12 Plot Holes That Hurt Otherwise Perfect TV Shows

If there’s one thing writers try their hardest to avoid, it’s a plot hole. These are essentially inconsistencies in a narrative, involving continuity errors, changes in a character’s motivation, or a violation of previously established rules. They can pop up in movies, but they’re more common in television shows that have multiple seasons. They often arise when new writers come onto a team and earlier details are forgotten or overlooked. 

A plot hole can even rear its ugly head in popular sitcoms, dramas, or sci-fi series that’ve been on for ages. Years ago, viewers might have missed contradictions in an ongoing narrative, but now that folks can binge one season after another, these holes are far more noticeable. Some plot holes even happen on purpose, because the writers want to overlook something that came before or steer the story in a new direction.

Whatever the reason a series has a plot hole, it can detract from the quality of an otherwise excellent show. Fans can become frustrated when their favorite character suddenly does something that’s, well… out of character. And when plot holes exist, you can rest assured someone will come along and let the world know. Each of these 12 series is excellent and beloved by millions, but they have at least one plot hole that’s difficult to overlook.

Ask a random “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” fan which season they dislike, and there’s a good chance they’ll say Season 7. It starts strong but loses its way when the main plot kicks into gear, and it opens up a pretty hefty plot hole. Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) needs to train a group of prospective slayers who could take over her role should she die. Were that to happen, one of them would be called up to take her place.

The only problem with this is the fact that Buffy dies multiple times before Season 7 begins, and in those cases, there isn’t any need to have a previously established group of would-be slayers waiting to join the fight. Buffy dies in Season 1, and Kendra (Bianca Lawson) takes her place as the active slayer, so Season 7 is already off the rails from the jump. When Kendra dies, Faith (Eliza Dushku) steps in to take the lead slayer role — again, a plot hole. Even when Buffy dies in Season 5, nobody stands up to take her place. For anyone who watched “Buffy” up to that point — which is everyone, because who starts a show in Season 7? — this is a glaringly annoying inconsistency that undermines the entire plot of the final season.

“Heroes” is one of those series that started out strong, but thanks to a writer’s strike, it went down in quality relatively quickly. It also developed quite a plot hole surrounding one of the leads, Claire Bennett (Hayden Panettiere), the so-called “Cheerleader.” Early on, Claire is shown to have the ability to heal from any injury, Wolverine style. She dies and comes back to life, making her impossible to kill, save for a tiny biological kill-switch located at the nape of her neck. It’s also hinted that decapitation would kill her, but that never happens. 

It’s established in the pilot episode that Claire’s powers began when she hit puberty, but this explanation doesn’t last long. That aspect of her abilities is inexplicably retconned when her biological mother later explains that she thought Claire died in a fire when she was an infant. It turns out that Claire’s miraculous survival was due to her abilities manifesting as a baby.

Essentially, she was born with her powers and survived a fire that would have killed a normal child. Her powers then opted to go dormant for years until deciding puberty was the right time to reassert themselves. However, this doesn’t match the earlier explanation, nor does it fit with how powers work in the series. These inconsistencies in Claire’s abilities make her unique among the other superpowered people in “Heroes,” and it muddies her origin story considerably.

As “Supernatural” progresses its narrative, it introduces God and the Darkness, otherwise known as Chuck (Rob Benedict) and Amara (Emily Swallow). This significantly ups the game, taking Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles) Winchester and placing them in contact with the creator of the universe. It’s later revealed that Chuck created a multiverse to play with, but this introduces a problem.

After Dean takes on the Mark of Cain, it’s revealed to be a curse that Chuck used alongside his archangels to trap Amara. When it’s removed, Amara returns, setting up her story arc. The plot hole is less about Chuck and Amara, who are unique, and more about the archangels, who the show explains are bound to the universes in which they were created. Lucifer (Mark Pellegrino) was corrupted because of the Mark, but when the series explores other universes, he’s likewise corrupted.

This is problematic because the other Lucifers would also have had to carry the Mark and help bind Amara, but that’s not possible. How then did all the other instances of Lucifer become corrupted? It’s one of those things you only notice when you see it, but after that, it’s impossible not to notice. It doesn’t take away from the show’s ongoing narrative, but it is confusing and lacks explanation by the end of “Supernatural.”

One of the most enduring ongoing gags in “The Big Bang Theory” is the broken elevator. It’s a clever way to force characters to talk while walking up the stairs because, as we all know, you’re not supposed to talk in an elevator. At first, the elevator is broken without any explanation, but the show doesn’t leave the audience hanging for its entire run. The explanation of what happened comes in Season 3’s penultimate episode.

