what is the visit about spoiler alert

The Visit Ending, Explained: What’s Wrong With the Grandparents?

In M. Night Shyamalan’s 2015 horror film, ‘The Visit,’ the audience accompanies a pair of young protagonists on a trip that leads to more menacing outcomes than one expects from a visit to Grandma’s house. After their distant grandparents, Nana and Pop Pop, reach out to teenage sibling duo Becca and Tyler, the pair takes the former up on their invitation for a week-long stay. However, upon arrival, armed with several cameras for Becca’s documentary, the two quickly begin noticing the strange happenings that seem to occur at the house after nightfall. Thus, the kids find themselves fending for themselves as each day unravels more erratic behavior by their aging grandparents, with the night bringing something more sinister.

The found footage film builds a compelling thriller narrative that gradually boosts its suspense until the final act delivers a startling and much-anticipated plot twist that fans have come to expect from the filmmaker. Nonetheless, the same conclusive twist may have left some of the viewers with a few questions. SPOILERS AHEAD!

The Visit Plot Synopsis

In her late teens, Loretta Jamison ran away with a substitute teacher from her high school, Corin, causing a rift between herself and her parents. As a result, years later, after Corin has abandoned his family, Loretta’s 15-year-old daughter, Becca, and 14-year-old Tyler have never met their grandparents. However, their distant relationship stands to change when the old couple reaches out to their grandkids, extending a home-visit invitation. Even though Loretta is against the idea, she doesn’t try to stop her children after they decide to visit her childhood home.

As such, while Loretta leaves for a cruise with her boyfriend, her kids take the train to visit their grandparents with promises of routine Skype calls. Becca, an aspiring filmmaker, decides to document the entire thing in hopes of learning the specifics about her mother and grandparents’ falling out. Consequently, Bella and Fredrick Spencer arrive at the train station on Monday morning to pick up their grandkids with enthusiastic smiles. Their first day together goes smoothly, and as it comes to an end, the kids’ grandpa, Pop Pop, instructs them about a 9:30 bedtime rule.

Although the kids don’t think of it much at first, Becca learns the merit of following through with the rule after she ventures out for a midnight snack and witnesses her Nana, sick and frantically throwing up. Even more frightening, the morning after, the woman abruptly and manically chases the kids under the house’s crawlspace during an impromptu game of hide-n-seek. Throughout the day, the kids’ concern grows further after noticing a few disturbing things about Pop Pop, such as his lack of bowel control and tendency to attack strangers in a fit of paranoia.

The following night, Tyler’s worries grow after he spots Nana wildly scratching at the walls outside the kids’ guest room in a stark state of undress. However, after Becca asks Pop Pop about the older woman’s condition, she receives a plausible answer about Nana’s sundowning issue, establishing her concerning after-hours behavior is similar to sleepwalking.

The explanation satisfies Becca, who attempts to return to her mission to learn about her mother’s relationship with Nana and Pop Pop. Still, she doesn’t make much progress since the topic seems to trigger a violent episode in her grandmother. Meanwhile, Tyler remains weary of his grandparents’ actions and insists they should spy on them by setting up cameras in the living room. Although Becca is initially against the idea, she agrees after walking in on Pop Pop with a rifle’s barrel in his mouth.

Even so, the plan backfires when Nana spots the camera on her nightly manic episode and attempts to break into the kids’ room armed with a knife. Once Becca realizes their lives may be in danger after reviewing the night’s footage, she decides to ask Loretta to pick them up on account of the dangerous circumstances. However, the kids are in for a big surprise when they show the elderly couple to their mother from a window, only to learn that the people they have spent the past few days with are not their grandparents.

The Visit Ending: Who Are The Old Couple? What Did They Do To The Real Grandparents?

As a slow burn of mourning suspense and horror, the film reveals Nana and Pop Pop’s concerning attributes in slow bouts. At first, the behavior that the couple exhibits can be easily explained as a condition of their old age, with sundowning, memory issues, and paranoia forming the baseline. Yet, as the film progresses, the old couple becomes more and more dangerous— first toward themselves and then the kids.

Due to Loretta’s dramatic exit from her parents’ house, the woman seldom speaks to the couple, even as she regularly calls the kids. Furthermore, a seemingly innocent accident damages Becca’s webcam, robbing the mother of any visual cues. Therefore, it isn’t until Thursday morning, when Becca and Tyler have begun fearing for their lives, that Loretta glimpses at the old couple. Consequently, she realizes all this time, her kids have been living with a pair of strangers who are pretending to be their grandparents.

The revelation immediately sets Loretta into action, who tries to contact the cops and reach her kids as soon as possible. In the meantime, she advises her kids to seek help from the neighbors to put distance between themselves and the imposters. Nevertheless, the old couple prevents Becca and Tyler from leaving the house with the idea of a family game night. Thus, with tension in the air, the kids find themselves enduring a game of Yahtzee until the old woman’s incoming mental episode gives Becca an excuse to slip away.

Using the opportunity to explore the house and learn about the imposters, Becca ventures into the forbidden basement, where she suspects her actual grandparents to be. Inside, she finds all the answers to her questions as Becca’s hunch turns out to be true in the worst way possible.

As it would turn out, the imposter old couple is a pair of psychiatric hospital patients, where the actual Bella and Patrick Spencer volunteered. The psychotic couple believed they were from an alien planet, Sinmorfitellia. As such, the pair drowned their own kids inside a well that they believed to hold a passage to the alien planet. For the same reason, they were being under monitoring in the psychic hospital.

Nonetheless, the couple escaped their bounds after the Spencers revealed their plans for a family reunion with their grandkids. Envious of the other couple, the imposters, Claire and Mitchell, killed the former pair and overtook their identities to spend the week with Becca and Tyler. Consequently, the duo managed to evade outsiders anytime they came looking for them at the house and ultimately killed their neighbor, Stacey, when she realized their reality.

Soon after Becca learns this truth, Mitchell locks her up in a room with a psychotic Claire, undergoing her violent episode. Despite their earlier attempts at domestic bliss, the couple’s instincts compel them to harm the children. Nevertheless, before the older woman can choke Becca to death, the girl manages to get her hands on a mirror shard and stabs her attacker to death. Afterward, she rushes to her younger brother’s aid, whom Mitchel is psychologically torturing.

However, with his sister’s element of surprise, Tyler manages to overpower Mitchell, unleashing raw rage and bashing the older man to death by slamming the refrigerator door at his head. Ultimately, after killing the old couple pretending to be their grandparents, Becca and Tyler make it out of the experience alive and reunite with their mother.

Why Did Loretta Stop Talking To Her Parents?

By the film’s end, Loretta’s sore relationship with her parents remains the one last mystery. Arguably, the woman’s reluctance to speak to her parents played a part in the kids’ entrapment since the latter had no point of reference to distinguish their relatives from strangers. Furthermore, part of Becca’s curiosity about her grandparents stemmed from Loretta’s refusal to speak about them to her own kids.

As such, after Becca and Tyler have returned to the safety of their home, Loretta sits down for one last interview for her daughter’s documentary, where she speaks about her past with her parents. When 19-year-old Loretta tried to run away from home with Corin, her high school teacher, the former’s parents wanted to stop her. Nevertheless, the same only resulted in an altercation where Loretta hit her mother, followed by the former’s father hitting his daughter.

Therefore, Loretta’s last day on the farm gave birth to several familial complications. Although Loretta’s parents tried to apologize and solve things afterward, the woman continued to avoid them years and years into the future. For the same reason, Loretta imparts a lesson to her daughter to never hold grudges so hard that they end up ruining things. In turn, Becca, who despises her father for abandoning them, decides to learn from her mother’s mistakes. Unlike Loretta, who refused to speak to her parents, leading to regret after their death, Becca chooses to include home videos of her father in the documentary to close the narrative as a sign of her forgiveness.

Read More: Is The Visit Based on a True Story?

SPONSORED LINKS

• Movie Explainers
• TV Explainers
• About The Cinemaholic

The Ending Of The Visit Explained

Contains spoilers for  The Visit

M. Night Shyamalan is notorious for using dramatic twists towards the endings of his films, some of which are pulled off perfectly and add an extra layer of depth to a sprawling story (hello, Split ). Some of the director's other offerings simply keep the audience on their toes rather than having any extra subtext or hidden meaning. Shyamalan's 2015 found-footage horror-comedy  The Visit , which he wrote and directed, definitely fits in the latter category, aiming for style over substance.

The Visit follows 15-year-old Becca Jamison (Olivia DeJonge) and her 13-year-old brother Tyler (Ed Oxenbould) when they spend the week with their mother's estranged parents, who live in another town. Loretta (played by WandaVision 's Kathryn Hahn ) never explained to her children why she separated herself away from her parents, but clearly hopes the weekend could help bring the family back together.

Although The Visit occasionally toys with themes of abandonment and fear of the unknown, it wasn't particularly well-received by critics on its initial release, as many struggled with its bizarre comedic tone in the found-footage style. So, after Tyler and his camera record a number of disturbing occurrences like Nana (Deanna Dunagan) projectile-vomiting in the middle of the night and discovering "Pop Pop"'s (Peter McRobbie) mountain of used diapers, it soon becomes clear that something isn't right with the grandparents.

Here's the ending of  The Visit  explained.

The Visit's twist plays on expectations

Because Shyamalan sets up the idea of the separation between Loretta and her parents very early on — and doesn't show their faces before Becca and Tyler meet them — the film automatically creates a false sense of security. Even more so since the found-footage style restricts the use of typical exposition methods like flashbacks or other scenes which would indicate that Nana and Pop Pop aren't who they say they are. Audiences have no reason to expect that they're actually two escapees from a local psychiatric facility.

The pieces all come together once Becca discovers her  real grandparents' corpses in the basement, along with some uniforms from the psychiatric hospital. It confirms "Nana" and "Pop-Pop" escaped from the institution and murdered the Jamisons because they were a similar age, making it easy to hide their whereabouts from the authorities. And they would've gotten away with it too, if it weren't for those meddling kids.)

However, after a video call from Loretta reveals that the pair aren't her parents, the children are forced to keep up appearances — but the unhinged duo start to taunt the siblings. Tyler in particular is forced to face his fear of germs as "Pop Pop" wipes dirty diapers in his face. The germophobia is something Shyamalan threads through Tyler's character throughout The Visit,  and the encounter with "Pop Pop" is a basic attempt of showing he's gone through some kind of trial-by-fire to get over his fears.

But the Jamison kids don't take things lying down: They fight back in vicious fashion — a subversion of yet another expectation that young teens might would wait for adults or law enforcement officers to arrive before doing away with their tormentors.

Its real message is about reconciliation

By the time Becca stabs "Nana" to death and Tyler has repeatedly slammed "Pop-Pop"'s head with the refrigerator door, their mother and the police do arrive to pick up the pieces. In a last-ditch attempt at adding an emotional undertone, Shyamalan reveals Loretta left home after a huge argument with her parents. She hit her mother, and her father hit her in return. But Loretta explains that reconciliation was always on the table if she had stopped being so stubborn and just reached out. One could take a domino-effect perspective and even say that Loretta's stubbornness about not reconnecting and her sustained distance from her parents put them in exactly the vulnerable position they needed to be for "Nana" and "Pop-Pop" to murder them. 

Loretta's confession actually mirrors something "Pop-Pop" told Tyler (before his run-in with the refrigerator door): that he and "Nana" wanted to spend one week as a normal family before dying. They should've thought about that before murdering a pair of innocent grandparents, but here we are. 

So, is The Visit  trying to say that if we don't keep our families together, they'll be replaced by imposters and terrify our children? Well, probably not. The Visit tries to deliver a message about breaking away from old habits, working through your fears, and stop being so stubborn over arguments that don't have any consequences in the long-run. Whether it actually sticks the landing on all of those points is still up for debate.

• Today's news
• Reviews and deals
• Climate change
• 2024 election
• Fall allergies
• Health news
• Mental health
• Sexual health
• Family health
• So mini ways
• Unapologetically
• Buying guides

Entertainment

• How to Watch
• My watchlist
• Stock market
• Biden economy
• Personal finance
• Stocks: most active
• Stocks: gainers
• Stocks: losers
• Trending tickers
• World indices
• US Treasury bonds
• Top mutual funds
• Highest open interest
• Highest implied volatility
• Currency converter
• Basic materials
• Communication services
• Consumer cyclical
• Consumer defensive
• Financial services
• Industrials
• Real estate
• Mutual funds
• Credit cards
• Credit card rates
• Balance transfer credit cards
• Business credit cards
• Cash back credit cards
• Rewards credit cards
• Travel credit cards
• Checking accounts
• Online checking accounts
• High-yield savings accounts
• Money market accounts
• Personal loans
• Student loans
• Car insurance
• Home buying
• Options pit
• Investment ideas
• Research reports
• Fantasy football
• Pro Pick 'Em
• College Pick 'Em
• Fantasy baseball
• Fantasy hockey
• Fantasy basketball
• Download the app
• Daily fantasy
• Scores and schedules
• GameChannel
• World Baseball Classic
• Premier League
• CONCACAF League
• Champions League
• Motorsports
• Horse racing
• Newsletters

New on Yahoo

• Privacy Dashboard

Let's Talk About the Twist in M. Night Shyamalan's 'The Visit' (Spoilers!)

Olivia DeJonge in ‘The Visit’ (Universal Pictures)

[Warning: We’re going to spoil the big twist of The Visit in the very first paragraph and then discuss the ending, so if you haven’t seen the movie yet, look away.]

For someone who was at one point regarded as the Master of the Mind-Blowing Plot Twist, it’s funny to think how almost every one of director M. Night Shyamalan’s surprise endings are essentially summed up by a single line of dialogue. Think, “ I see dead people ,” in The Sixth Sense , “ They called me Mr. Glass ,” in Unbreakable or “ Swing away ,” in Signs . The director’s new film, The Visit (in theaters today) tosses another one sentence-wonder on the pile: “Those aren’t your grandparents.” Uttered at the pivot point between the second and third acts, those words provide an otherwise formulaic movie with a much-needed kick in the pants as it enters the climactic home stretch.

But let’s back up a minute to explain why that sentence pulls the audience back in at the moment they might otherwise check out. Made in The Blair Witch Project found-footage tradition, The Visit depicts a family reunion that’s being documented by a pair of precocious youngsters, 15-year-old Becca (Olivia DeJonge) and 13-year-old Tyler (Ed Oxenbould). In order to give their single mom (Kathryn Hahn) a chance to take a much-needed vacation with her new boyfriend — her first steady beau since their father split — the kids have volunteered to spend a week with the grandparents they’ve never met. How have they gone this long without receiving a birthday phone call or even a card from their Nana (Deanna Dunagan) and Pop Pop (Peter McRobbie)? Well, as Mom tells it, she fled their household nearly two decades ago under contentious circumstances and has deliberately refrained from seeing or speaking to them since. She’s clinging to that resentment so fiercely, she doesn’t even have any pictures of her parents around…a plot point that will become important later on.

Deanna Dunagan in ‘The Visit’ (Universal Pictures)

After years of silence, the old folks have taken steps to heal this rift by asking to meet their grandchildren. Becca, the budding filmmaker of the two siblings, sees the potential for a heart-wrenching documentary to be made from this week-long vacation and eagerly equips herself with two digital cameras. But rather than teary confessionals and family secrets laid bare, she ends up capturing some truly disturbing behavior not long after she and Tyler pass through the doorway of Nana and Pop Pop’s isolated Pennsylvania farmhouse. On their very first night, Becca records her grandmother roaming about the house, vomiting all over the floor. And at roughly the same time each subsequent evening, Nana is out of her bed doing something bizarre, whether it’s crawling around the floor on her hands and knees or moaning and banging on cabinets and doors. Pop Pop blames her problems on “ sundowning ,” an actual medical condition affecting dementia patients. Meanwhile, he’s got his own problems, including a shed where he keeps poop-filled diapers (he’s incontinent, you see) and a penchant for cleaning guns by sticking them in his mouth.

Much of this potentially paranormal activity has already been teased in the movie’s trailer , which is designed to make you think that: A) The grandparents are demons; B) The grandparents are possessed by demons; C) The grandparents have been replaced by body-snatching monsters from a parallel dimension. As it turns out, though, their crazy behavior is due to the fact that they’re both legitimately crazy. They’re also — big twist! — not Nana and Pop Pop, as Hahn’s character belatedly reveals when Becca and Tyler surreptitiously film the elderly couple during a Skype session on the last day of their stay. (Estranged daughter that she is, she has conveniently not wanted to speak with them in earlier video calls.) Because Mom is hours away by car and the local police aren’t answering, the kids have to stay in the house with these strangers for a full day pretending like nothing has changed.

