfolds as a series of reveals and twists to unearth central mysteries – can be equal parts rewarding and maddening. Fundamentally, mystery boxes raise the narrative stakes. When storytellers introduce a mystery, they take on the responsibility of solving it in a satisfying, meaningful way.”
For all the reasons mentioned above, Lost has become the quintessential mystery box show. Over the course of six seasons, the series introduced a plethora of mind-melting, what-the-fuck plot twists moments, only to exploit audience expectations by refusing to properly resolve any of them before ending on one of the most unsatisfying finales in recent memory. (The first four seasons rock though—don’t @ me.)
And look, it’s not that mystery in of itself is inherently bad, either—I would argue it’s almost essential for any compelling narrative—but you need to actually do something with it to have a meaningful sense of payoff. If mystery as mystery is the entire point of your show, then it feels cheap, trite, and manipulative. So, in that spirit, I’ve listed some other notable shows that utilised the mystery box format for good and for bad with varying levels of success.
Carnivàle (2003–05)
Synopsis: “During the Great Depression, an Oklahoma farm boy and a charismatic minister learn that they are key players in a proxy war being fought between Heaven and Hell.”
This show often gets forgotten in the early 2000s glut of prestige television, being overshadowed by the likes of The Sopranos, Deadwood, and The Wire. However, Carnivàle was doing some cool and interesting with its mix of Stephen King-influenced supernatural religious themes and period-piece class drama. I often see this show as being the spiritual precursor to what American Horror Story and others would pull off to greater acclaim a decade later.
While Carnivàle does introduce some big ideas, lampshading enough mystery and intrigue to make them sufficiently compelling, HBO cancelled the series before any real satisfying conclusions could be drawn. This is not entirely the fault of the showrunners or writers, who I’m sure had every intention of taking the series in a certain direction, but anyone watching the show twenty years later will still arrive at a very disappointing finish and be left wanting more.
FlashForward (2009–10)
Synopsis: “A special task force in the FBI investigates after every person on Earth simultaneously blacks out and awakens with a short vision of their future.”
If Lost is guilty of anything, it’s engendering years of copycat television pilots and short-lived series that desperately tried to cash in on the mystery box format. The most egregious of these is FlashForward: a show that actively refused to pay off any sense of narrative momentum and, instead, just kept throwing dumb twists at you with every episode, hoping you wouldn’t notice how flimsy and off the rails the entire premise was quickly becoming.
It’s perhaps telling that the original 1999 novel the show is based on gleefully interrogates ideas of free will, determinism, quantum mechanics, and predestination with philosophical thematic heft, while the television show is primarily focused on unlikeable characters and hammy exposition. Go figure.
The Lost Room (2006)
Synopsis: “A detective investigates a mysterious motel room, which acts as a portal to an alternate universe.”
Of all the mystery box shows, The Lost Room feels relatively successful. As a three-episode mini-series, the show unfolds more like an extended film narrative, allowing the viewer to form an expectation that not all things will be resolved neatly, and strap in for thrilling alternate universe shenanigans.
If there was one critique I could level at the show, however, it would be an overreliance on the trope I’m calling ‘The Noun as All Things.’ This is when a novel, show or film introduces all narrative objects as simply variations on ‘The Noun’. There are countless examples throughout media, but The Lost Room (see what’s going on there?) is particularly bad for it, with plot devices like The Room, The Event, The Objects, The Cabals, The Collectors, The Legion, The Order, and episode titles such as ‘The Key and the Clock,” “The Comb and the Box,” and “The Eye and the Prime Object.” Seems a bit lazy and repetitive, doesn’t it?
Fringe (2008–13)
Synopsis: “An F.B.I. agent is forced to work with an institutionalized scientist and his son in order to rationalize a brewing storm of unexplained phenomena.”
I was never a huge fan of Fringe. Despite the show’s amusingly bonkers, X-Files meets Twilight Zone, sci-fi-meets-procedural serial drama premise, and some admittedly great character actors—including Australia’s Anna Torv and John Noble—something about it never quite clicked.
Much of that came down to the show’s writing. The mystery box format (thanks to co-creator J.J Abrams) led to an overreliance on parallel universes, alternate timelines, and the telenovela trope of ‘long-lost children’ made the show’s complex mythology increasingly difficult to follow without binging multiple seasons’ worth of lore. Plus, if Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman are involved, chances are it’s going to have a drop in quality once the shine wears off.
Terra Nova (2011)
Synopsis: “Centers on the Shannons, an ordinary family from 2149 when the planet is dying, who are transported back 85 million years to prehistoric Earth where they join Terra Nova, a colony of humans with a second chance to build a civilization.”
I mean, do I really need to explain this one? The premise alone is an excuse to throw weird shit in the direction of B-grade characters. Why would you go back in time when the future is already thoroughly screwed? Why are humans choosing to live in a tree fort? Why is there an 18th-century sailing ship in “the Badlands”?
Do we ever find any meaningful answers to these questions? Of course not. That’s not the point. The point is having shitty green-screen dinosaurs on television. Was I surprised when this show was unceremoniously cancelled after one dismal season? Not at all. (Also, fun fact: this show was filmed in and around the Gold Coast in Australia, where I live. So, that’s fun, I guess.)
Mr. Robot (2015–19)
Synopsis: “Elliot, a brilliant but highly unstable young cyber-security engineer and vigilante hacker, becomes a key figure in a complex game of global dominance when he and his shadowy allies try to take down the corrupt corporation he works for.”
Of all the shows on this list, Mr. Robot is easily the most critically acclaimed. The show turned Rami Malek into a bonafide Hollywood star—leading to roles as Freddie Mercury in the 2018 Queen biopic, Bohemian Rhapsody, along with a recent turn as a Bond villain—along with scooping up a score of Emmy and Golden Globe awards.
Yet, for all of the accolades, the show’s use of Elliot’s position as an unreliable narrator, along with frequent shifting thematic goalposts from season to season, made it hard for me to really care and/or give a shit as the show progressed. Mystery boxes, even the more refined and subtle of them, can eventually wear down the viewer’s sense of fulfilment. And sometimes, you don’t want to be challenged—you just want to be entertained.
Westworld (2016–)
Synopsis: “At the intersection of the near future and the reimagined past, waits a world in which every human appetite can be indulged without consequence.”
This one hurts, folks. Season one of Westworld (or “The Maze” as the DVD edition describes it) was exceptional. A good central mystery, great worldbuilding, a multiplicity of characterisation and internal motivations, and a clear distinction between protagonist and antagonist, one that only becomes murkier with each episode. But what happens when you’re narrative journey ends and natural character arcs have reached a satisfying, if somewhat ambiguous, resolution? Well, if you’re HBO and the showrunners of Westworld, you just… keep going.
See, that’s the thing about mystery boxes: they’re not real boxes, there’s no fixed volume, and you can always fill them back up with even more absurd twists and turns. Season four of Westworld was announced earlier this week, but if I’m being completely honest, I barely remember what happened in the previous one (nor do I care to). Returns, diminished, etc.