Leonard (Johnny Galecki) is conducting an experiment in the apartment with Raj (Kunal Nayyar) and Howard (Simon Helberg) to produce rocket fuel. That’s already not a great idea, but it fits the show’s narrative and the characters well. In one of “Big Bang Theory’s” best roommate moments, Sheldon (Jim Parsons) notices a problem. He grabs the canister from Leonard and places it in the elevator before it explodes, saving everyone.

That makes perfect sense, but the problem arises because of a Season 1 episode when Leonard has to explain to Howard that the elevator is broken and they have to take the stairs. Why wouldn’t Howard remember the time he and Leonard nearly blew themselves up, but were saved by Sheldon? It’s a small plot hole that fans of the series can easily overlook, but it defies logic in a show that’s rooted in science.

While Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall) is the main serial killer in “Dexter,” he’s hardly the only one. He takes on all kinds of killers, but when he has Hannah McKay (Yvonne Strahovski) on his table, he doesn’t finish her. Instead, they start a relationship. In Season 7, Hannah’s penchant for killing people comes to light, and she’s forced to flee Miami to avoid being captured by the authorities.

In Season 8, Hannah suddenly returns by drugging Dexter and Deb (Jennifer Carpenter) before reentering their lives. She remains throughout the rest of the season, right up to the end, where she’s seen with Dexter’s son in Argentina and reads about Dexter’s disappearance. That’s how the series ends — Hannah and the boy walking down a street to get ice cream in Argentina, while Dexter moves North.

The problem with Hannah’s return in Season 8 is her outright refusal to disguise herself. She’s just back galivanting around Miami like she’s not wanted for capital murder. No wig, no big hat with large sunglasses — nothing to hide her identity. It’s not as if she’s inconspicuous just walking around, as Strahovski is an empirically attractive person who stands out in a crowd, so Hannah’s lack of disguise is a pretty big plot hole.

If you sat down to watch “Family Matters” when it premiered in 1989, you were introduced to a bunch of characters. At the start, the Winslow family consisted of a mom, a dad, and three children, placing them right in the ideal nuclear family zone of television sitcoms of the era. Fans enjoyed the funny antics of the characters, including those of Judy Winslow (Jaimee Foxworth), the young tween of the family.

Judy remains a large part of the series throughout the first four seasons, but towards the end of Season 4 in 1993, Judy angrily runs up the stairs to her room and is never seen again. It’s not that she goes to her room and then off-camera moves to a convent or something — she’s never even mentioned again. After that episode, the family and everyone else in the show act as if Judy never existed. That’s a massive, gaping plot hole that all viewers noticed. After all, a main cast member suddenly and inexplicably vanished. 

Ultimately, Judy disappeared from “Family Matters” for a practical reason: money. By the fourth season, Steve Urkel (Jaleel White) had become the breakout character, and the show redirected much of the focus his way. Judy was dropped because of this, and cutting her saved money to keep production moving in the desired direction.

“Sex and the City” is one of the most popular original shows to air on HBO in the ’90s, and it has a long legacy despite a few moments that haven’t aged well. The series eventually spawned some movies, a prequel, and a sequel series, extending its run to 2025. Still, the version of the show that ended in 2025 is considerably different from the show that initially aired in 1998, due to a creative change that altered the show’s format.

Initially, Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) periodically looks directly at the camera and breaks the fourth wall. She does this to convey what she’s thinking at the moment, and the practice endures throughout the first season. Eventually, it’s completely abandoned without any discernible reason. That’s a plot hole because when a character breaks the fourth wall, they’re engaging directly with the audience. Suddenly stopping the practice creates a barrier (the literal fourth wall) that didn’t previously exist. 

The change was a creative decision made by Parker, producers, directors, and writers — they simply didn’t like it. Parker didn’t want to be compared to her husband, Matthew Broderick’s, famous fourth-wall breaks in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” It also made the narrative of the show feel less believable, so they stopped doing it.

There aren’t many police sitcoms that are as funny as “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” but that’s what happens when a perfect cast comes together. The series is primarily centered around Jake Peralta (Andy Samberg), an immature but excellent detective who drives much of the show’s plot. He lives in squalor and is disgustingly unclean, and it’s stated on more than one occasion that he cannot grow facial hair.

Specifically, he insists that he can’t grow a mustache, which upsets him. But when Jake is sent to prison in Season 5, he’s shown with a full beard and mustache, proving that he has no problem sprouting whiskers from all the right places on his face. It makes sense that he’d be a little less interested in grooming in prison, but it’s a plot hole nonetheless.