Watch the trailer:

Too bad for them that Pop Pop decides to prove that being crazy isn’t the same thing as being stupid. Aware that the ruse is up, he fills in the backstory behind the twist. Prior to taking up residence in the farmhouse, he and “Nana” were patients at a nearby mental hospital where the real Nana and Pop Pop were regular volunteers.

Jealous at their happiness over the impending visit of their grandkids, the frauds forced their way into the home and murdered the couple with a hammer, stashing their bodies in the basement. (Throughout the movie, other folks from the hospital have been stopping by the house to check up on the popular duo, but their replacements have conspired to be “out for a walk” during these visits.) They then went to the train station to pick up Becca and Tyler who were none the wiser because, remember, no pictures! Also, no Mom around to warn them otherwise. (Not for nothing, but this twist really does elevate Hahn to Worst Mother in the World status.)

Peter McRobbie in ‘The Visit’ (Universal Pictures)

Of course, now that the kids know, they’ll have to die — a fate they manage to avoid by killing the escaped mental patients instead. As the siblings stumble outside, the cops and their mother finally show up and whisk them away to safety. In a final coda, Becca finally gets the on-camera waterworks she’s been searching for when Mom reveals that she had the opportunity to mend fences with her parents years ago, but decided to hold onto her grudge instead — a choice that indirectly led to their deaths. She tearfully tells her daughter that forgiveness is essential, which in turn allows Becca to let go of some of the lingering anger she feels towards her own father for ditching their family.

In the past, some of Shyamalan’s twists have deepened his movies, turning, for instance, The Sixth Sense into a parable about grief and Unbreakable into a real world exploration of comic-book mythology. With The Visit though, the big revelation cheapens the movie to a certain extent. When you step back and think about it, there’s something deeply unpleasant about the way he’s using the mentally ill as routine horror-movie boogeymen. In the moment, however, the twist achieves its goal of catching the audience off guard. During the screening I was in, a wave of loud gasps swept through the packed house when Hahn said, “Those aren’t your grandparents” — the same gasps I heard 16 years ago in the final moments of The Sixth Sense when everyone figured out at the same instant that Bruce Willis had been dead all along. Shyamalan may no longer be considered “ The Next Spielberg ,” but that reaction to The Visit indicates that he’s still capable of some Spielbergian surprises.

Recommended Stories

'sasquatch sunset' is so relentlessly gross that people are walking out of screenings. star jesse eisenberg says the film was a ‘labor of love.’.

“There are so many movies made for people who like typical things. This is not that," the film's star told Yahoo Entertainment.

76ers' statue for Allen Iverson draws jokes, outrage due to misunderstanding: 'That was disrespectful'

Iverson didn't get a life-size statue. Charles Barkley and Wilt Chamberlain didn't either.

Masters: Zach Johnson's f-bomb, Bryson's burden, Jason Day's billboard sweater and more Friday observations

Friday at The Masters was one of the strangest days at Augusta National in recent memory.

Travis Kelce receives his University of Cincinnati diploma, chugs a beer on stage

Nobody is going to change the Kelce brothers.

O.J. Simpson dead at 76 after battle with cancer, family announces

O.J. Simpson, one of the most infamous figures in U.S. history, had been battling cancer.

Influencer fatigue finds its next victim: Coachella 2024

“We built a full city in the desert, and now, it’s a little too big," an event ticketing expert told Yahoo Entertainment about Coachella.

2025 Toyota 4Runner (finally!) revealed, and the new Trailhunter is extremely cool

The 2025 Toyota 4Runner is finally arriving this fall with a full lineup including returning TRD Pro and new Trailhunter. Hybrid power now available.

Republicans (?!?) are killing a tax cut

In a flip of the usual priorities, Senate Republicans seem likely to kill a set of tax cuts that have already passed the House and are broadly popular. Here's why.

2024 NBA Awards: All-NBA, All-Defensive and All-Rookie selections

Here's one voter's awards ballot with All-NBA, All-Defensive and All-Rookie selections.

2024 NBA Awards: Official picks for MVP, Rookie of the Year and every individual honor

With the 2023-24 NBA season coming to an end, here's one voter's award ballot, breaking down the top candidates — and declaring the winners.

Screen Rant

The grandparents in the visit explained: breaking down the twist's clues & reveal.

M. Night Shyamalan's The Visit has a big twist and shocking reveal about the grandparents, and there were many clues to this throughout the movie.

Spoilers for M. Night Shyamalans' The Visit.

• Loretta's strained relationship with her parents and lack of photos and communication were clues to The Visit's twist.
• Becca and Tyler had never met their grandparents before and didn't know what they looked like.
• The grandparents had strange rules, and Nana's odd behavior during hide-and-seek hinted at their true intentions.

M. Night Shyamalan’s The Visit has every element that makes a Shyamalan horror movie, including a plot twist that was hinted at throughout the whole movie. After rising to fame in 1999 with The Sixth Sense , M. Night Shyamalan has continued to make movies, mostly horror ones that often include a twist and shocking reveal. Although these elements led to predictable and disappointing reveals and movies, there are others with interesting twists that added to the tension of the story, as was the case of the 2015 found footage horror movie The Visit .

The Visit follows siblings Becca (Olivia DeJonge) and Tyler (Ed Oxenbould), who live with their divorced mother, Loretta (Kathryn Hahn). Loretta hasn’t talked to or seen her parents in 15 years, but when they get into contact with her, Becca and Tyler convince her to let them visit them for a week. As they have never met their grandparents, Becca decides to make a documentary film of the experience. Once with their grandparents at their isolated farmhouse, it all seems normal at first but gets gradually stranger and more disturbing, leading to a shocking reveal: the “grandparents” aren't the real ones, and they killed Loretta’s parents to pose as them .

M. Night Shyamalan's Films Ranked From Absolute Worst To Best (Including Old)

Loretta had no relationship with her parents in the visit, loretta didn’t even take her children to the farm..

The first big red flag in The Visit that pointed at this not being a typical trip to the grandparents’ house was Loretta’s relationship with them. At the beginning of The Visit , Loretta explained that she left her parents’ home after falling in love with Becca and Tyler’s father, whom her parents never approved of. Loretta didn’t share more details at first, but at the end of The Visit , it’s revealed that she had a major argument with her parents in which she hit her mother and her father struck her, and after that, she ignored all their attempts to contact her.

Loretta’s resentment and anger went as far as not showing her children photos of her parents , nor did she make the effort to accompany her children to her parents’ house – after all, it was their first time going there and meeting their grandparents. Loretta’s estranged relationship is one of the biggest and earliest clues to The Visit ’s big twist.

Becca & Tyler Had Never Seen Their Grandparents Before

Becca & tyler had no idea what their grandparents looked like..

Not making them part of her and her children’s lives, and not having any photos of them, made it so Becca and Tyler had no idea of what they actually looked like.

Loretta’s difficult relationship with her parents led to her not talking about them, not making them part of her and her children’s lives, and not having any photos of them, so Becca and Tyler had no idea of what they looked like. This certainly made it easier for the fake grandparents to lure Becca and Tyler in , but it was yet another hint at this not being a normal trip to visit the grandparents.

The Kids Weren’t Allowed To Leave Their Room After 9:30 pm.

The grandparents had a couple of rules that had to be followed..

The first rule was because the “grandparents” were hiding the bodies of the real ones in the basement.

Once at the farm, it seemed like a quiet and calm place and the grandparents seemed pleasant, but they had a couple of rules that Becca and Tyler had to follow. The first one was that they weren’t allowed to go into the basement because it had mold, and the second one was that bedtime was at 9:30 every day, and they weren’t allowed to leave their room after that. The first rule was because the “grandparents” were hiding the bodies of the real ones in the basement, but the second one was more complicated.

Nana acted erratically at night , projectile vomiting, running around the house, crawling like an animal, and ripping the walls while naked, among other disturbing things. Leaving their room after 9:30 pm would have not only endangered Becca and Tyler, but it would have also revealed there was something wrong with the grandparents.

Nana’s Odd Behaviour During Hide-and-Seek

One of the visit’s biggest scarejumps..

With not much to do at the farm, Becca and Tyler decided to play hide and seek under the house, but to their surprise, Nana was also there. Nana chased Tyler and Becca, crawling like an animal , and when they all got out, she acted as if nothing had happened and went back inside the house. That same behavior was repeated later on in the movie, further disturbing Becca and Tyler.

Pop Pop Attacked An Unknown Man On The Street

Pop pop believed he was being followed..

Another red flag in Pop Pop’s behavior (after the reveal of the shed with piles of soiled diapers) was when he and Nana took Becca and Tyler to see the school Loretta attended when she was younger. There, Pop Pop saw a man on the other side of the street and, believing he had been following them for a while, attacked him. It wasn’t until Becca stopped him that Pop Pop realized he didn’t know the man, and though this was brushed off by Becca and Loretta as “old people” behavior, Tyler knew something wasn’t right.

Nana “Accidentally” Covered Becca’s Laptop Camera With Dough

Nana temporarily left becca & tyler without their webcam..

Becca and Tyler kept in touch with Loretta through video calls every day while Loretta was on a cruise with her new boyfriend. One day, Nana apologized to Becca for ruining her laptop as she spilled dough on it and tried to clean it but couldn’t get rid of the dough on the camera. Loretta wasn’t able to see her kids because of this , but it was soon clear Nana did it on purpose so Loretta couldn’t see them and thus tell the kids they weren’t the real grandparents.

Dr. Sam’s Visit To Check On The Grandparents

Dr. sam’s visit was a big clue to what happened to the grandparents..

Had the grandparents been home when Dr. Sam arrived, The Visit would have ended earlier.

During their time at the farm, only two people came to visit. The first one was Dr. Sam, who worked at the same hospital where Becca and Tyler’s grandparents volunteered. The grandparents weren’t around when Dr. Sam arrived, but he told Becca and Tyler that he wanted to check on them as they hadn’t gone to work in a couple of days. Had the grandparents been home when Dr. Sam arrived, The Visit would have ended earlier.

Nana Asked Becca To Clean The Oven

Nana had other intentions..

In one of the most suspenseful and strangest moments in The Visit , Nana suddenly asked Becca to help her clean the back of the oven. Becca did so to help her, but Nana insisted that she reach the far back of it, thus getting in completely. Although Nana didn’t do anything to Becca the first time, the second time she asked her for help she closed the oven to clean the outside and then opened it again, letting Becca out.

This moment is reminiscent of the tale of Hansel & Gretel and how the witch tried to trick Gretel into getting inside the oven.

Stacey’s Visit & Confrontation

Stacey realized these weren’t the real grandparents..

The second visit was from a woman named Stacey, whom Becca and Tyler’s real grandparents had helped in counseling at the hospital. As the grandparents weren’t home when she arrived, she returned later and came face to face with the fake grandparents. Stacey tried to get them to leave with her to take them back to the hospital, but they ended up killing her and hanging her body from a tree. Stacey realized these weren’t Becca and Tyler’s real grandparents , but the siblings didn’t understand her reaction.

Why Nana & Pop Pop Killed The Real Grandparents

Becca & tyler never got to meet their real grandparents..

Nana was revealed to have committed murder in the past, and they were both jealous of the real grandparents’ happiness and the visit of their grandkids.

During Becca and Tyler’s final night at the farm, the truth was unveiled: Nana and Pop Pop were patients at the mental hospital where Becca and Tyler’s grandparents volunteered, and the real ones were murdered by them and their bodies kept in the basement. Nana was revealed to have committed murder in the past, and they were both jealous of the real grandparents’ happiness and the visit of their grandkids , so they killed them and took their place.

Clues like Loretta having no photos of her parents and the kids never having met them were necessary to keep the big reveal of The Visit a secret, while others like Dr. Sam and Stacey’s visit added to the horrors that were about to be unleashed at the farm.

From director M. Night Shyamalan, The Visit follows two siblings who are sent to stay with their estranged grandparents while their mother is out of town on vacation. Realizing that all isn't what it seems during their stay, the siblings set out to find out what is really going on at their grandparents' home. Olivia DeJonge and Ed Oxenbould star as Becca and Tyler, with Deanna Dunagan, Peter McRobbie, and Kathryn Hahn making up the rest of the main cast. 

From the kitchen to the laundry room, 5 home upgrades you didn't know you needed — from $8

• TODAY Plaza
• Share this —

• Watch Full Episodes
• Read With Jenna
• Inspirational
• Relationships
• TODAY Table
• Newsletters
• Start TODAY
• Shop TODAY Awards
• Citi Music Series
• Listen All Day

Follow today

More Brands

• On The Show

The true story that inspired 'Spoiler Alert,' according to real-life inspiration Michael Ausiello

Michael Ausiello, an entertainment journalist and founder of TVLine, has documented his partner's cancer journey three times now — first in Facebook posts, then in a book and now in a movie.

Ausiello's husband, Kit Cowan, died in 2015 from rectal cancer. In the year leading up to his death, Ausiello sent updates to family and close friends via private Facebook posts.

The blurbs become a book published two years later titled "Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Other Four-Letter Words." Ausiello's close friend actor Jim Parsons read the book and told him it should be a movie — so they teamed up for the tear-jerker romantic comedy "Spoiler Alert," which premieres Dec. 2.

Parsons stars as Ausiello in the movie, and both serve as producers. Michael Showalter directs.

"Spoiler Alert" starts on the day Cowan (played by Ben Aldridge) dies and flashes back to the first day he met Ausiello. Their love story unfolds from there, with a few stops including a coming out scene, their Christmas tradition, the wedges that separated them, the things that brought them back together and their wedding.

Ausiello, 50, opens up to TODAY.com about publicly grieving such private moments with his late husband and the significance of seeing their love story on the big screen.

'It gets easier': Ausiello on returning to this part of his life

Ausiello initially started sharing Kit's journey on Facebook as a way for him to process the sudden diagnosis and death.

“I wanted to share our experience going through the cancer journey with friends and family was it can be lonely going through something like this, and isolating," he says. "Every time we shared one of those Facebook posts, or one of those updates, the warm virtual hugs that we would get in response felt so good, and meant so much. And then, when I wrote the book, I felt that on just such a bigger scale."

One of the members of the private group receiving his posts was Rakesh Satyal, a colleague at Simon & Schuster publishing company. In 2015, he encouraged Ausiello to turn them into a book.

"When I wrote the book, I was at the start, and in the middle of, grieving his loss, which made it an emotionally torturous process," Ausiello recalls. "Writing a book is very lonely and isolating."

Ausiello says the movie's release has put his healing into perspective.

"It definitely gets easier," he says. "It gets easier because I've had some distance from Kit's death. The movie experience now comes several years after Kit has died. So I'm on the other end of that initial grief."

As a result, making the movie was "much more fun" than writing the book, he says.

"It's a collaborative experience," he continues. "I'm not alone. I'm with other people. And I'm with other people who I have enormous respect for and have admired for a long time. So just creatively, it's just extremely fulfilling."

Ausiello says Parsons is a trusted friend and "always made (him) feel like a partner on this journey."

'A version of my life': Ausiello on how the movie compares to the real thing

Ausiello says being on set did not make him feel like he was reliving his life.

"The movie is a version of my life story. It isn't my life. So that also makes it easier when I was on set every day. I was always aware that we were making a movie. I never felt like I was watching my life unfold again before my eyes," he says.

At the same time, some scenes "bore a very strong resemblance" to the real thing.

"So even though, yes, I knew we were making a movie, there absolutely were times where it took my breath away (with) how similar it felt the actual experience," he says.

A few scenes in particular, Ausiello says, were spot on.

Yes, the Smurf scene really happened

When Kit visits Michael's apartment for the first time in the movie, Michael is hesitant to let him in. When Michael finally opens the door, Kit sees why he'd been nervous: Michael's apartment is decorated with Smurfs memorabilia. Yes, Smurfs from the famous cartoon.

Ausiello says this is all entirely true.

"Not only did I have a room full of Smurfs, but those were my Smurfs in the scene. That was my personal collection that was used in the movie, and it only was a fraction of the overall collection. My actual collection is probably six or seven times what you saw," he says.

In the movie, Kit is understandably shocked."What is this, Michael?" he asks after noticeable silence.

Michael replies with a story about how his mom used to go shopping for house needs every week and, if he went, would reward him with one Smurf. After she died of cancer when he was a kid, Michael says he starting buying them for himself and it grew into a collection.

