In Defense of Spoiling the End of the TV Show

The premiere of the first-ever season of The Golden Bachelorette has been on my calendar for months. I can’t wait to watch 24 men who have aged exceedingly well climb out of their limos and greet the star, Joan Vassos, on Sept. 18 at the Bachelor Mansion. I’ll pay special attention to a few of them—because I already know exactly which guys are making it to hometowns and fantasy suites, and which one will walk away with the final rose. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

No, I’m not clairvoyant—don’t ask me how long Vassos and her leading man will last in the real world—and no, I don’t have an in with the network. I just happen to love spoilers. If I don’t know exactly how a TV show or movie I’m watching ends when I’m at the beginning, I won’t watch. I flip to the last few pages of books for the same reason. The uncertainty—and possibility that the ending will crush me into smithereens—gives me a boatload of angst that I definitely don’t need.

I’m far from alone: Just ask the guy who’s made a career out of spoiling The Bachelor franchise. “I’m not getting people to turn off the show, or not to watch,” says Steve Carbone, a Dallas-based blogger better known by his internet moniker, Reality Steve. “It’s just watching differently.” Carbone started blogging about The Bachelor in 2003, and in 2009, he received his first spoiler from a tipster—correctly revealing a couple weeks in advance that Jason Mesnick would dump his chosen winner, Melissa Rycroft, in favor of his runner-up and now-wife, Molly. It was Carbone’s big break: After he posted the spoiler, his following and credibility skyrocketed. “Then every season, people just kept coming to me with info.” He started dropping tidbits about Vassos’ season of The Golden Bachelorette during filming in July, and revealed her final four on Aug. 27, three weeks before the show was slated to air.

Carbone now has hundreds of thousands of spoiler-hungry followers on Instagram and X, as well as a popular podcast, and his spoilers are the subject of much discussion in niche corners of the internet, like the daily “spoiler” thread in The Bachelor subreddit. While he doesn’t personally like his entertainment spoiled, he gets why other people do. “The biggest thing I’ve gotten from people is that they tell me they watch for a particular edit”—like who’s being portrayed as a villain or set up to be the heartbroken runner-up—“because they know when this person is leaving, or when this person is getting a one-on-one date,” he says. “It’s like a CliffsNotes guide to watching.”

Why do some people love spoilers, while others run away from them? I asked experts, including psychologists and researchers, to dig into spoiler culture and help make sense of the appeal.

Spoilers don’t ruin stories

When Jonathan Leavitt started researching spoilers, he wanted to prove that suspense is good—that waiting with bated breath to find out what happens enhances the reading or watching experience. Instead, according to study results published in Psychological Science, it turned out that people enjoy a story more when they know how it ends. (Hello, validation!) “It was definitely surprising,” says Leavitt, who now works as a data scientist.

Why all the spoiler love? Leavitt suspects it has to do with the fact that stories are often complex and intentionally misleading—prompting tension and confusion. “When you know the outcome, you get to feel a lot smarter and make better inferences,” he says. “And, I believe, you ultimately understand the story better in the end.”

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Take a mystery book, for example. Many of the clues sprinkled throughout the novel will be misdirects—but you already know who the killer is, because you flipped to the last page. “You’re seeing this one character act very suspicious, so it’s like, ‘People are going to think this person did it, but I know they didn’t,’” Leavitt says. “And then you might actually get a better idea of why they’re acting that way. You organize the elements of a story better in your mind, and you’re less fooled. There are fewer pathways to go down.”

People often tell Leavitt they hate spoilers; maybe their favorite movie is The Sixth Sense, and they say that if they had known what happened, it would have ruined the whole thing. He likes to ask how many times they’ve watched it—and can’t help but smile when they say four or five times. It’s more evidence, he believes, that knowing what happens doesn’t derail enjoyment.

During the many times Leavitt has rewatched The Lord of the Rings, for example, he’s found that he has the same fulfilling viewing experience he did the first time he watched. Once you’re transported into a different world and engaged in the production, that sense of immersion overrides what you already know about it. “We went in thinking spoilers are the antithesis of suspense,” he says, “but they are absolutely not.”

A sense of comfort and control

Alison McKleroy, a therapist in Oakland, Calif., sees a lot of spoiler lovers in her practice—and she, too, is one of them. “Earlier in my life I wanted a little more surprise and adventure, and now I love peace and relaxation,” she says. “I’ve done so much work to have a more peaceful nervous system with yoga and mindfulness. It just feels like I don’t need to undo that.”

