The original post: /r/television by /u/Cunari on 2025-11-22 19:51:29+00:00.
Babylon 5 had this happen too many times to count for example Born to the Purple paid off in Interludes and Examinations. It seemed like a one off affair between Londo and Fabiano Udenio and then there was an unexpected callback to it. This also happened with GROPOS where a character returns for day of the dead.
This happened countless times in Supernatural too where one off characters would return just to get killed off. For example Tara Summers character or Sarah Blake’s character.
In Buffy, Jonathan, Warren and Andrew all seemed like monster of the week and then ended up teaming up.
Any other examples where episodes where you thought this was just a MOTW, filler or standalone episode and ended up getting payoffs later?