Kit's parents really are like Michael's parents

Ausiello's mother died of cancer and his dad died years before that. Cowan's parents, Bob and Marilyn Cowan, became "family," Ausiello says.

"I do keep in touch with them. I visit. I'm not there nearly as much as I used to be because Kit's not here. But I love Bob and Marilyn. They're my family ... I adore them and in many ways, I see them as two of the heroes in this story," he says.

He says they're "navigating and figuring out" what their relationship looks like now that the "person tethering all of us together" is gone.

The couples therapy scene was 'perfectly depicted'

Before Kit's diagnosis, the couple finds themselves exchanging jabs and struggling to get along. They go to a couples counselor in hopes of mending what's broken.

The scene ends with the counselor recommending they break up to allow time for them to work out the "resentment" they have for one another.

"That was actually very similar," Ausiello says of the scene. "Our therapist Tony, who inspired this character — who was our couples therapist, and is now still my individual therapist — would often say it was like the 'Kit and Mike Show' when we came in. We didn't really know it at the time, but the two of us together — it was like a comedy team. It was perfectly depicted in the movie."

The marriage proposal scene was 'very faithful' to the actual experience

At the time of Kit's diagnosis, Michael and Kit were on a break and living in separate apartments. But Michael was the first person Kit told when he found out, and they went to doctor's appointments together. The rectal cancer, initially confined to one area, spreads to Kit's brain.

After hearing this news, the couple has a conversation about the future, one that Ausiello says is similar to what really happened.

"After Kit learns that the cancer has spread to his brain, when we're in our backyard, we just put all our cards out on the table. (The characters) have an honest reckoning about our relationship that was very faithful to the actual experience, and also a pure joy to watch being shot. It felt almost like we were shooting a one-act play that night, because of the scene between Ben (Kit) and Jim (Michael), and Michael (Showalter, the director) just gave them so much space, so much breathing room to sort of find the little moments within that scene. It was one of my favorite nights on the set," he says.

One scene is modeled off a video Cowan took

After treatments and exhaustion, Kit finds himself with some energy one weekend, so Michael takes him to a beach in Ocean City, N.J. Bob and Marilyn join them.

Ausiello says the scene is modeled from a video he has of the real trip to Ocean City.

"When Kit is out on the deck, blowing the bubbles and sort of cheekily introducing the cast of characters around him — that was frame for frame, word for word almost exactly how it was in real life, mostly because I have it on video.

"I shared that video with our director, Michael Showalter. And he was like, 'Well, we're just going to do exactly that.' Now, we did exactly that because Ben looks so much like Kit. And particularly in that scene, he so brilliantly captured Kit's essence that that scene is just — it's so beautiful, and so poignant. And so, so true to the real life experience," Ausiello says.

'My heart is open': Ausiello on what's next

The film ends with Michael asking Kit, before he dies, what he should do next.

"You'll know," is Kit's reply in the movie.

Ausiello says he is "absolutely open to love again."

"Whether I will be lucky enough to find someone that I love as much as Kit, or half as much as I love Kit, I should be so lucky. But my heart is definitely open," he says.

The legacy of the movie

Ausiello reflects on the timing of the movie's release.

“I’m grateful the movie is coming out when it does feel like the LGBTQ+ community is under attack and our right to marry the person that we love are in jeopardy of being robbed, taken away from us,” Ausiello says.

“I am proud to be putting this story out into the world even though I never set out to make a message or to make a statement. I just wanted to tell an honest, authentic story. If (the movie) moves the needle a little bit, opens people’s eyes and puts a little bit more love out into the world, all the better."

Randi Richardson is a reporter for NBC News' TODAY.com based in Brooklyn.

• Search Please fill out this field.
• Manage Your Subscription
• Give a Gift Subscription
• Newsletters
• Sweepstakes
• Entertainment

'Spoiler Alert' : The Heartbreaking True Story Behind Jim Parson's New Romantic Movie

In his memoir Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies , writer Michael Ausiello wrote about his relationship with husband Kit Cowan, who died of cancer in 2015

Jim Parsons ' latest movie has a touching true story behind it.

Spoiler Alert is an adaptation of Michael Ausiello's 2017 memoir Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies about how the television journalist fell in love with photographer Kit Cowan in the early 2000s. They later married on March 21, 2014, and Cowan died at 43 of a rare form of neuroendocrine cancer on Feb. 5, 2015.

At the time, Ausiello wrote in a tribute to Cowan on TVLine (which he founded) that "as you can imagine, my heart is broken. But it's also filled with immeasurable gratitude for the 13-and-a-half years that I was lucky enough to spend with this extraordinarily loving, funny, talented, complicated man."

In the film, from The Big Sick director Michael Showalter, Parsons plays Ausiello, who, after the heartbreaking diagnosis, sets aside relationship issues with Cowan (played by Ben Aldridge) to help him in his final months. Sally Field and Bill Irwin star as Cowan's parents Marilyn and Robert.

Ausiello, 50, told Today.com about the similarities and differences from their real love story and the one depicted onscreen in Spoiler Alert .

"The movie is a version of my life story. It isn't my life. So that also makes it easier when I was on set every day. I was always aware that we were making a movie. I never felt like I was watching my life unfold again before my eyes," he said, adding, "Even though, yes, I knew we were making a movie, there absolutely were times where it took my breath away [with] how similar it felt the actual experience."

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free weekly newsletter to get the biggest news of the week delivered to your inbox every Friday.

He also confirmed that the Smurfs memorabilia collection shown in the film are his real-life treasures — and only a "fraction of the overall" haul.

Ausiello told Today.com that he's still close with Cowan's parents: "I do keep in touch with them. I visit. I'm not there nearly as much as I used to be because Kit's not here. But I love Bob and Marilyn. They're my family ... I adore them and in many ways, I see them as two of the heroes in this story."

And, the writer say he's "absolutely open" to finding love again today. He said, "Whether I will be lucky enough to find someone that I love as much as Kit, or half as much as I love Kit, I should be so lucky. But my heart is definitely open."

Parsons, 49, recently told Variety that his husband Todd Spiewak encouraged him to option the rights to Ausiello's memoir and make it into a movie. (The actor/producer and Ausiello were also acquaintances for years as the journalist covered him during his Big Bang Theory days.)

"My husband watched me read it, which means he watched me sob through it. And he said, 'Do you think it would make a good movie?' I said, 'I don't know.' And he read it, and he said, 'I think it would,' " said Parsons.

He also explained it was "really thrilling" to share a story that is "such a full view of a gay relationship." Said Parsons, "It was such a full view of two people who really love each other, two souls that come together and go on this journey together, the ups and downs of that, the coming apart and coming back together and, ultimately, being able to really get about as clear a view of another human being as you can possibly get."

Spoiler Alert is in select theaters Friday, then everywhere Dec. 9.

Related Articles

Spoiler Space: The Visit

Thoughts on, and a place to discuss, the plot details we can’t reveal in our review .

Related Content

One interesting thing about The Visit —the first M. Night Shyamalan movie since The Village to turn on a third-act plot twist—is the lengths to which the movie goes to keep the audience from reaching what should be the most logical conclusion. Hints about a family secret and unexplained events that suggest everything from supernatural ritual to extraterrestrial control work the kids’ (and, by extension, the audience’s) imaginations, but when they tell Mom about it over Skype—briefly swinging the laptop over to the window to show her that Pop Pop and Nana are outside—she responds with the obvious answer that the viewer probably hasn’t had time to think of: “Those aren’t your grandparents.”

No, of course they’re not. They’re just two elderly people who happened to be standing at the train station awkwardly holding a sign with Becca and Tyler’s names on it, whom the kids have accepted as their grandparents because they wanted to. Found-footage movies generally operate under the logic that people behave more or less normally when there’s a camera around all the time. The Visit ’s neatest tweak on the genre is that everyone is consciously playing for the camera—even Becca, who reframes into a tight close-up as she puts her hand over Nana’s early on.

Nana and Pop Pop—violent escapees from a nearby mental hospital who forced their way into the home of two volunteers, the real grandparents—are both trying to keep up the appearance of sanity and normalcy, but are doing a terrible job. “You know, I used to be an actor” becomes a running gag, uttered by random strangers—an Amtrak conductor, a neighbor who comes by while Nana and Pop are out—who then proceed to ham it up for Becca and Tyler. Shyamalan is a notoriously economical writer, with little in the way of the extraneous. (See: Signs .) Here, all the references to performance—whether it’s Tyler’s “ethnically confused” rapping or Becca directing her brother to unpack his suitcase without looking at the camera—converge in a climax where the kids are forced to act out Nana and Pop Pop’s deranged idea of “normal” family night while they wait for the local cops to arrive.

There’s plenty of other stuff, too; whether it’s Becca’s low self-esteem, Tyler’s offhand recollections of disappointing their dad at a pee wee football game, or the neighbors who drop off food while the imposter grandparents aren’t home, everything happens for a narrative reason. And then there’s the treasure trove of other Shyamalanisms: the focus on divorce and marital turmoil; the references to hippies-turned-authoritarians, alien invasion stories, and ’70s pop culture; the obsession with water (see: Unbreakable , Signs , Lady In The Water ), which manifests itself in the imposter grandma’s belief in an alien species that can only be contacted by being drowned in a well; and the home invasion premise (see: Signs , the “Orange Man” sequence in Unbreakable , the flashback in After Earth ), which the movie hides until the third act.

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

Spoiler Alert

The story of Michael Ausiello and Kit Cowan's relationship, which takes a tragic turn when Cowan is diagnosed with terminal cancer. The story of Michael Ausiello and Kit Cowan's relationship, which takes a tragic turn when Cowan is diagnosed with terminal cancer. The story of Michael Ausiello and Kit Cowan's relationship, which takes a tragic turn when Cowan is diagnosed with terminal cancer.

• Michael Showalter
• David Marshall Grant
• Michael Ausiello
• Jim Parsons
• Ben Aldridge
• 49 User reviews
• 67 Critic reviews
• 61 Metascore
• 1 win & 6 nominations

• Michael's Sitcom Older Brother

• Sitcom Young Michael

• Mrs. Ausiello
• Dr. Underwood
• Nurse Angelique

• Night Nurse
• (as Ellen Yiovas)

• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

More like this

Did you know

• Trivia In a December 2022 article for the Daily Beast, Kevin Fallon reported that in Michael Ausiello's capacity as a TV reporter for publications including TV Guide, Entertainment Weekly, and TVLine, Ausiello had interviewed Jim Parsons several times over the years that Parsons starred on The Big Bang Theory. When Ausiello's source memoir was released in 2017, Ausiello asked Parsons to moderate a Los Angeles Q&A session on it, and when Parsons read the book to prepare for the panel, his husband, Todd Spiewak, found him sobbing in their living room. Spiewak suggested to Parsons that if he had such a strong emotional reaction to the story, he should option it for the movies - which is what they ended up doing together (both Parsons and Spiewak are producers).
• Goofs Immediately before Michael and Kit lie down under their first Christmas tree, there are several presents underneath. When they lie down, there are no presents.

Michael Ausiello : [listening to the cupboard sound] Oh god! Am I going back in the closet?

• Connections Featured in The View: Sally Field/12 Days of Holidays (2022)
• Soundtracks Can't Get You Out of My Head Written by Rob Davis , Cathy Dennis Performed by Kylie Minogue

User reviews 49

• Feb 4, 2023
• How long is Spoiler Alert? Powered by Alexa
• December 9, 2022 (United States)
• United States
• Official Facebook
• Official Focus Features
• Semi-Formal Productions
• That's Wonderful Productions
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• Dec 4, 2022

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 52 minutes
• Dolby Digital

Related news

Contribute to this page.

• See more gaps
• Learn more about contributing

More to explore

Recently viewed

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, spoiler alert.

Now streaming on:

A common complaint about LGBTQ+ movies from LGBTQ+ people is that they always end tragically. The new dramedy "Spoiler Alert" doesn't break this mold, but given that it's based on the life story of TV journalist Michael Ausiello , it gets a pass. Besides, Ausiello does issue a warning up top that this tale will have a sad ending. At least, he does in the book: The title of his memoir is Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies at the End , shortened to "Spoiler Alert" for its movie adaptation. 

This is a nice film. A sweet film. A film you can watch with your mother-in-law. Jim Parsons from "The Big Bang Theory" stars in a sensitive performance as Michael, a shy pop-culture junkie who doesn't drink or do drugs and is emotionally guarded because of his traumatic past. Michael is grossed out by Grindr and timid about sex, which means he's a poor fit for the musky dance floors of the Manhattan gay-bar circuit. (Incidentally, he does get on quite well with his eventual mother-in-law, played here by Sally Field .) 

But it's on one of those dance floors, on a rare night out with a colleague from TV Guide , that Michael meets Kit Cowan ( Ben Aldridge ), the man who ends up being the love of his life. Kit has everything that Michael wishes he had: Confidence, cool friends, and a muscular physique. And yet, Kit is willing to wait for Michael to let down his emotional walls. Besides, Michael's not the only one with neuroses—Kit has baggage he has to work through if he and Michael are going to live the monogamously partnered life that Michael, in particular, seems to want. 

The chemistry between Parsons and Aldridge is easy and flirtatious, mainly when they engage in witty banter. And "Spoiler Alert" does a good job of showing the lovable side of both of these flawed, vulnerable characters. You can see how these two could fall so deeply for one another that they'd stick it out through the hardest of times, from ordinary spats about sex and commitment to the far more serious threats to Kit's health that drive the second half of the movie. (This is one of those dramedies that shifts from comedy to drama, instead of blending the two throughout the film.) 

The film is very honest about the struggles involved with long-term relationships and filled with true-to-life detail that could only have come from a memoir: Michael's obsession with Diet Coke and The Smurfs. Kit's love of smoking weed out of a tiny metal one-hitter and ever-present digital camera. (The film is set between the early '00s and mid-2010s.) The packaging of their love story is more generic, however, soundtracked by "Woah OH oh" handclap music and structured around Facebook posts and visits with Kit's parents. Director Michael Showalter does attempt one flight of surrealist fancy by inserting sequences from an imaginary sitcom based on Michael's childhood. But given that the best things about "Spoiler Alert" are its realistic characters and setting, these pivots into broad '80s archetypes never quite click. 

Showalter covered similar territory in 2017's " The Big Sick ," which is also about a relationship (a heterosexual one this time) that's tested by a health crisis (only it's early in the courtship, rather than later on during a rough patch). That film was also based on a true story, but with a more fortunate outcome. In a media landscape where gay romances are rarely allowed the happy endings of straight ones, it's an inarguable fact that in these real people's real lives, the (presumed—she hasn't publicly stated otherwise) straight woman survived, but the gay man didn't, what do you do with that? Probably leave the question open (I'm certainly going to) and let "Spoiler Alert" be what it is: An effective PG-13 romantic tearjerker for mainstream audiences who are increasingly comfortable with LGBTQ+ content—a positive development, whether you're a "clubbing on a Wednesday" type or a "fall asleep on the couch watching 'Felicity'" one.

Now playing in theaters. 

Katie Rife is a freelance writer and critic based in Chicago with a speciality in genre cinema. She worked as the News Editor of  The A.V. Club  from 2014-2019, and as Senior Editor of that site from 2019-2022. She currently writes about film for outlets like  Vulture, Rolling Stone, Indiewire, Polygon , and  RogerEbert.com.

Now playing

Love Lies Bleeding

Brian tallerico.

State of Consciousness

Simon abrams.

Girls State

Arthur the King

Monica Castillo

Film credits.

Spoiler Alert (2022)

Rated PG-13 for sexual content, drug use and thematic elements.

110 minutes

Jim Parsons as Michael Ausiello

Ben Aldridge as Kit Cowan

Sally Field as Marilyn

Josh Pais as Scott

Tara Summers as Mrs. Ausiello

Winslow Bright as Kelly Roswell

Allegra Heart as Franny

Sadie Scott as Kirby

• Michael Showalter

Writer (based on the book "Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies" by)

• Michael Ausiello
• David Marshall Grant

Cinematographer

• Brian Burgoyne
• Peter Teschner
• Brian H. Kim

Latest blog posts

Until It’s Too Late: Bertrand Bonello on The Beast

O.J. Simpson Dies: The Rise & Fall of A Superstar

Which Cannes Film Will Win the Palme d’Or? Let’s Rank Their Chances

Second Sight Drops 4K Releases for Excellent Films by Brandon Cronenberg, Jeremy Saulnier, and Alexandre Aja

Spoiler Alert: Plot, Cast, Release Date, and Everything Else We Know

Spoiler Alert is a gay love story that aims to make one laugh, cry, and appreciate the time we have with our loved ones. Here's what to know

A few years ago, Hollywood fell in love with a niche romance genre – the sick-flick. Many films were released to rave reviews, including The Big Sick and The Fault in Our Stars . The sick-flick appealed to a large audience for its oftentimes relatable and cathartic subject matter. Losing a loved one is no laughing matter, but through cinema, topics of love and loss can be explored in a healing manner. That’s where Michael Showalter’s newest film Spoiler Alert comes in.

