Second Chapter Cliffhanger

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A Cliff Hanger that bridges the gap between the second and third chapters of a trilogy by occurring at the end of the second installment.

With the larger story structure of the trilogy, several lessons of smaller scale story telling get carried over to help with the sense of continuation. So the Act Break in a film trilogy can end up acting like a tv show's act break and so put in a cliffhanger to bid you over in the three year production break. It is near ubiquitous with the Two-Part Trilogy. The first installment is often rather introductory and may aim for a more fulfilling tie up at the end. This is often because after just the first one, people don't have the sense of the story as part of a larger whole and that may include the creators and financiers of the project. However, the end of the second installment often makes a good point for a significant Cliff Hanger to be carried over to the final part.

More than just a Sequel Hook, the Second Chapter Cliffhanger will to a degree rob the second film of its own sense of resolution, often putting the characters in the Darkest Hour with everything still up in the air. This helps make an easy way to keep the audience interested in a third part and makes the third part feel like it is genuinely the same story and not just another sequel. This trope often sets up the third installment as being the kind of movie where all of the various threads come together.

As an Ending Trope, Spoilers ahead may be unmarked. Beware.

Examples of Second Chapter Cliffhanger include:

Film

• The Empire Strikes Back ends with Han Solo being frozen in carbonite and captured by a new enemy, not strictly in league with the main villain though, leaving us with just Luke and Leia's promise to rescue him.
• Pirates of the Caribbean : Dead Man's Chest which ends with Captain Jack Sparrow, killed by the kraken and thus captured in Davy Jones' locker by an enemy who was at least the main villain in this film (but not the next), leaving us with the promise of Will, Elizabeth, the crew and Tia Dalma to get him back. Shock heightened by the return from the dead of Captain Barbossa.
• The Matrix is another Two-Part Trilogy case. Part 2 ends with Neo in a coma and the emergence of Smith as an enemy, unaligned with the machines, though just as dangerous. It also removed the possible solution that Neo had been working towards for the rest of the movie. This possibly reduced the drama because it made a lot of the actions of the second movie a great big Shaggy Dog Story when going into the third.
• Back to The Future. Part II resolved the alternate timeline, but everything else is saved for a big fat "To Be Continued".
• Spider-Man 2 ends with Harry discovering that his father was the Green Goblin.

Literature

• The Two Towers book ends with Frodo being paralyzed by spider bite and captured by Orcs, leaving us with just Sam's promise to rescue him.
  • The film still left us with a slight hook with the threat of Smeagol/Gollum's betrayal and his thoughts that "she could do it" but pretty much was aiming for it's own sense of resolution for the individual installment.
  • However, unlike the Two-Part Trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring also ends a cliffhanger. And opposite from the treatment of The Two Towers film (which ended earlier than the book), the Fellowship film (which ends later than the book) increases the cliffhanger by ending on Merry and Pippin's kidnapping by Orcs.

Video Games

• Halo. The cliffhanger between Halo 2 and Halo 3 would definitely count, giving us the line "Finish the fight," and angering many fanboys, since they had to wait three more years until the conclusion of the story arc. The worst part was that the second game would have had up to three more levels and a coherent ending if not for Microsoft's insistence on sticking to the release date that Bungie had projected when development started. Some sources have even said that a third game was never planned at all.
• Call of Duty:Modern Warfare 2 ends with the only surviving protagonists as public enemies, a major villain still alive, the main character stabbed in the chest, being hauled towards a helicopter, and when the pilot is told they have to get out of there, he replies that he "knows a place".

Web Original

• During the "Recollection" trilogy, Red vs. Blue had the seventh season, "Recreation", end with Washington teaming up with the Meta and capture the Reds at Valhalla while the remaining characters were trapped by attacking aliens.

Western Animation

• This appears in the structure of the three seasons of Avatar: The Last Airbender. First season: successful repulsion of enemy navy, second season: betrayal, death, loss.
• The movie trilogy from The Fairly OddParents, wishology, parodies this trope as well as part of its parody of movie trilogies in general: while the first part, "The Big Beginning", ends with a very vague Second Movie Hook, the actual second movie ends with a full-fledged Cliffhanger, as the story clearly can't end that way by itself.