Throughout B99, Jake goes from being an immature adult child to someone who you’d have no problem leaving your children with, as he matures into a proper adult. It’s possible that the show wanted to convey his growing maturity, brought through incarceration, and his facial hair was a subtle visible indication of this. If that’s true, it’s certainly understandable, but it doesn’t detract from the plot hole created by Jake’s earlier lamenting his lack of facial hair.

“The X-Files” is one of the most successful series to come out of the 1990s, and it has endured far longer than most. At its center are two FBI agents, Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), both of whom hunt down supernatural and paranormal threats amidst massive conspiracies. Mulder’s driving motivation is the disappearance of his sister when they were children, which he attributes to an alien abduction.

Maintaining continuity throughout a series as long as “The X-Files” isn’t easy, so some plot holes are bound to pop up every once in a while. Still, there’s one that not only upends the character of Mulder, but is something that could have been easily avoided. In Season 5, Mulder can be seen inexplicably wearing a wedding ring, and there’s no confusion, as it’s on the correct finger.

Mulder isn’t married, so there’s no reason why he’d be wearing a wedding band at all. There’s no mention of the ring in the show, and there’s no confirmed reason it’s there. It comes and goes across multiple episodes. A possible explanation is that Duchovny had recently gotten married to Téa Leoni, and he wanted to keep the ring on during filming. It’s also possible that the ring is there as a goof because he forgot to take it off, and nobody noticed.

“Friends” has no shortage of continuity errors and goofs, including the fact that Monica’s (Courteney Cox) apartment changes numbers for no discernible reason. In the pilot episode, Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) storms into the coffee shop wearing a wedding dress, and she’s introduced to all of the friends, including Chandler (Matthew Perry). It’s clear that they’ve never met before, but this is proven untrue in later episodes.

Several flashback episodes show that not only did Chandler and Rachel know one another, but they directly interacted on multiple occasions. There are Thanksgiving episodes that show them together, and there’s another that flies in the face of the pilot. When Ross (David Schwimmer) and Chandler are in college, Monica and Rachel stop in for a party. Chandler once more interacts with Rachel with his A Flock of Seagulls haircut, attempting to entice her to go to the same school.

Toward the end of the episode, Chandler attempts to kiss Rachel, and she pulls back. He explains that he’s in college and in a band, which is more than enough of a reason to lock lips, and they make out. How then did they not know one another just a few years later? Not to mention Chandler cut off part of his toe in a Thanksgiving episode with Rachel in attendance, which isn’t something a person forgets.

It’s almost a given that a sitcom will create continuity mistakes as it runs for multiple seasons, but “That ’70s Show” took it to a whole new level. The most glaringly obvious one involves the story’s timeline, which makes absolutely no sense. When the pilot kicks off, it’s 1976, and that works, given the title. But then the narrative ends on January 1, 1980 — after the show has run for eight seasons. While that could be explained away with inconsistent season lengths, there’s another problem. If the show takes place over the course of only four years, how do they celebrate Christmas five times? The holiday only comes around once a year, so at most, there should have been only four Christmas-themed episodes.

Other inconsistencies surround character birthdays and other holidays, which muck up the timeline even further. It’s something you might not notice if you watched the show as it aired, but a solid binge will make it stand out. Even more disturbing is the time between Season 8’s “Winter,” which is set on December 25, 1979, and the finale, which is set at the end of the month. That effectively places all of Season 8 into a five-day period.

When “Wednesday” begins, Wednesday Addams (Jenna Ortega) is kicked out of school for some dangerous shenanigans involving a water polo team and a bunch of live piranhas. Her parents decide to send her to Nevermore Academy, where the plot unfolds as each character’s unusual supernatural abilities are shown. Wednesday has an unusual ability of her own: She sees visions, and this is a major factor in the plot.

Nevermore Academy is a school for outcasts who have extraordinary abilities, so if a kid is clairvoyant like Wednesday, that’s par for the course. It makes perfect sense that Wednesday could go there, but her attendance is actually a plot hole. While Wednesday has supernatural abilities, she hides this from her family, and the school doesn’t know about it when she’s enrolled.

If Nevermore Academy limits its enrollment to supernatural outcasts but had no clue about Wednesday’s abilities, why was she allowed to attend? It’s a plot hole that can be overlooked because she does have visions, but it doesn’t make any sense. It could be explained away because Wednesday is a legacy, as her parents went to school there, but this is never explicitly stated, leaving the plot hole wide enough for a Hyde to run through.