Based on Michael Ausiello’s memoir Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies , this film promises a gay romance filled with heart. The sick-flick genre has seen LGBTQ+ stories before, but not one quite like this, and not as part of the sick-flick genre that has recently returned to popularity. Films exploring life with cancer, recovery, remission, and loss take on a complicated balance between hope and fear.

In Spoiler Alert , it’s clear from the start how the story ends – but just because the hero dies at the end, it doesn’t mean the journey has to be a sad one. Filled with love, hope, dreams, and the inevitable loss of them, Spoiler Alert is a gay love story set in a modern era that shows every facet of the queer experience .

Spoiler Alert: The Plot

Following Michael and his lover Kit through the last eleven months of Kit’s life, Spoiler Alert stays true to its title by not hiding any details about the film’s ending. However, there is much to enjoy in this feature adaptation of Michael Ausiello’s memoir, despite the ending being clear from the start. As Kit fights against cancer, his relationship with Michael deepens, and there is plenty of life left for them to enjoy during the film’s runtime.

“Based on Michael Ausiello’s best-selling memoir “Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies,” the film is a heartwarming, funny and life-affirming story of how Michael and Kit’s relationship is transformed and deepened when one of them falls ill.”

Coming from the director of The Big Sick , Spoiler Alert is sure to be a well-executed sick flick from an experienced creator. Not just a sick flick either – Spoiler Alert is a fantastical romance story about finding joy in the last months of one’s life. Early reviews of the film detail fantasy elements that whisk audiences away from the hardest moments. For a film that is, at its heart, a queer love story , this strategy feels kind for an audience tired of the 'Bury Your Gays' trope.

Related: Exclusive: Michael Ausiello Honors Kit Cowan in Spoiler Alert

Spoiler Alert doesn’t hide the tragedy of its ending, which allows it to explore all the joy that can be found even in the grim reality of a loved one’s imminent death.

Spoiler Alert: The Cast

Spoiler Alert features a star-studded cast fit for a film with heavy subject matter. Jim Parsons, best known for his role as Sheldon in The Big Bang Theory , will star as Michael. Photographer and long-term partner Kit Cowan will be played by the talented Ben Aldridge , best known for his work on Fleabag and Our Girl. The film also features the acting talents of Josh Pais ( Joker ), Allegra Heart ( Dickinson ), Jeffery Self ( You’re Killing Me ), and Tara Summers ( Mercy Street ).

Of the cast, many are LGBTQ+ or have acted in queer films before. Jim Parsons came out in 2012 and married his partner of 14 years in 2020 – similar to the story of Michael and Kit in Spoiler Alert , who were also together for 14 years. Having Parsons in the lead role gives the film the emotional depth it needs to depict such a long-term and loving relationship on the screen. Co-star Ben Aldridge recently came out and will be acting in another gay role in M. Night Shyamalan’s upcoming queer horror film Knock at the Cabin . Jeffery Self has also starred in several LGBTQ+ films, including the hilarious Gay of Thrones . We love to see LGBTQ+ actors cast in queer roles!

Related: Some of the Greatest Gay Love Stories in Movies

Behind the scenes, Spoiler Alert also has an incredible creative team. Director Michael Showalter takes the helm after his previous success in the sick flick genre with The Big Sick . David Marshall Grant and Dan Savage wrote the screenplay, adapted from Michael Ausiello’s memoir. Long-time collaborator of Showalter, cinematographer Brian Burgoyne is behind the camera on Spoiler Alert . With a cast and crew this talented, we’re sure Spoiler Alert will be a touching adaptation of Michael and Kit’s last months together.

Release Date

Spoiler Alert is set to release on December 2nd, 2022, to a limited number of theaters in the United States. After the first week, on December 9th, the film will receive a wider release across the country. If you can’t find a theater screening near you on the 2nd, keep an eye out for it to arrive later in December.

• Search Please fill out this field.
• Newsletters
• Sweepstakes
• Movie Reviews

Spoiler Alert review: A ridiculously charming leading man anchors a genre-defying love story

Jim Parsons and Ben Aldridge star in a heartbreaking romance that subverts expectations.

For decades, gay love stories have been presented as tragedies, with rare exceptions swinging over to broad comedy. Spoiler Alert refuses to be either. That's not to say the real-life story of Michael Ausiello and Kit Cowan doesn't end (and begin, actually) in a hospital bed — or elicit a few laughs — but the new film spends the bulk of its 112 minutes sitting in the mundane of Michael and Kit's life: the awkwardness of early dates, the meeting of parents, the nights on the couch watching Drag Race . Yes, it chronicles Kit's cancer battle and death, but Spoiler Alert is ultimately a relationship story, one we see on screen far too infrequently.

Just like its source material — TVLine founder Michael Ausiello's bestselling memoir Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies — the movie lets you know from the start that Michael ( Jim Parsons ) will lose Kit ( Ben Aldridge ) to a rare and aggressive form of neuroendocrine cancer. Getting that out of the way up front frees director Michael Showalter ( The Big Sick ) from any inclination to inject a sense of manipulative hope. A happy ending is not an option here. We know Kit's fate and, just like Michael, can only focus on enjoying the time we have with the charming photographer.

And oh, how charming Aldridge is as Kit. The Pennyworth and Fleabag actor effortlessly exudes movie-star charisma with all the approachability of a Hallmark romantic lead. Parsons is distant in comparison (though colleagues who worked with Ausiello at EW in the late 2000s say the Big Bang Theory star successfully captures the essence of the witty man they knew), but that reservedness doesn't hinder the magnetism of the couple's early scenes together.

Screenwriters David Marshall Grant ( A Million Little Things , Brothers & Sisters ) and Dan Savage (the columnist behind " Savage Love ") seem an equally suitable match, the latter infusing a kick into what could have played out as an oversentimental episode of Grant's television work. Spoiler Alert nimbly shifts tone and time periods, and whenever it gets a little too cute for its own good, the film finds its way back into an intimate, real moment between Kit and Michael.

The central couple is so appealing that the story deflates a bit any time their world expands (through no fault of his own, Queer Eye 's Antoni Porwoski is a distracting casting choice as Kit's coworker). That observation initially includes the intrusion of Kit's parents ( Sally Field and Bill Irwin ), whose first appearance plays out more like a Will & Grace story line — though their presence is increasingly welcome as Kit's health declines. Spoiler Alert 's delicate restraint is on full display as Field's Marilyn is informed of her son's diagnosis. The actress, known for her Oscar-worthy scene-chewing, goes subtle for a change with her understated yet still heartbreaking response.

Spoiler Alert defies expectations throughout, refusing to adhere to one genre or storytelling convention. Some unexpected twists are successful (a multi-cam sitcom setting provides Michael's backstory) while others are jarring (one hard left turn in the final act, in particular), but Showalter ultimately succeeds because he never loses focus of the heart at the core of his story. Grade: B+

Spoiler Alert is out now in limited release, available wide on Dec. 9.

Related content:

• The 16 movies we're most excited to see this holiday season
• Jim Parsons was ready to fight to keep Mayim Bialik on Big Bang Theory : 'I will not let this character go'
• Jim Parsons to lead Off Broadway production of Terrence McNally musical A Man of No Importance

Related Articles

You probably know what happens in the movie 'Spoiler Alert'. Bring some tissues anyway

There’s not much to spoil when it comes to “Spoiler Alert.”

Especially if you’ve seen the trailer, which uses most of the film’s funniest bits (if you haven’t seen it yet, maybe consider holding off). It’s no secret that the hero dies — courtesy of the 2018 memoir that the movie is based on, Michael Ausiello’s “Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies” — leaving protagonist Michael (Jim Parsons) a widower after his longtime boyfriend Kit’s (Ben Aldridge) year-long battle with cancer.

But knowing how the couple’s story ends, in real life as well as in the film, doesn’t detract from the experience of watching the movie. It’s a beautifully balanced and well-paced film that knows when to be brutally honest and when to give viewers a moment of reprieve.

The biggest reveal, really, is how much love these characters exude amid the most trying circumstances.

Cast brings its all to ‘Spoiler Alert’

Fittingly, the heartbreaking but unavoidable end of Kit and Michael’s relationship is disclosed at the beginning of “Spoiler Alert.” (You’ll have to make it through nearly two hours to get the full impact of their final hours together, though.)

But as they say, it’s more about the journey than the destination.

Michael from the future narrates and takes us back to the beginning of their story, when he and Kit met in 2001. Michael is a TV journalist — affectionately dubbed a “tall dweeb” by Kit’s friend, Nina (Nikki M. James) — who has residual trauma from his mom dying from cancer when he was a child. Kit is a self-assured photographer who hasn’t come out to his parents since he realized he was gay right after college.

Despite their trepidation due to lack of experience in committed relationships, they find themselves getting each other Christmas presents, making space in their apartments for the other’s belongings and being useful when one of them has an unexpected hospital stay (before the “C” word is ever used).

Michael is “worried that I’m going to fall in love with you, and you’re going to break my heart.”

Of course, that doesn’t stop either of things from happening.

'Colossal win' for Arizona: Why moviemaking might make a comeback next year

‘Spoiler Alert’ knows when to pull back

A dozen Christmases go by. Their relationship isn’t picture-perfect: Kit smokes too much pot (says Michael) and Michael drinks too much wine (Kit claims), but they’re still together — even if that just means living under the same roof.

That’s around the time that Kit starts feeling like there’s a “golf ball” lodged up his rectum. As they try to find answers for this medical mystery, Kit appears at ease while Michael’s anxiety reminds him about his mother’s health issues decades ago.

Turns out, it’s a neuroendocrine tumor. And they should address it with chemotherapy and radiation as soon as possible.

Kit and Michael have overcome overbearing parents, health scares and jealousy together over the course of a decade — and now they must face life-threatening news together.

As the couple navigates this cruel terrain, a tight circle of friends — including Kit’s former roommate (Sadie Scott), one of the characters that consistently brings levity to the story — as well as Kit’s parents, Marilyn (Sally Field) and Bob (Bill Irwin), steadfastly fights alongside them.

It might be difficult to convince audiences to watch a movie about an aggressive cancer diagnosis that throws a wrench into what was supposed to be a long, true love. But there’s some consolation in that lighthearted humor is speckled throughout “Spoiler Alert” — and the way Ausiello tells the story of their love — as the filmmakers ease off the gas pedal on a journey with a certain devastating destination.

“Spoiler Alert” makes you grateful that Kit and Michael’s love ever existed. It makes you angry that they have to accept such unfair circumstances at a relatively young age.

It’s a reminder to not waste time. And though Kit did end up breaking Michael’s heart after all, you won’t see Michael regretting a thing.

'Spoiler Alert' 4 stars

Great ★★★★★ Good ★★★★

Fair ★★★ Bad ★★ Bomb ★

Director: Michael Showalter.

Cast:   Jim Parsons, Ben Aldridge, Sally Field, Bill Irwin .

Rating: PG-13.

Note: In theaters in Phoenix on Dec. 9.

Reach Entertainment Reporter KiMi Robinson at [email protected] . Follow her on Twitter @kimirobin  and Instagram @ReporterKiMi .

Support local journalism. Subscribe to azcentral.com today .

'Spoiler Alert': Release Date, Cast, Trailer, and Everything You Need to Know

Get your tissues ready for the heartfelt romantic drama based on a real-life love story.

Quick Links

When and where is spoiler alert coming out, watch the spoiler alert trailer, what is the plot of spoiler alert, who's in the spoiler alert cast.

It’s the time of the year when Christmas films line up to premiere on the big screen. And among them is the upcoming romantic dramedy Spoiler Alert , which promises to make more than one viewer both laugh and weep. Based on the 2017 best-selling memoir Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies written by Michael Ausiello , the movie is a biographical feature following the relationship between the author and his husband Kit Cowan. Ausiello wrote for TV Guide for nearly eight years, and later wrote and reported for Entertainment Weekly before launching his own site, TVLine. Cowan, on the other hand, was an experienced photographer.

Distributed by Focus Features and produced by That's Wonderful Productions and Semi-Formal Productions, the film is being helmed by director Michael Showalter , who has previously directed The Big Sick and has extensive experience as a comedy writer and producer for features such as Wet Hot American Summer and Search Party . Jim Parsons and Ben Aldridge lead the cast, with Parsons also participating as a producer alongside Alison Mo Massey , Jordana Mollick , Alyssa Murphy , Todd Spiewak , and Showalter. Ausiello is involved as an executive producer, along with Michael Scott Allen , Eric Norsoph , and Jason Sokoloff . The screenplay for the film was written by David Marshall Grant and Dan Savage .

Spoiler Alert is a romantic tale about love and loss, both a comedic and tragic story that navigates a real-life relationship’s ups and downs. If this sounds like something you’d love to add to your Christmas watchlist , keep reading to know where to watch, when it’s set to premiere, who is joining the cast, and everything else we know so far.

RELATED: 'Spoiler Alert' Poster Gives a Look at Jim Parsons in Michael Showalter's Adaptation

After nearly four years from the time production began in December 2018, Spoiler Alert is finally ready to hit the big screens across the world. Spoiler Alert ’s theatrical release will arrive in batches. The first lucky ones to enjoy the film on December 2, 2022 , will be the viewers in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York. The greater domestic release will be on December 9, and the international public will have to wait just a few more days until December 16 to watch the movie.

The film will first be available only in selected theaters across the United States, as well as internationally. It is uncertain which theater chains will be screening the film, so you'll have to keep an eye on your movie theater of choice to find out if Spoiler Alert will be added to their lineups. For those who prefer to watch it at home next to their Christmas trees, there is no word yet on which streaming platforms will include Spoiler Alert in their listings or when it will be available on these.

The Spoiler Alert trailer came out in late September, just in time to add to the anticipation of 2022 Christmas movies. And while Christmas is not the film's main concern, it seems that one of the things the two lovebirds have in common is the holiday spirit, based on their first conversations and their annual Christmas cards. Michael says in the trailer he was always afraid that Kit would end up breaking his heart. After watching it, it seems like many hearts will be broken in theaters during the nearly two-hour runtime of the movie once it's released.

By the looks of the trailer, Michael Ausiello and Kit Cowan meet at a party in 2001. The two fall in love and, through each one’s quirks and differences, they build a relationship that evolves as the years go by. Ausiello is the narrator who takes the audience through their key moments as a couple, from their early years and deep conversations, their unusual hook-up scenarios, their Christmas souvenirs, and meeting his in-laws for the first time, to the moment Cowan is diagnosed with terminal cancer, their marriage, and many other highlights between the treatment and the farewells.

Related: Jim Parsons on ‘The Boys in the Band’ and Why He Wrote Ryan Murphy a Letter

The Spoiler Alert cast features some renowned names and familiar faces. As mentioned already, Jim Parsons leads as Michael Ausiello, the main character and the narrative voice that tells the story. Parsons is best known for his comedy work, especially his role as Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory , which earned him four Emmy Awards. He has also played big roles in productions like Hidden Figures and Ryan Murphy ’s Hollywood , for which he was also an Emmy nominee. In addition to Spoiler Alert , another upcoming project for Jim Parsons is Just by Looking at Him , a comedy film written and directed by Ryan O'Connell .

Ben Aldridge portrays Kit Cowan, rounding out the starring duo with Parsons. The English actor played Captain James in the series Our Girl , had a recurring appearance on the multiple Emmy Award-winning show Fleabag , and can be found most recently in HBO’s Pennyworth . We will see him next in the upcoming drama Tyger and the horror film Knock at the Cabin , among names like Dave Bautista and Rupert Grint .

Two-time Academy Award winner Sally Field appears as Marilyn, who is Kit's mother. Field is best known for roles such as Mrs. Gump in the multi-Oscar-winning and iconic film Forrest Gump , Aunt May in The Amazing Spider-Man , and Gidget in the memorable 1960s series of the same name, among many other groundbreaking performances that are just too many to name. Field can be seen next in the comedy film 80 for Brady .