People who prefer spoilers typically value predictability, ease, comfort, clarity, and a sense of control, McKleroy says. The world is rife with uncertainty—she calls it “free anxiety”—so why subject yourself to more? For many people, not knowing what happens leads to anticipatory stress, or an increased stress response triggered by an unpredictable plot. “When you’re anticipating something bad happening—like for me, when the music starts to turn—your heart starts pumping, and you’re not enjoying yourself anymore,” she says. My anxiety, which is already high at baseline, spikes so much when I’m reading a thriller, or even watching a couple I’m rooting for break-up in a rom-com, that I simply can’t enjoy myself until I’m certain things will end in a satisfying way.

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That resonates with Christina Scott, a social psychology professor at Whittier College in California and devoted spoiler lover. Her 10-year-old twins have even started asking for spoilers for the books they’re reading—maybe it’s genetic to a degree, she speculates. Either way, she likens a preference for spoilers to what people enjoy at amusement parks. “Some people want to go on roller coasters that flip them upside down,” she says. “I just want to go on the cute little merry-go-round. You need to do whatever’s going to help you enjoy the ride.”

A desire to know what happens, from start to finish, might reflect an unmet need for certainty in our own lives, Scott theorizes. “There’s enough ambiguity and stress—enough cliffhangers in real-life existence—that you want to sit down and enjoy a movie that should be relaxing,” she says. “I think in some ways we also want that reassurance in our life, but it’s not possible.” She’s told her kids that she wishes she could see what they’ll become a couple decades down the line—and then she could easily weather the ups and downs of the impending teenage years. That same outlook translates to how she feels about what she watches and reads.

Plus, while many people can keep some distance from the book or movie they’re consuming, spoiler lovers tend to be deeply empathetic. We put ourselves in the characters’ shoes and feel what they feel, at times perhaps because what they’re going through triggers a memory from our own life. “To invest in a character who’s now going to be blown to pieces—that’s the ultimate worst,” Scott says. “Knowing they’ll be OK allows you to feel safe in rooting for them and empathizing with them, because you know it will be worth the investment.” 

Spoiler alert: No, she’s not going to change her ways

Daniel Green, director of the master of entertainment industry management program at Carnegie Mellon University, does not seek out spoilers. He’s worked in TV production on shows like The Sopranos and Party of Five, so he has a traditional view of how media is meant to be consumed. “I like to go on the journey in my head, because all the writers took so much time to come up with it,” he says. “Really good stories are built on structure, and it goes 1-2-3. It doesn’t necessarily go 1-2-5-4.”

It’s a convincing argument, and I admitted to Green that I can recall a couple times when I skipped to the end of a book—like Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl—only to become wildly disappointed that the big reveal was ruined. On the other hand: There have been countless more times when I let out a sign of relief after reading the last chapter, and then enjoyed it in its entirety, from start to finish. On other occasions, I’ve discovered a movie or book ending that rattled me to my core—looking at you, One Day—and crossed it off my list before ever starting, relieved I didn’t waste even more time on it.

Plus, I keep returning to a point made by McKleroy, the therapist in California. When we’re in fight-or-flight mode, it’s hard to focus because our brain is working overtime to help ward off a threat. “If we’re running from a tiger in nature, we’re not going, ‘Oh, look at that beautiful butterfly going by,’ or, “Gosh, the sun is so pretty,’” she says. “From a nervous system perspective, people who engage in spoilers are actually getting to savor the beauty as it unfolds—and they have space to treasure the less obvious elements of the story.” It might not be exactly what a writer intended, but spoilers grant some of us the ability to enjoy and appreciate their work to the fullest possible extent.

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There’s nothing wrong with needing to know what happens, Scott says, and no one should make you feel bad or embarrassed about it. If you’re watching a movie with someone, and they don’t get why you’re reading an annotated recap first, try explaining where you’re coming from. Scott advises wording it like this: “I understand this doesn’t work for you, but just like you want plain popcorn and I want mine buttered, this is what will help me enjoy the movie the most.” Sometimes, she says, your viewing partner might feel like you have an unfair “leg up” on them, because you know what happens and they don’t. “They might think they’ll look foolish based on their reaction [to certain parts], and feel like you have extra armor,” she says, which is why it’s helpful to shine light on your perspective—and to assure them you won’t spoil anything for them.

Of course, it’s easiest when you don’t have to offer any explanation. Scott and I joked that we ought to start a spoiler lovers support group, a place for people like us to come together, no judgment, and bond over the joy of knowing what to expect. We’d all meet at the movie theater—and ease into the film with the comforting knowledge of what comes last.