We see two characters talking for 45 seconds. Then a bomb goes off, that was under the table. The audience didn't know there was a bomb: big surprise; but the dialogue between the characters is completely irrelevant and eclipsed by the explosion.

Now imagine the same scene, but before, we see a terrorist placing the bomb under the table. Now the scene is totally different, and every word that comes out of one of the characters' mouth is fascinating. Does either one of them know about the bomb? Will they find out in time? Will they survive? Etc.

Suspense > surprise.

And your scene depends on the characters. Is one the main character? Highly unlikely he get killed.

It's even worse if it's a TV series. Main character is strapped to a bomb? No problem. Guest star is strapped to a bomb? Might get killed. Unknown supporting role strapped to a bomb? Sure death. I think that was part of GoT's success. Surprise deaths. And nudity of course.

If everything has a meaning even the chosen actor is important. Known actor in a minor role? Surely gets important.

At the beginning of the show. A few seasons in, lots of people developed plot armor.

I think a recent series which bucked this trend was For All Mankind. Rather than building suspense, bad stuff just happened with no warning. And it wasn’t a jump scare, it just happened. The entertainment for me then came from the characters reactions and how the plot then unfolded.

I actually class it as one of the best shows I’ve seen. I feel it managed to be very wholesome while also having some major emotional highs and lows. In particular, it didn’t build drama just for the sake of keeping the audience engaged.

I could talk about that show for ages.

Nobody is surprised, then subsequently asks no questions. The questions simply come after.

And so I imagine the sequence of when you want the viewer to ask their questions can be used as a literary device (famously, in media res).

Chekhov‘s Guns are important for short stories (which is what Chekhov was famous for), but short stories are not the only type of fiction and they don’t fit everywhere.

'knowing what will happen' is not in itself a limit on good literature. You know what's going to happen in every Shakespeare play long before you've seen or read it.

> Toadvine glanced at the man's forehead but the man's hat was pushed down almost to his eyes. The man smiled and forked the hat back slightly with his thumb. The print of the hatband lay on his forehead like a scar but there was no mark other. Only on the inside of his lower arm was there tattooed a number which Toadvine would see in a Chihuahua bathhouse and again when he would cut down the man's torso where it hung skewered by its heels from a treelimb in the wastes of Pimeria Alta in the fall of that year.

It's not really the gun on the wall, the bread knife, or the tattoo. It's the narrator revealing a kind of untrustworthy omniscience by spoiling future details of the story.