Bill Irwin is Kit Cowan’s father in the movie. He has already done some great work with director Showalter, with both of them having been a part of the recent Hulu series The Dropout . Irwin's other career highlights include his involvement in the Sesame Street franchise and the 2008 drama film Rachel Getting Married , not to mention the groundbreaking X-Men -adjacent series, Legion . His upcoming films include Best Place in the World and Rustin , the latter with Colman Domingo , Jeffrey Wright , and Chris Rock . Other actors who are part of the ensemble cast include Antoni Porowski ( Queer Eye ), Nikki M. James ( BrainDead ), Jeffery Self ( Search Party ), Paco Lozano ( Manifest ), and Tara Summers ( Mercy Street ).

• To save this word, you'll need to log in. Log In

spoiler alert

Definition of spoiler alert

Examples of spoiler alert in a sentence.

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'spoiler alert.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

1982, in the meaning defined above

Articles Related to spoiler alert

Famous Novels, Last Lines

Needless to say, spoiler alert.

Dictionary Entries Near spoiler alert

Cite this entry.

“Spoiler alert.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spoiler%20alert. Accessed 13 Apr. 2024.

Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!

Can you solve 4 words at once?

Word of the day.

See Definitions and Examples »

Get Word of the Day daily email!

Popular in Grammar & Usage

Your vs. you're: how to use them correctly, every letter is silent, sometimes: a-z list of examples, more commonly mispronounced words, how to use em dashes (—), en dashes (–) , and hyphens (-), absent letters that are heard anyway, popular in wordplay, the words of the week - apr. 12, 10 scrabble words without any vowels, 12 more bird names that sound like insults (and sometimes are), 8 uncommon words related to love, 9 superb owl words, games & quizzes.

To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories .

• What Is Cinema?
• Newsletters

What Is RFK Jr. After, Really ?

By Eric Lutz

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other potential spoiler candidates could play a decisive role in Donald Trump ’s effort to beat Joe Biden this fall. “There is no question that in a close presidential race,” Trump strategist Roger Stone told the New York Times Wednesday, “independent or minor party candidates can have a disproportionately large impact.” But the Kennedy scion, a Democrat turned independent crank, may not mind being used as a pawn in Trump’s scheme to return to power. In fact, the Kennedy campaign has seemed, at times, to relish its part as a possible Biden saboteur.

CNN this week reported that an RFK Jr. campaign official, Rita Palma , told a meeting of Republicans in New York that ensuring Kennedy is on the state's ballot would open the door to Trump winning there and help them “get rid of Biden,” which she described as her “number one priority.” “If it’s Trump vs. Biden, Biden wins,” she told the crowd. “With Bobby in the mix, anything can happen.”

“We’re all on the same team right now,” she added, “and we’ll be on the same team later, as long as Trump or Kennedy wins.”

And, as CNN pointed out Tuesday, it gets worse: Palma had previously attended the “Stop the Steal” rally on January 6, 2021—the day an armed MAGA mob stormed the Capitol—and repeatedly praised Trump as her “favorite president” over social media, suggested he should serve more than two terms, and expressed support for his baseless “rigged election” claims. “Jan 6 was not a riot,” Palma tweeted the day after the insurrection. “A small group of people were trouble. It was 99.9 peaceful. I was there.”

The Kennedy campaign has downplayed her involvement, describing Palma as a mere “ballot access consultant responsible for scheduling volunteer shifts for our upcoming signature collection drive” in New York. “She is not involved in electoral strategy,” Kennedy spokesperson Stefanie Spear told CNN.

But Palma is not the only apparent Trump sympathizer in the orbit of the Kennedy campaign, which has enjoyed significant financial support from donors who contributed to the former president’s 2020 bid. For one, there's Timothy Mellon , the largest single donor to both RFK Jr.’s PAC and to Trump’s MAGA Inc. There’s also Del Bigtree —who was hired by the RFK Jr. campaign earlier this year, after he raised doubts about the integrity of voting machines during a January 6 rally—as well as the unnamed “marketing contractor” who in Kennedy fundraising mails last week described convicted insurrectionists as “J6 activists…stripped of their Constitutional liberties.”

Much like Palma, the campaign distanced from that contractor, claiming he'd been fired and that Kennedy believes that “anyone who violated the law on January 6 should be subject to appropriate criminal and/or civil penalties.” The only trouble is: In listening to the rhetoric of Kennedy himself, it's not completely clear what he believes. Amid last week's controversy over the email in question, RFK Jr. claimed that “reasonable people, including Trump opponents, tell me there is little evidence of a true insurrection” on that day rioters stormed the Capitol: “They observe that the protesters carried no weapons, had no plans or ability to seize the reins of government, and that Trump himself had urged them to protest ‘peacefully.’”

These so-called “reasonable people” in Kennedy’s ear are dead wrong, of course, and he followed it up a few hours later with another statement acknowledging that his “understanding that none of the January 6 rioters who invaded the Capitol were carrying firearms was incorrect.”

“This behavior is inexcusable,” he added.

And yet, Kennedy still seem to be excusing it, giving weight to the Trumpian implication that “prosecutorial discretion was abused for political ends” in cases against January 6 insurrectionists—while maintaining a degree of plausible deniability, as usual. “I would appoint a special counsel to look at that,” Kennedy told NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo on Monday. “My purpose, Chris, is not to exonerate those people, but rather just to restore peace.”

The big question here is whether Kennedy is knowingly playing into Trump narratives, or if he’s actually buying into some of this as a noted conspiracy theorist himself. “We’re all drinking from fire hoses,” he told Cuomo Monday, chalking up the January 6 “error” from last week as a legitimate mistake. But whether this is gullibility or bad faith, the effect in November could be the same: to create chaos in November that could ultimately help Trump, an aspiring authoritarian, reclaim the White House. “RFK Jr.’s campaign isn’t building a plan or a strategy to get 270 electoral votes,” Matt Corridoni , spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee, told CNN. “They’re building one to help Trump return to the Oval Office.”

More Great Stories From Vanity Fair

Anne Hathaway on Tuning Out the Haters and Embracing Her True Self

Author Patricia Highsmith Was Almost as Twisted as Mr. Ripley

Inside Trump’s Terrifyingly Competent 2024 Campaign

And the MAGA Mutiny That Brought McCarthy’s House Down

The 25 Best True-Crime Documentaries to Binge Right Now

A Brief History of Royals (Not) Going Public With Their Health Issues

From the Archive: The Devil in Bette Davis

Stay in the know and subscribe to Vanity Fair for just $2.50 $1 per month.

By Bess Levin

By Savannah Walsh

By Chris Murphy

Contributing Editor

• The Bold and the Beautiful
• Days of Our Lives
• General Hospital
• The Young and the Restless
• Comings and Goings
• Message Boards

Alerts & Newsletters

By providing your information, you agree to our Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy . We use vendors that may also process your information to help provide our services. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA Enterprise and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

SheKnows.com Lifestyles

Soaps.com is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2024 SheMedia, LLC.

All Rights Reserved

• Days of our Lives

• Comings & Goings
• Share This Article

Spoilers for the Week of April 08, 2024

04/13/2024 08:45 am.

Soaps.com has the latest, new General Hospital spoilers from Monday, April 15, to Friday, April 19. Even as some wonder if Josslyn and Dex have a future, Sonny finds out what his former employee is up to. Meanwhile, Lois makes a big impression, Ava’s keeping a secret, Carly appears to be flirting with a dangerous potential partner, and Sam has a conversation with Jason that will have a big impact on their family! Read on for all the details…

Related Story

General Hospital Fave William deVry Has a New 'Romance' in Store

General hospital spoilers week of april 15:.

General Hospital spoilers for Monday, April 15:

When Jason needs the latest info, he knows who to turn to: Carly, who happily provides him with an update.

When Tracy went to the doctor a few weeks ago, we’ll admit we worried. But everything turned out fine, and now she’s even getting a bit of good news!

Sonny takes a meeting with Drew. What’s he got to discuss with Jason’s brother? Meanwhile, John — who has made no bones about his efforts to bring down Sonny by any means necessary — shares his latest theory with Anna.

Ava’s been one of Nina’s biggest supporters, but these days, all she wants to do is keep her friend from discovering the truth!

Missing William deVry? Well, he has a new ‘romance’ in store — and you won’t want to miss it!

General Hospital spoilers for Tuesday April 16:

They say great minds think alike, which might explain why Anna and Laura come to the exact same realization!

Where exactly does Josslyn’s relationship with Dex stand? We want answers… so hopefully, Trina will get a few when she questions the pair!

As they’ve done so many times in the past, Alexis and Finn turn to one another for support.

It had to happen sooner or later: Chase and Brook Lynn are finally going to have that all-important conversation about the thing that divides so many couples… money!

Elizabeth and Gregory have another honest talk. This time, she’s the one opening up to him.

General Hospital spoilers for Wednesday, April 17:

Those who thought Carly dumping Drew might be the first step toward her reuniting with Sonny won’t want to hear this, but she’s about to get much closer with John!

Cyrus is ready to talk, and he’s going to tell Anna everything. Or at least his version of everything.

Lois asks Sonny if she’s going to be attending her daughter’s wedding. Meanwhile, Ava keeps him in the dark about something important. Has Ava realized Sonny’s meds have been tampered with ?

We may soon find out if Dex is making the right move or putting himself in jeopardy as he pursues his new career.

General Hospital spoilers for Thursday, April 18:

The day we’ve sorta been dreading has finally arrived: Sonny learns that Dex is working for the local police department! Meanwhile, Josslyn hopes what she says to Anna will have an impact.

How will Carly react to the special gift Jason presents her with?

Nina and Drew throw sparks again.

As her wedding day approaches, Brook Lynn has a heartfelt conversation with her mom.

General Hospital spoilers for Friday, April 19:

Nobody argues with the fierceness of Sonny and Carly, who find themselves having a major clash. Meanwhile, Nina discovers something that we suspect won’t thrill her!

Sam draws a line in the sand, telling Jason he should stay far away from Danny.

Drew and Willow find time to reconnect.

After the impression Lois makes on Maxie, we wouldn’t be surprised if Brook Lynn’s mom becomes the latest employee of Deception!

Which  General Hospital  stories wound up on our list of the 40 worst tales ever to be told on daytime? Check out the gallery below to find out! 

— Richard Simms/Amy Mistretta

Most Popular

Bold & Beautiful Threw Sugar Into the Mix… Now They Have to Make It Make Sense

Young & Restless Mystery Disappearance *Solved* — Plus, [Spoiler’s] Return for the Looming Lawsuit Showdown

Jason Sends Diane to Make [Spoiler] an Offer — and Lucy Tanks on a Home & Heart Segment

The *Real* Reason Sara Haines Is Missing From The View: ‘We Needed to Tell You…’

Advertisement

<p>Regretting its decision to make Emily Quartermaine a victim of the Text-Message Killer, the soap rehired Natalia Livingston in 2009 to play the heroine’s heretofore-unknown twin sister, Rebecca Shaw. But the second time wasn’t the charm for the Emmy winner. “When they first told me about Rebecca, she was gonna be this completely different character,” <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/general-hospital/news/578793/general-hospital-steve-burton-natalia-livingston-story-gone-wrong/" target="_blank">Livingston recalled in 2020</a>, “so I came in that first day with all these ideas about how she was going to be different, and one of the writers came down at the end of that day and said, ‘Keep this character just like Emily.’” Too bad the con artist didn’t turn out to be adored by viewers just like Emily.</p>

<p>When the primetime juggernaut aired its Season 5 finale in 1985, the audience went wild. In the episode’s final moments, terrorists crashed the wedding of Amanda Carrington and Prince Michael and opened fire. “Who died?” viewers were left to ask all summer. It was so exciting, so suspenseful and ultimately so… lame. In Season 6’s premiere, we found out that none of the series’ major players had kicked the bucket, just Steven Carrington’s boyfriend and Jeff Colby’s girlfriend. So it was all much ado about nothing.</p>

<p>Gotta admit that when the venerable soap took us to the Wild West of yore in the 1980s, we bought it hoof, line and sinker. But its 2008 visit to 1968 was destined to go down in daytime history as a dud. After Bo Buchanan and Rex Balsom were struck by lightning — yeah, like <em>that</em> was the most farfetched thing about this story! — we got weeks of Bo as dad Asa and Rex as Bo before finally Gigi Morasco rescued them from a bygone era and us from this plot.</p>

<p>As if to prove that there was no “there” to which this whackadoo soap wouldn’t go, it followed up Julian Crane’s affair with the sexpot that he didn’t realize was his son, Vincent Clarkson, with a 2007 twist that found the womanizer’s penis being stabbed off. Mind you, none of that was the crazy part. What <em>was</em> was Vincent making sure that doctor mom Eve Russell was so drunk when she tried to reattach the appendage that she put it on upside freaking down!</p>

<p>Over the course of its storied run, this much-missed ABC soap was praised on the regular for keeping its plots relatable and down-to-earth. And on the rare occasions when when things got unreal? Let’s just say that it didn’t go well, as in 1982, when Dr. Faith Coleridge was briefly believed to be the reincarnation of Egyptian queen Merit Kara. (Another much-derided arc that you might expect to find on this list — but never will, not on our watch! — even has a champion in the leading lady who played it out. <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/soaps/news/593910/ryans-hope-delia-gorilla-drop-tower-soap-opera-storyline/" target="_blank">Read all about it here.</a>)</p>

<p>In 2023, Phyllis Summers was so very angry about Diane Jenkins faking her death and leaving behind son Kyle Abbott to grieve that she decided to stick it to her archenemy by… faking her <em>own</em> death and leaving behind <em>her</em> kids to mourn. She even took pains to frame Diane for her attempted “murder” as payback for stealing away Jack Abbott. Of course, Phyllis — or headwriter Josh Griffith — hadn’t thought through the scheme <em>at all.</em> Her nonexistent body wasn’t even cold before she was skulking around Genoa City in a wig and trying to figure out how to unmake the mess that she should’ve been smarter than to have made in the first place.</p>

<p>In 1996, the NBC soap attempted to goose its Nielsen numbers by having the Bay City Stalker murder beloved heroine Frankie Frame. But the horrifying twist was all shock, no actual shock value. “It was a bit of a miscalculation on the part of the show to kill her off and in such a brutal way,” portrayer <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/soaps/news/605697/another-world-anniversary-frankie-frame-winthrop-murder-backstage-soap-opera-scandal/" target="_blank">Alice Barrett said later</a>. “I think that they forgot who their audience was — they’re mothers.” Three years later, the soap followed Frankie to the grave.</p>

<p>In 1982, the Monticello-set soap asked its audience to suspend its disbelief to the point that it would buy bubble-headed teen Jody Travis both as a descendant of Marie Bonaventure, aka the Martyr of Eden, and as the one individual who could save the war-torn Mediterranean country from organized crime. The audience’s answer: No.</p>

<p>Get used to seeing Reva Shayne. She pops up a lot on this unfortunate countdown (and it’s a testament to how well Kim Zimmer’s character was sometimes written and always played that, despite her numerous godawful storylines, she’s still revered as one of daytime’s greatest). First up on the list of plots that never should’ve been hatched for her: that stretch during which she was briefly psychic and started traveling through time via a magic painting to Edwardian England, the Civil War era and WWII Germany. A brush stroke of genius, it was not.</p>

<p>Never having been one to count herself lucky that she wasn’t serving a life sentence for her years of tormenting Lauren Fenmore, looney-tunes Sheila Carter took another pass at her archenemy in 2006 by getting so much plastic surgery that no one could tell her from her victim’s bestie, Phyllis Summers. It made no sense and was of even less consequence (and yes, that <em>is</em> possible) since a decade later, despite being killed by Lauren, Sheila turned up on <em>The Bold and the Beautiful</em> alive and well, and looking like her old self.</p>

<p>Unaware that Sheila wasn’t dead (and <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/the-bold-and-the-beautiful/news/719771/who-was-sugar/" target="_blank">apparently never will be</a>!), her twisted sister Sarah Smythe signed up for plastic surgery to make herself Lauren’s twin. Side note: Who the hell <em>is</em> this doctor who can chisel such exact replicas of people, right down to their heights and voices? But we digress. Sarah campily conspired with Sheila’s never-before-mentioned kids Ryder and Daisy to ruin Lauren’s life for a couple of months before finally then-headwriter Maria Arena Bell let Lauren put herself as well as us out of our misery by slaying the Dragon Lady.</p>

<p>When the soap killed off Franco Baldwin in 2021 and assigned Roger Howarth his third Port Charles character, we assumed that something great must be in store for the Emmy winner. We — and perhaps he, too — assumed wrong. In short order, Austin was tied to the hospital and the Quartermaines, to Maxie Jones and a mystery that… Honestly, to this day, we couldn’t tell ya whether it was ever solved or even resolved. In fact, so murky and tiresome was Austin’s storyline that months passed after his murder without anybody bothering to ask whodunit.</p>

<p>As the <em>Another World</em> spinoff’s Thelma and Louise, Tina Johnson and Alexandra Neil sold the hell out of this hella-silly 1981 storyline in which gal pals Lurleen Harper and Ruby Wright discovered that a Native American artifact called the Fire Compass would turn anyone who opened it into a mummy — and not the high-quality kind that once took ahold of Abbott and Costello, either! But we still weren’t sorry when the goofy plot was, ahem, “wrapped.”</p>

<p>We thought that the “ick” factor was as high as it could get in 2012 when the show had Sharon Newman marry Victor, not only her ex-husbands’ father but her own longtime father figure. But the nuptials were topped by the fact that the on-again/off-again in-laws also had sex that so inspired The Mustache, he slipped a diamond necklace under Sharon’s pillow. TMI! TMI!</p>

<p>Imagine you’re Taylor Hayes. You think you’ve finally gotten off the marry-go-round that for so many years had found you battling Brooke Logan for the affections of fickle Ridge Forrester. Sure, you’ve settled down with his half brother, Nick Marone. And sure, he was also one of Brooke’s exes. But still, if you’re Taylor, you’d consider that progress. So imagine her chagrin in 2007 to discover that, through the kinda mixup that could only happen on a soap, she didn’t give birth to her and Nick’s baby, she gave birth to <em>Brooke</em> and Nick’s!</p>

<p>The 2013 plot in which a back-from-the-dead A.J. Quartermaine used his late grandmother’s relish recipe to bail ELQ out of financial trouble could’ve been a charming throwback to the original 1984 storyline. Do we need to tell you that it wasn’t? No, what we got instead was a mind-numbing arc in which A.J.’s crankypants Aunt Tracy founded a competing relish company, and the whole family discussed condiments to the point that we never wanted to so much as <em>see</em> another pickle. And the worst part? To decide who had made the better relish, A.J. and Tracy went on <em>The Chew</em>, the talk show that had replaced our beloved <em>All My Children.</em></p>

<p>Don’t you look at us like that! We can most definitely include storylines on this list that we both laughed at <em>and</em> loved! And the one about the city underneath Llanview that had once housed an experimental community definitely falls into that category! Just look at those rad, <em>Star Trek</em>-y uniforms — come <em>on</em>! And on the plus side, the trippy plot furthered longterm story, by revealing to Viki Buchanan — and all of us — that her alternate personality had given birth to her nemesis, Megan Gordon. #themoreyouknow</p>

<p>Speaking of storylines that we both laughed at <em>and</em> loved… Honestly, there weren’t many plots on NBC’s too-zany-for-its-own-good 1999-2007 soap that didn’t fit that bill. But our favorite and by far the most ludicrous was the one in which scheming Kay Bennett imprisoned romantic rival Charity Standish in a block of ice and replaced her with a zombified version of herself. Only later — and need we say too late? — did Kay discover that the creature she’d unleashed was actually a succubus intent on bedding her crush, Miguel Lopez-Fitzgerald, thereby killing him! Hey, at least he’d have died happy?</p>

<p>By the time future <em>Matlock</em> star Nancy Stafford joined the cast in 1982, the soap was as good as cancelled. So its final headwriters decided to out-<em>General Hospital General Hospital</em> by going even further into sci-fi territory than the Ice Princess storyline. The result? Stafford’s character, Adrienne Hunt, was a sixtysomething who, as you can see above, had discovered the secret of eternal youth. No fountain required, even!</p>

<p>Make a list of all the things on which you might reasonably expect a rich, handsome, successful playboy about town to spend his time. Done? So how high did you rank “Start a podcast that’s so self-obsessed and boring, it causes a dip in the sale of sleep aids”? What? That wasn’t on your list at all? Funny. That wasn’t on viewers’ list of things that they ever wanted to see Billy Abbott do, either. And yet, for months in 2022, there they were, stuck listening to him prattle on in hopes of helping others. In fairness, we suppose he might have been of assistance to a listener or two — if they were suffering from insomnia!</p>

<p>“Bope” fans had waited years and also years to see Peter Reckell and Kristian Alfonso back in action together as ill-fated Bo Brady and his Fancy Face, Hope Williams. (On <em>this</em> earthly plane, that is; they’d already taken a turn around the dance floor in the afterlife of <em>Beyond Salem</em>.) But when the audience’s dream came true in 2023, it turned out to be a nightmare. Bo didn’t even regain his love for Hope until a moment before son Shawn opened fire and put him in a coma. Talk about not sticking the landing! Or the takeoff… or…</p>

<p>Overall, this classic soap, which changed channels from CBS to NBC over the course of its 1951-86 run, was pretty solid. But as the axe began <a href="https://soaps.sheknows.com/soaps/news/610899/why-was-soap-cancelled-search-for-tomorrow-anniversary-brian-frons/" target="_blank">swinging toward it for a second time</a>, the powers that be understandably panicked and gave T.R. Sentell what future primetime star Jane Krakowski told <em>Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen</em> was her lousiest storyline. “Once, I joined the circus. That was like a desperate grab at ratings.” Unfortunately, but perhaps not surprisingly, it didn’t succeed.</p>

<p>Perhaps it was inevitable that at some point in her long run as Rachel Cory, Victoria Wyndham would be tasked with playing a doppelganger. (It <em>is</em>, after all, a daytime rite of passage.) It’s just a shame that the lookalike she was assigned was as over the top as Carl Hutchins’ demented former lover. Throughout 1995, the cuckoo countess had Wyndham chewing scenery like a beaver at an all-you-can-eat buffet. By the time Carl fatally stabbed Justine with a letter opener, the actress reportedly wished the storyline had been marked “return to sender.”</p>

<p>Who could blame Rex and Cassie for believing that they were really extraterrestrials? When the soap introduced Roman Brady and Kate Roberts’ surprise kids in 2002, it did so by having them crash-land in Salem during a meteor shower. And their attire? Well, that was truly out of this world. See above. Has tinfoil ever been so haute couture? Eat your heart out, <em>Bold & Beautiful.</em></p>

<p>We thought that we couldn’t groan any more loudly than we did at the start of this 2023 storyline, in which Luna Nozawa got so high off of mom Poppy’s “breath fresheners” that she mistook slim, Black Zende Forrester for beefy, white R.J. Forrester that she hit the sheets with the wrong cousin. But then the show took a plot that was already bad beyond comprehension and made it worse. “How is that even possible?” you ask. It had Zende, despite knowing that Luna wasn’t into him and never had been, fantasize about their night together and imagine a future with the young woman who’d been too out of it to see straight, never mind consent to intercourse. Ugh to the nth.</p>

<p>If you asked any viewer in 2022 which character they most wanted to see come back, the one answer that you definitely <em>wouldn’t</em> have received was, “Could it be… <em>Satan</em>?” Yet, decades after Marlena Evans’ mid-1990s possession, return, the hell-raiser did, only this time with little to no point. Beelzebub bounced from one host to another as if auditioning for the lead in <em>Invasion of the Body Snatchers</em>, turned Susan Banks into a cat, re-cast Eileen Davidson as Kristen DiMera and played spoiler to a bunch of couples we really didn’t mind seeing broken up.</p>

<p>Luke Spencer was never exactly an altar boy, but when he started to make the Cassadines look like the Cleavers, it raised eyebrows. For months, the audience assumed that he’d been replaced by a doppelganger or a bona-fide villain in a mask — hey, it happens, and in Port Charles, a freakin’ <em>lot</em>! But it turned out that a trauma suffered decades earlier had left Luke with a case of dissociative-identity disorder that didn’t require him to don a red wig like <em>One Life to Live</em>’s Niki Smith or be any fun whatsoever. </p>

<p>In 2002, the CBS soap put the “mother” in “Necessity is the mother of invention” by accommodating three actresses’ pregnancies at once with a cuckoo plotline in which Barbara Ryan shipped off to a spa a trio of her enemies, Emily Stewart, Carly Tenney and Rose D’Angelo. “That doesn’t sound so silly,” you might say. “It doesn’t even sound very vindictive.” Ah, but it was both — because at this <em>particular</em> spa, Barbara’s foes were given treatments that amounted to Soap Opera Rapid-Aging Syndrome for adults!  </p>

<p>Good Lord, no <em>wonder</em> Kevin Fisher drank even wine that looked like a headache in a bottle! Emotionally tortured by memories of the abuse he’d suffered at the hand of his appropriately named father, Terrible Tom, Amber Moore’s pal was forced by bad guy Clint Radison to rob banks. Sorry, did we say that he was forced to rob banks? We meant that he was forced to do so while wearing a <em>ginormous</em> chipmunk head. Thankfully, Kevin’s big brother, Michael Baldwin, eventually arranged for him to get psychological help. And, presumably, all the acorns he could eat.</p>

<p>Five years after Josh Lewis’ wife drove off an unfinished bridge in the Florida Keys, “the deceased” resurfaced in old-timey Goshen with a bad case of amnesia and a keen interest in butter churning. There, she might have stayed, too, were it not for the horse-drawn carriage accident that reunited her with old flame Alan Spaulding and started her down the path to remembering that she wasn’t a prim and proper Amish lady but the notorious “slut of Springfield.”</p>

<p>Talk about a rude awakening! When the primetime soap decided to un-kill off Patrick Duffy’s Bobby Ewing in 1986, it simply had him reappear in sometime wife Pamela’s shower at the end of Season 9 and wash away everything that had happened in the last 31 episodes by telling her that it had all been a bad dream. Though fans jumped for joy to have Duffy back, they couldn’t say that the show hadn’t jumped the shark. Plus, “various cast members were pissed because their storylines were lost as a result of that,” Steve Kanaly, who played Ray Krebbs, told <a href="https://people.com/patrick-duffy-dallas-costars-were-pissed-over-bobby-ewing-return-from-dead-7547227" target="_blank"><em>People</em></a> in 2023.</p>

<p>The NBC soap milked this blood-soaked storyline for all the shock value that it could — and there was a <em>lot</em>, considering that it rubbed out half of Salem, even Alice freakin’ Horton! (You might as well smash the hourglass at that point!) But after we found out that the mass murderer who’d decimated her town’s population was Marlena Evans, the show pulled its punch, revealing that all of the dear departed were alive and well and being held prisoner in Melaswen (New Salem spelled backwards) by Andre DiMera.</p>

<p>When faking one’s death, rule No. 1 is “Don’t get spotted by people who know you.” That’s Soap Vixen 101, and we’d have thought that Skye Lockhart, Adam Newman’s mercenary wife of convenience, would have known it, even back in 2010. (It’s <em>not</em> a new rule.) And rule No. 2? There really isn’t one, but apparently, for Skye’s sake, it should have been “Don’t hang out on volcanoes, you twit!” That’s where she got busted by Sharon before taking a tumble into the lava and doing a way better impression of a deep-fried corpse than she had been.</p>

<p>Upon finding out her true identity in the late 1990s, the young woman who seemed to be perpetually rocking an all-over mud mask declared, “That’s <em>Princess</em> Swamp Girl to you!” But as Gina’s heir, Greta Von Amberg wasn’t just handed a loofa and a scepter. On the contrary, she was obliged to venture into a Virtual Garden of Eden, where she and a fig-leaf-clad Austin Reed were tasked with battling all manner of demons (who just happened to resemble characters back in Salem). In the end, about the best that could be said of this storyline was that the Wardrobe Department issued Austin a fig leaf.</p>

<p>Joshua Lewis learned the hard way what we all could’ve told him: Some people are — and should remain! — one of a kind. After wife Reva’s late-1990s “death” — she was very prone to dying in quotation marks, you’ll recall — he had her replicated and rapidly-aged into Dolly, a doppelganger for his lost love. (How the clone managed to completely and totally avoid this spectacular hair-metal ’do as she grew up, we’ll never understand!) In the end, Reva, as she was wont to do, rose from the grave, and Dolly, realizing that she was a redundancy at that point, overdosed on aging serum and died in… well, her own arms.</p>

<p>Ew! Sorry, we mean… ew, ew, ew, ew and also, to be sure we haven’t been unclear, <em>ew</em>! That was in a nutshell the audience’s reaction when the CBS soap flirted with the idea of pairing up these two. Technically, there was no reason that they <em>couldn’t</em> hook up — he was the son of Stephanie Forrester and Massimo Marone; she, the daughter of Eric Forrester and Brooke Logan. But because Ridge (then Ronn Moss) had originally thought that he was Bridget’s father, then her uncle, the “ick” factor was just way too high. Thankfully, the plot never went any further than a coupla kisses that left fans retching.</p>

<p>We didn’t blame the ABC soap for wanting to capitalize on Kelly Monaco’s sky-high profile following her victory in Season 1 of <em>Dancing With the Stars</em>. But we <em>definitely</em> have held against the show the facepalm-inspiring storyline with which it tried to do that. Follow along — if you can. A rich woman named Allegra Montenegro, in order to keep living in the lavish style to which she’d become accustomed, kidnapped Monaco’s Sam McCall — a dead ringer for her daughter, Alicia — in order to have her convince one Andrew Olsen that she was the real McCoy. Via ballroom dancing. We know — it was atrocious. When all was said and done, Andrew was dead, Sam was arrested, Allegra was revealed to be the actual killer, and everyone did their best to forget that this mess had ever happened.</p>

<p>“Go big or go to outer space!” seemed to be the <em>Dynasty</em> spinoff’s motto as it ended its two-season run in 1987. In the series’ final moments, it had Fallon Carrington’s car break down in the desert. There was no such thing as Lyft back then, but that was OK. She was soon picked up by — sure, why not? — a flying saucer. When she was done putting the “gal” in “intergalactic,” she simply turned up again on the mothership to start frequenting support groups for those who had been, ahem, alienated.</p>

<p>Never mind that the soap had been lauded for decades for the groundbreaking 1973 storyline in which ambitious Erica Kane had had an abortion. In 2005, headwriter Megan McTavish threw that pivotal twist out the window and revealed that all those years earlier a mad doctor had implanted the future supermodel’s fetus in his wife. Why? Apparently, McTavish felt that the show was past due to replay the bad-seed plot that had introduced the character of Kendall Hart, only this time with a hunky surprise kid who was so uninteresting that nobody much cared when he lost his marbles and then his life.</p>

<p>Chances are, when you read the words above, you instinctively groaned. The cast, on the other hand, just laughed their asses off while they were playing out this whackadoo 2006 storyline, which involved hidden treasure, Nazis and Brad Carlton breaking a villain’s neck with his thighs. With! His! <em>Thighs</em>! As hard as it is to believe, things apparently got even sillier backstage than they did on the air. “One day, Josh [Morrow, Nick] decided we should make our own reliquary,” Amelia Heinle (Victoria) told <a href="https://www.soapoperadigest.com/content/amelia-heinles-five-greatest-yr-moments-0/" target="_blank"><em>Soap Opera Digest</em></a> in 2010, so he “ended up making one out of tinfoil and Jolly Ranchers… You had to be there.”</p>

Previous in Spoilers

Emilee Moore Performs Outside of Coachella With Billboard Promising Fans They’re Not ‘Alone’ in Heartbreak

‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Renewed for Season 4; ‘Lower Decks’ to Conclude With Season 5 (EXCLUSIVE)

Rico Wade Dies: Atlanta Hip-Hop Producer, The Dungeon Family Member Was 52

Fire Country Poll: Would You Watch a Sheriff Mickey Fox Spinoff?

Sheknows family:, stylecaster.

• Rolling Stone
• HollywoodLife
• Robb Report
• Footwear News
• Sourcing Journal
• Fairchild Media

By providing your information, you agree to our Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy . We use vendors that may also process your information to help provide our services. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA Enterprise and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Alert: MPU Boss Talks Finale’s Big Reveals, Scott Caan’s Hairline and Rubbing All Those (Pricey!) Eggs

Matt webb mitovich, editor-in-chief.

• Share on Facebook
• Show more sharing options
• Share to Flipboard
• Share on LinkedIn
• Submit to Reddit
• Post to Tumblr
• Share on WhatsApp
• Print This Page

The following contains spoilers from the Season 1 finale of Fox ‘s Alert: Missing Persons Unit .

Alert: Missing Persons Unit , with Monday night’s double-episode finale, tracked down the woman, Beth Colt, who had abducted/held prisoner Keith and a kid named Max — as well as several other ill-fated lads before them!

Alas, any sense of joy was fleeting for Nikki and Jason. As Keith exited a family celebration with his friend Oliver, a car mowed him down in the street, after which the driver threw him into the back seat and sped off. The MPU team, working off a partial plate and threatening texts that Keith had received from someone he listed as “H.” in his journal, quickly found the woman. Keith tried to calm down this woman who he called “Mom,” because, it turns out, she is his mother. And “Keith” is really, as theorized for weeks, an imposter named Lucas.

The standoff with the police led to Lucas getting shot, fatally, by his own mom. Afterwards, the team learned that it was actually Oliver who had been held captive/used as a “human blood bag” by Beth Colt for two years, before he escaped. NotKeith then passed off Oliver’s own story as his own, while making use of newspaper clippings (and swapping the tuft of baby book hair) to pass himself off as Keith.

TVLine spoke with Alert: MPU showrunner John Eisendrath (also of The Blacklist ) about the season-ending twists, the character that some fans found puzzling, how any possible Season 2 might be different, and more.

It’s incredibly sad for them, that he is not their child, and yet I think it affords them something they’ve never had, which is the opportunity to mourn the loss of their child. Like in the way you have a child who’s a soldier and is missing in action, you don’t really mourn the loss until you know for sure.

I feel like in the end, the reason [Oliver] agreed to help with the deception is because he genuinely did feel badly that he left a kid behind, and he genuinely did feel badly that a person is out there continuing to take advantage of other young people. This was an opportunity for him to square his own circle, and it was an opportunity for Keith to continue to misrepresent himself while at the same time helping to capture a really terrible person.

Not that you need to know how I come to have shaman in my life, but… my kids are now in high school, but when they were little we hired someone to help look after them, a nanny. And in our case, it’s a woman who is from Guatemala who has now been with our family for over 20 years, and she is 100-percent a shaman. In her village in Guatemala she is sought after, to this day whenever she is down there. And here in Los Angeles, in her community, people come to her all the time. The irony is that I was so clueless that it was years later when my kids would say, “Rosa was doing rituals with us in the backyard,” and I was like, “Wait, WHAT ?” Everyone in our family has been rubbed with eggs, everyone has had flowers that they burned and then put them in a bag to take them way far, far away….

TVLINE | She just had soooo much going with the past lives and the past lovers, and setting small fires in the office…. If you don’t mind me asking, did you think it was over-the-top ridiculous? Did you enjoy it, was it too weird…?

TVLINE | I think the consensus among viewers was, “This is a little weird.” Interesting.

TVLINE | But also, have you checked the price of eggs these days? She was going through a lot of them. Well, we started the show before the avian flu.

TVLINE | Lastly: Given all that happened in the finale and the closure that Nikki and Jason got, if there is a Season 2, would Alert become more of a straight-forward procedural? Good question. Again, if you don’t mind, I’m super-curious: Were you surprised the Keith story ended? Did you like that it ended as opposed to carrying forward?

TVLINE | As I said, I was hoping for another shoe to drop, and I got that. I’m good. It’s interesting, because I’ve never done a show where a serialized story ended at the end of a season. And we had a lot of discussions about it, if there’s a Season 2 would it be better to have no potential barrier to entry for new viewers? It was a very big risk to take, one way or the other, and I understand both sides. [On The Blacklist, Alias and other shows] I’ve always done it the other way, so I was like, “Well, let’s try it this way.” I think that absent the Keith story, to answer your question, no, I do not think Alert will ever be just episodic, case-by-case. I think that within each season it should have a story that is as deeply personal and emotional as Keith’s was this season.

Cancel reply

29 comments.

Email * Your email address will not be published. We will notify you when someone replies.

Well, the Keith twist that most people saw coming wasn’t a shock. I am glad the storyline was wrapped off, though it does seem pretty harsh to kill him off.

I wish the question had been asked why Nikki constantly call everyone “baby.” Your family or close relations is one thing but suspects, witnesses and crime victims during interviews and interrogations? I actually found that even more odd than Kemi. And why did Nikki identify herself to suspects by shouting “MPU” as she did in this finale and several other episodes? Is MPU a commonly understood acronym? Personally, I’d have no clue if someone pointed a gun at me and yelled that that they were police.

It was Nikki’s constantly saying “we get our baby’s back” that made me quit watching a couple episodes back. It made me cringe. I wanted to like show, but that character rubbed me the wrong way. Kemi was interesting and I felt her compassion for everyone.

I realize that what a character says or shouts a couple of times over the course of a 10-episode run is ultimately pretty minor but I think the fact that I noticed stuff like this is because the writing seems so indecisive about what the show was. From the interview with the showrunner, it doesn’t seem like he wanted it to be a procedural type show like Law & Order but then why do they even need to be cops? I laughed when Nikki said if they went by the book, they’d recuse themselves from hunting for Max – following rules and procedures was so casually optional for them. And while George makes a good point about their personal connections potentially contaminating any case they build, how is Nikki’s fiancee and Kevin’s future stepdad being in charge of the case going to avoid bias? I get that this is TV drama that takes a lot of creative liberties and I’m fine with that. But why throw stuff big issues like this out there when it’s handled so clumsily? This show could have worked just as well, if not better, if they all searched for missing persons for the private firm from the pilot. Aside from the power to send Amber Alerts, I don’t see how being the Missing Persons Unit added anything to the storyline or characters, if anything, it only made their behavior more outrageous.

Love this show… can’t wait for next season to start

I loved this show until tonight and I hated everything about this episode! In a previous article Eisendrath said it all builds to a season-ending climax that will leave viewers feeling “relieved and satisfied,” but one that is also “bittersweet,” but I couldn’t disagree more. I was neither relieved or satisfied and it wasn’t bittersweet it was just bitter and awful. Like someone else commented before the imposter thing has been done so many times before just once it would be nice to have them found and have a happy ending but still deal with the challenges of being away so long. Plus maybe I missed something because there was a lot going on at the end but did they actually find Keith’s body in the lake? If they did I didn’t hear that and my thought was just maybe when they drain the lake he’s not there and would carry the story over to a season two if there is one.

Sidney mentioned to her dad they were dredging the entire lake as they were in the circle. It would be something if they did and he wasn’t there.

Should have aired the episodes separately. You really can’t do the unhinged-woman-accidentally-kills-her-loved-one bit twice in two hours. Even if the episodes had been aired a week apart it probably would have been a bit much. It really took some of the emotion out of fake Keith’s death, because it was like…didn’t we just see this?

I watched this show and I’m glad the fake Keith story line was resolved, but I don’t care if it comes back for a season 2. The parents are both police officers, but they don’t insist that a kid who is supposedly their kidnapped son take a DNA test or debrief with someone when he returns. That’s a ridiculous plot device.

Also, the characters seemed to be quirky just to be quirky. As a police professional, would Kemi really be allowed to do her weird shaman stuff while on the job? What police manual and rules is she following? And speaking of rules, one week Nikki is falsifying a police report and the next week she is yelling at her husband and fiance to follow the rules. Maybe try leading by example.

Anyway, I was mildly entertained watching this show, so it wasn’t a complete waste, but it would need drastic improvement for me to continue watching.

Got to agree the DNA part of this is ridiculous. If the kid went missing just 7 years ago, his DNA would have been collected then by the police. This would instantly have outed fake Keith

I was glad they gave closure to the missing-son storyline, because the show will be much better without it. But everyone still seems pretty unfazed by the revelation (and now verification) that Keith’s sister accidentally killed him and never told anybody.

Mitch, I normally think you are so spot on with your assessment and your interviews but I think you really missed the mark here. The show is terrible. The writing is atrocious. The fact that this guy even kept asking YOUR opinion hints at the fact he knew this stuff wasn’t good. I’m sorry, but there is no way in the world a shaman would be able to perform the stuff she did in a police station and of all units with a missing person unit. Can you believe finding out your kid was missing and have somebody ask if they can rub eggs on your head? Come on. Nikki‘s character was one of the most grating characters in recent memory. From the “we get our babies back“ to calling everybody “baby“ including suspects was so over the top. The will they/ won’t they with Jason literally in front of Mike was totally unbelievable. Not even a saint would put up with what Mike put up with. But truly the worst part of the entire show was just how unbelievable everything was from reality. There’s not a chance a real police station would run the way they did. I love how they often found out about a case because the amber alert would come up on their phone. Yet, THEY are the unit that should be issuing the amber alert. It was so ridiculous, the alert would pop up for the public to see on the phone, and then they would go into the office like, “we got a case.” What?! Also, it’s just no big deal that the sister watched her brother, die, didn’t tell anybody about it for years and let her parents suffer and think the fake Keith was real and nothing happens to her, no consequence??? Just, “we understand baby.” This was honestly the worst written show I’ve ever watched. The “case of the week“ was always messed up to. The bride who is making ceramic porn? I mean you couldn’t make things weirder! All of the cases have the weirdest motives in subplots. And, of course, every single case was solved in two days. Because that’s normal for missing person cases. Another thing, the whole todo with Keith’s mom; yeah I get it. He had a crappy life, but what was it? Was he trying to cook up a scheme to get money out of them like the mother said? Or was he genuinely looking for a family? Which one? And did the mother really want him back? What was the whole point of putting a gun to his head? It made no sense. Frankly, the person I’m most mad at is myself for staying with it for the entire nine episodes. Awful. I really wish you would dug into this crap with the writer/producer instead of just giving him softballs. I will be shocked if there is a season two, baby.

Everything you wrote is true. This show was awful.

Considering the MPU headquarters is (likely) located downtown Philadelphia (4th biggest US market), the driving time back-and-forth to rural areas is unrealistic. The “lost in the mountains and a storm is coming” episode is the most unrealistic, they hear Jason & Mike on the cellphone at HQ, and decide “let’s go save them”, drive to the mountain, walk the trail to the tent and find a body, all this in, what, 10 minutes?

Also daylight inconsistencies. Episode starts in the morning, after commercial breaks: timer update: 8 hours missing, then 12 hours… It was obviously filmed in the fall, last 3 episodes had snow on the ground (in finale, they said it was Feb 3rd). But past Sept 25th in Philadelphia, you get less than 12 hours of daylight per day.

When I think a show is awful, it’s one & done. Two and done at the most. Why would you torture yourself if you hated it so much?

I asked myself that every single time I watched it. LOL I think part of it was I just wanted to see how they played out the Keith story line because it was so obvious he was lying. But I don’t know, maybe I am a masochist??? haha Every time I watched I got angrier and angrier with how bad it was, how inconceivable everything was….but I still watched. SIGH

I so much agree with all that you said… I too, watched/followed all the episodes… got disappointed every time. I cringe in a lot of the scenes. The show was bad, the acting was bad, but I was hopeful that “maybe, just maybe” it improves…

Alll of this. In the fierce competition for most offensively stupid thing about this show (driving by Nikki’s simpering “we get all our babies back” and Kemi sending terrified family members home to bathe in egg water are hard to surpass), the clear winner for me is the unacknowledged sociopath of a daughter and everyone around her who did not blink an eye that she knew her little brother was dead and decomposing in a lake for years! (Of course, If one of Eisendrath’s teens disappears, I’m sure his Guatemalan nanny will be all the help he needs.)

I 1000% agree with everything you said. I posted after the premiere that the writing and acting was just horrible. I kept watching because I really wanted to see how the Keith story unfolded. But, there was not a single episode I really enjoyed. It was just so unbelievable in how these characters behaved. Nikki was awful and the “baby” was nails on a chalkboard. And seriously, how do they just gloss over that Sidney watched her little brother die, tells no one, and they just say “okay”? Ooof…just bad. Now that the Keith story is over, “if” it comes back for S2 I won’t tune in.

Re-read TVLine’s “Grade the Premiere”: Hey, where’d the family dog go?

Hah, I wondered this too. The dog identified Keith as an imposter, never to be seen again. We all knew from the beginning that it wasn’t the real Keith. Dogs ALWAYS know!

Hey showrunner, You don’t need to bring this show back for S2. Let it fades away, baby! 😆

It should be a one-and-done. The acting and writing weren’t good.

I liked a number of things about this show, but I found a number of things off-putting as well. 1. I liked the chemistry between Scott Can and Dania Ramirez; I could picture them as estranged spouses. 2. I liked the serialized stories; the individual plots made sense and we’re well acted. This gives me hope for a Season 2. As for the negatives:

1. The “We get our babies back” mantra got old by Episode 2. It felt like Nikki needed to be in therapy. 2. Kemi. She’s an interesting character, played by a compelling actress, but I can’t imagine a police department where half of what she does would be tolerated. Plus, I don’t know how she arrests and holds someone with diplomatic immunity and keeps her job. 3. The ultimate Keith reveal wasn’t a big surprise, given the newspaper clippings he had in Episode 1, but I appreciated that Nikki and Jason got closure by the end of the season. 4. Their daughter watched her brother fall into an icy lake and presumably drown, and she sat on that knowledge for seven years, even after he came back from the dead, and NOTHING?? WTAF??? How did Sidney sit by quietly while her parents’ marriage fell apart? How does she suffer no consequences for this deception? It would be especially cruel for Nikki and Jason, but if Sidney disappeared without a trace in E1 next season, I wouldn’t miss her.

I hate it. I loved Keith and felt sorry for him. I couldn’t wait for the next episode and now this ending. Poor Keith he deserved happiness!!

I agree with the rest, this show was a hot mess. I watched only to see how much worse it could get (Like LaBrea). Nikki was a total joke and the behavior of these “Cops” was absurd. Remember when she blew the bad guy up for laughs? What a wreck. To make it worse the creator has to ask the interviewer if things were too weird or confusing? Dude, YES. Terrible show, thanks for the laughs Baby.

Hey is there nothing lower than “fair”. This is awful! Did I mention AWFUL? A voodo-ish detective, a Trans woman paralyzed by asking someone out, and if the lead calls one more person “baby” I’m gonna puke. Lousy writing, story lines. Who thought this was a good idea?

This is the worst. Lousy writing, lousy acting. If the lead calls one more person “baby” I’m going to puke. Too much time on back stories like a trans person crippled by social interaction and a voodoo agent analyzing eggs like my Inca mother-in-iaw. Are you seeing how many weirdos you can cram into one hour? Gave it a chance, too freaking wierd.

Alert is a Fantastic show. I cannot wait for the next season. I have come to care about the characters. This is a good show.

I tried watching this and it was so boring and dry. I seriously do not think this will make it another year. There is so much crap being fed to viewers these days.

Most Popular

You may also like.

‘The Conners’ 100th Episode: Did It Live Up to the Hype? (POLL)

Spoiler Alert

The conners.

• ‘The Conners’: Crystal From ‘Roseanne’ Makes Dramatic Return – What Next?
• ‘The Conners’ Cast Previews Landmark 100th Episode

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Conners Season 7, Episode 10, “Smash and Grab and Happy Death Day .”]

The Conners hit 100 episodes with its latest installment, “Smash and Grab and Happy Death Day,” but was there anything truly standout about the milestone entry?

Usually, 100th episodes lean into a big event, but The Conners relies on emotions and sentimentality for its milestone. The installment is broken up into two prominent storylines, one focusing on a smash-and-grab robbery at Dan’s ( John Goodman ) hardware store where Jackie ( Laurie Metcalf ) is on-site to help detain one of the would-be robbers.

Disney / Chris Willard

Meanwhile, Becky ( Lecy Goranson ) juggles the topic of death with her daughter Beverly Rose ( Charlotte Sanchez ) as her sister Darlene ( Sara Gilbert ) offers a blunter perspective. In both these storylines, sentimental aspects of these characters’ lives play a role.

Jackie ultimately lets the low-rate criminal go after the police are slow to respond to the smash-and-grab; she sees herself in the young woman’s struggle. When Dan pushes back initially, Jackie tries to change his perspective by sharing her own personal stories.

'The Conners': Crystal From 'Roseanne' Makes Dramatic Return – What Next?

As for Becky, she gets upset with Darlene for bringing up death in the first place because it forces her to have a big discussion with Beverly Rose. It also brings up a lot of trauma from her late husband Mark’s death. Eventually, the sisters find common ground on the topic, and Becky is able to revisit Mark’s death to help teach her daughter about it.

It’s an overall sweet episode, but does it really feel like a 100th-episode celebration? We want to hear from you. Let us know your thoughts in the poll, below, and sound off in the comments section.

The Conners , Wednesdays, 8/7c, ABC

The Conners where to stream

John Goodman

Laurie metcalf, lecy goranson, sara gilbert.

• Action/Adventure
• Children's/Family
• Documentary/Reality
• Amazon Prime Video

More From Decider

'The Golden Bachelor' Stars Gerry Turner And Theresa Nist Divorcing Three...

'The View' Reacts To O.J. Simpson's Death: "The Tragedy Was The...

'The View' Forced To Evacuate Their Studio Before Wednesday's Show After...

'X-Men '97' Gives Gambit a Hero Moment You'll Never Forget

Holly Madison Says She “Tried” Exotic Dancing But Doesn’t Have...

'Captain America: The Winter Soldier' at 10: The Movie That Made (and...

Joy Behar Says She Was "Dragged Into" Controversy Over Beyoncé's 'Jolene'...

Guy Fieri Calls Drew Barrymore "Gangster" For Talking With Her "Mouth Full...

Share this:.

• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
• Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
• Click to copy URL

Is ‘Spoiler Alert’ Streaming on HBO Max or Netflix?

Where to stream:.

• Spoiler Alert

• Jim Parsons

Jim Parsons And Mayim Bialik Return As Beloved 'Big Bang Theory' Couple In 'Young Sheldon' Finale

Stream it or skip it: 'young sheldon' season 7 on cbs, where a tornado and a trip overseas shakes up the cooper family in the final season, what time is 'young sheldon' on tonight how to watch 'young sheldon' season 7 live and on tv, when will 'young sheldon' season 6 be on netflix release time, 'young sheldon' season 7 premiere date info.

Jim Parsons is trading in his comedic  Big Bang Theory   shoes for something a little less Sheldon and a little more romantic in the new drama  Spoiler Alert .

Based on the memoir  Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies,  the movie follows the final year of Kit Cowan’s (Ben Aldridge) life after learning of his terminal cancer diagnosis. It’s told through the eyes of his partner of 14 years, Michael (Parsons).

For everything we know about this movie — which is described in the trailer as “less of a rom-com and more of a love story” — here’s how, when and where you can watch Spoiler Alert:

WHERE TO WATCH  SPOILER ALERT:

As of now, the only way to watch  Spoiler Alert is to head out to a movie theater when it premieres on Friday, Dec. 2. You can find a local showing on Fandango . In the meantime, you’ll just have to wait for it to become available to rent or buy on digital platforms like Vudu , Amazon , Google Play or iTunes .

WHEN WILL  SPOILER ALERT  BE ON STREAMING?

A streaming release date for  Spoiler Alert has not yet been announced. However, seeing as it’s a Focus Features film and its parent company is NBCUniversal, it’s possible that it will end up on Peacock at some point.

As for a digital release date, which also has not been announced, we can make an estimate based on a previous Focus Features film. Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris was released in theaters on July 15 and came to digital on Aug. 2. If Spoiler Alert follows the same time pattern, it could be available to purchase on digital by late December or early January. Although the film may follow what most companies have been doing and not debut on digital until the 45-day theatrical window is up.

WILL  SPOILER ALERT  BE ON HBO MAX?

No, Spoiler Alert will not be on HBO Max because it’s not a Warner Bros. Movie. In the past, the company released its movies on HBO Max and in theaters at the same time. However, they have since stopped, and now allow a 45-day window between the theatrical release and the streaming release.

WILL SPOILER ALERT BE ON NETFLIX?

No, Spoiler Alert will not be streaming on Netflix. But it is entirely possible that it could be in the future. In the meantime, you’ll just have to head out to a theater or wait for it to become available on digital.

Does 'Yellowstone' Return Tonight? Everything To Know About 'Yellowstone's Season 5, Part 2 Premiere Date

Dwayne Johnson Gets Into Verbal Altercation With WWE Fan: "Watch Your F**king Mouth"

'The View' Reacts To O.J. Simpson's Death: "The Tragedy Was The Injustice" 

Stream It Or Skip It: 'Anthracite' On Netflix, About Four People Trying To Solve A Ritualistic Murder In The French Alps

Where To Watch 'When Calls The Heart' Season 11: Start Time, Streaming Info

R.I.P. Cole Brings Plenty: '1923' Actor Found Dead At 27 After Going Missing

Book Review

Spoiler alert by olivia dade.

by Shana · Oct 6, 2020 at 4:00 am · View all 14 comments

Spoiler Alert

by Olivia Dade

October 6, 2020 · Avon

More Info →

View Book Info Page

Genre: Contemporary Romance , Romance

Theme: Mistaken/False Identity

Archetype: Actor/Actress/Celebrity , Beta , STEM , Writer/Author/Librarian

I read the first chapter of Spoiler Alert and was sucked into a compulsive reading vortex, becoming annoyed when work or sleep tried to distract me from gobbling up the book. It’s a delightful celebrity romance that treats writing sexy fanfiction as a worthy creative pursuit. It also has a classic falling for your penpal storyline, without the slow burn over correspondence that tends to annoy me. This story of a fanfiction writer who falls for the actor she writes about, who is also a secret fanfiction writer, is my new favorite version of that trope. I’m an infrequent fanfiction reader, just because I tend to be far behind in my media consumption, and no one’s interested in my hot takes on ER . The sweetness of this cozy romance, and the thoughtful fat representation, kept me from caring about the fandom in-jokes that went over my head.

Marcus is an actor who got his big break on a Game of Thrones -esque ensemble series, God of the Gates. Marcus is shy, and finds it easier to pretend that he’s a vapid himbo at work, rather than admit that he’s socially awkward, and hiding his dyslexia. He’s a huge fan of the books his show is based on, and runs a fanfiction forum devoted to God of the Gates. Unfortunately, Marcus’s contract requires that he never publicly critique or share details about the show, something he’s finding increasingly difficult. Thank goodness he can snark anonymously with his online BFF, Ultimate Lavinia Stan. Fanfiction gives him an outlet for his complaints about how the show’s Mediocre Dude™ producers are turning brilliant source material into misogynist claptrap. I typically have trouble suspending disbelief when celebrity characters claim to be obsessed fans of their own work, but Marcus’s love for the show and its fan community is reinforced in nearly every chapter. The book includes some of his angst-filled stories, and his commentary on April’s smutty ones. He spends most of his free time in fan forums, and misses them when he tries to step back from his involvement later in the book. His frustration with the show’s plot detours once they run out of published books to follow will feel familiar to despairing GoT fans.

April is a freelance geologist who doesn’t like to advertise that she spends most of her free time writing God of the Gates fanfiction. When April escapes to a cushy state job staffed by folk music-loving musicians, she decides to let her fandom flag fly. Step One, tweet a photo of her gorgeous fat body cosplaying her favorite character, using her real name. When she gets hassled by a few fat shaming dudes, Marcus shows up in her mentions and pointedly asks her on a date, without knowing she’s his fandom bestie. April suspects a publicity stunt, but is pleasantly surprised when sparks fly between them. Poor Marcus is shocked when April tells him her fanfiction name, but he can’t tell her about his alter ego without risking his job. Can he convince her, and himself, that he’s more than just a pretty face?

I loved how Marcus’s career as an actor is a central part of the book. It reminded me of Lucy Parker’s Act Like It , because acting and celebrity are presented as real jobs that take skill, active management, and a buttload of strategy. Marcus’s struggle to escape the bland but amusing public persona he’s created for himself was frequently hilarious. He’s basically a Greek mythology nerd pretending to be Jason Mendoza from The Good Place . Marcus’s tentative friendships with coworkers were a highlight for me, especially when one the other stars discovers that his character is frequently featured in pegging fics. At the same time, April’s coworkers are very chill about her dating a celebrity, because women scientists are the coolest friends.

Spoiler Alert weaves in many common fan complaints—like terrible casting that diverges from the source material, from both the actor and fan perspective. It doesn’t skirt over the potentially creepy dynamics embedded in the “fan dates fave” trope. April and Marcus even talk about the experience of sleeping with someone whose face and body you’ve studied obsessively. I found this fascinating, although I could have done with fewer descriptions of Marcus’s flat abs.

This was a low-tension read. The couple’s IRL connection is instant for Marcus, because he’s already half in-love with April after years of online friendship. Most of the story follows Marcus and April as they manage the complications of their budding relationship, and their own emotional baggage. The main obstacle to a HEA is Marcus deciding whether, or when, to tell April about his secret fandom identity. In the meantime, Marcus makes up a story to explain his disappearance from the forums while April wonders why her confidante is now ghosting her. Even after Marcus and April start dating, he’s desperately afraid of losing her. Emo beta heroes are my catnip, and super-sensitive Marcus worships April. April lovingly refers to him as a drama queen at one point. I wanted to eat him with a spoon, but also wanted to smack him for keeping secrets. However, Marcus’s reasons for not telling April about their past online relationship are compelling, and I appreciated that the book didn’t act like it was reasonable for him (or April) to implode his career. Meanwhile, April is navigating being a minor public figure while learning to trust Marcus, and she makes plenty of mistakes of her own along the way. I appreciated how ethical Marcus tries to be while hiding their past connection, and that the inevitable relationship fuck-ups are evenly divided between Marcus and April. This storyline could easily have been stressful, but these two spend most of their time cuddling on the couch.

The fat representation in Spoiler Alert is strong. Marcus starts the book as a caring but cluelessly privileged hero, and gets schooled in fatphobia thanks to April. April has a clear analysis of size discrimination, and a sense of her own worth. But she also has moments of understandable insecurity about how other people will respond to her size, including Marcus, that last through most of the book. What worked about Spoiler Alert was how April never believes that there’s anything wrong with her body. She’s a confident badass. However, April knows that other people—lovers, fellow fans, her parents, might be assholes about her size. The problem here is clearly with them, not her. The challenges of dating while fat aren’t ignored, but they stay in the background so the book’s fluffy tone remains lighthearted.

For both April and Marcus, this felt like the first relationship where they were completely accepted, and that’s part of what helps equalize the power balance between them. Marcus has endured a lifetime of bullying from parents who thought his dyslexia was stupidity, and he’s had lovers run after glimpsing the nerdy personality behind his surfer boy looks. Marcus’s journey is learning to see himself as potentially lovable, while April’s is learning to trust that others will see herself the way she does. However, these two suck at having difficult conversations, particularly with their parents, with whom they both have toxic relationships. Marcus’s were teachers who didn’t notice his learning disabilities, while April’s can’t imagine she’ll be happy without dieting. They both figure their shit out over the course of the story, but if you need characters with stellar emotional problem-solving from page one, this is not your book. I was in the mood for realistic relationship development, so this worked for me. I wanted to cheer when these two learned to set firm boundaries with their parents.

My main issue with this book is the structure. The story is told in alternating POV chapters, and every other chapter is an “interstitial,” including excerpts from God and the Gates fics, scenes from Marcus’s movie scripts, and past DMs between his and April’s fan personas. These were occasionally funny or poignant, but I hated the way they disrupted the narrative flow during dramatic moments. Most of them didn’t add much to the story, except for demonstrating the depth of Marcus and April’s pre-dating friendship, and I skimmed over a bunch. Readers more steeped in fan culture might enjoy drabbles about a fictional tv series more than I, but it didn’t keep me from loving the book.

Spoiler Alert is tropey wish fulfillment, but at its heart, it’s is a quiet contemporary with a #couplegoals relationship where both characters offer comfort, create beautiful art, and help each other overcome insecurities. I never questioned whether the relationship made sense, and these two are adorable even when they’re not being completely honest with themselves (and each other). Spoiler Alert is also a love letter to fandoms, that will make you want to chase your romance novel with a shot of fanfiction.

This book is available from:

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks!

Add Your Comment →

What a great review. I am sold :). Reading it makes me think of one of my favourite fanfiction romance: Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell.

What a lovely review. I am sold :). Somehow, even though I am sure they are very different books, it makes me think of one of my favourite fanfic romances: Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell.

Still waiting for this one at the library, but all the reviews have been promising so far so I’m excited!

This does sound wonderful! Thanks for your review, Shana.

This ASoIaF fan noped out in the middle of season 2, so I guess I’m going to have to give this one a whirl, even though I have trouble getting through low stakes, low-tension romances. Gotta commiserate fellow angry fans.

Shoot. For some reason I thought this was going to be self published and I was just going to buy it if I liked the sample. If I’d realized it was going to be trade ppb priced, I’d have gotten on the wait list a while back. Now there’s a six month wait at my library!

I love Olivia Dade’s books for the kindness and decency of her characters (like Cat Sebastian’s) and also for the strength and all-out competence of her women – not that those are the only reasons to love them but I’m always struck.

@LisaA: That’s such a good way to describe her characters and what I have been enjoying most: reading about kind and decent people. (Can’t imagine why that seems like such a balm right now, she said dryly.) Thank you for putting that into words!

I had a preview chapter for this (probably at the end of another Olivia Dade book!), but didn’t note the title, so I am glad you reviewed this so I can actually order it 😀

I was fortunate yesterday in that my library had an e-copy available. I’m half way through the book and definitely enjoying it!

My library bought 2 more copies! Now it’s a 7 week wait, a big improvement.

I enjoyed this book, but for me, the secret of his fanfic persona cast a pall over the book for me. I understood it but man, it was hard to read. Completely redeemed in the end so the re-read will be better. Lovely, sexy book otherwise.

I just finished this book on audio. I loved it more than I thought I would, but I was truly disturbed by the abuse Marcus suffered by his parents, and I don’t know where else to put that. I have a young son who is smart but has a different kind of difficulty with school, so I felt this keenly.

“It reminded me of Lucy Parker’s Act Like It, ”

Add Your Comment

Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

Your Name: *

Your Email: (will never be shared) *

Your Website:

Notify me of follow-up comments via e-mail. You can also subscribe without commenting.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

↑ Back to Top

• WordPress.org
• Documentation
• Learn WordPress

Measles elimination in the U.S. is under 'renewed threat,' CDC warns

Measles has spread at a rapid clip this year. From January to March, the U.S. recorded around 30% of the total cases seen since the beginning of 2020. 

From 2020 through 2023, the U.S. recorded an average of five measles cases in the first quarter of each year. Those low numbers were due, in part, to the Covid pandemic, when fewer people were interacting in person. By contrast, this year’s first-quarter tally was 97, according to a report the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released Thursday.

"The rapid increase in the number of reported measles cases during the first quarter of 2024 represents a renewed threat to elimination," the authors wrote. 

Measles has been considered eliminated in the U.S. since 2000, meaning the disease is no longer constantly present, though there are still occasional outbreaks.

The country nearly lost that elimination status in 2019, when it recorded more than 1,200 cases — most of which were associated with outbreaks in Orthodox Jewish communities in New York. The high case load this year could put that elimination in jeopardy once again: As of April 4, the U.S. had already recorded seven outbreaks and 113 cases .

The CDC report called for more widespread vaccination coverage. Around 91% of measles cases recorded in the U.S. since January 2020 were among people who were unvaccinated or had an unknown vaccination status, it said.

One dose of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine is 93% effective at preventing measles, and two doses are 97% effective.

This year so far, 83% of recorded cases have been in people who were unvaccinated or whose vaccination status is unknown. Half of the 2024 cases have been in children under age 5. So far, 65 people have been hospitalized.

No one has died of measles in the last four years, according to the CDC report.

Measles vaccination rates dipped in the last few years. Communities should have around 95% vaccination coverage to prevent sustained measles transmission, but 12 states and Washington, D.C., had rates below 90% as of the 2022-23 school year.

The share of U.S. kindergartners who had received two doses of the MMR vaccine fell from 95% in the 2019-20 school year to 93% in the 2022-23 school year. According to the CDC, that leaves around 250,000 kindergarteners susceptible to measles each year.

Vaccination coverage has also declined globally . Around 83% of people worldwide had received one dose of a measles vaccine in 2022, down from 86% in 2019, according to the CDC. Global coverage declined to 81% during the Covid pandemic — the lowest since 2008.

The CDC report encouraged vaccination before international travel, since the majority of measles cases are introduced to the U.S. from other countries. According to the CDC, the number of countries reporting “large or disruptive” measles outbreaks increased 123% from November 2022 to October 2023. 

In the U.S., the largest outbreak this year began at a migrant shelter in Chicago. The city’s measles case total topped 60 this week. Since last month, the Chicago Department of Public Health has distributed more than 13,000 measles vaccines to help contain the spread.

Measles is highly contagious: An infected person can spread it to up to 90% of people close to them if those contacts aren’t immune.

However, the CDC report noted that the “risk for widespread U.S. measles transmission remains low because of high population immunity.”

Aria Bendix is the breaking health reporter for NBC News Digital.