Woe to Wo Fat is the 19th and final episode of Season 12 in the original version of Hawaii Five-O.
Synopsis[]
The series concludes with the final showdown between McGarrett and Wo Fat. Three scientists who have disappeared have one thing in common, they all attended a symposium on possible space-based, laser defense systems. McGarrett impersonates a fourth scientist, Dr. Elton Raintree, who attended the same gathering and is soon abducted. Wo Fat is behind it all and wants the scientists to complete their work and produce such a device.
Cast[]
- Jack Lord as Detective Captain Steve McGarrett
- James MacArthur as Detective Danny Williams
- Al Harrington as Ben Kokua
- Kam Fong as Detective Chin Ho Kelly
- Gilbert Lani Kauhi as Kono Kalakaua
- Khigh Dhiegh as Wo Fat
Trivia[]
- After 12 long, bloody seasons and 278 grueling cases on CBS, Detective Steve McGarrett (the only character to be in them all!), to a finally-jailed Wo Fat (or should we say Inmate 9869?), utters the last line of dialogue of the entire Hawaii Five-O series: "Aloha, Wo Fat."
- The last scene shows Wo Fat taking a nail file out of his shoe with the implication he will saw his way out of prison cell an unnecessary cliffhanger that implies that he will escape and McGarrett will chase him again. Considering the fact that Wo Fat has not only failed in his spy missions -such as "F.O.B. Honolulu 1 & 2," but because he has also allied himself with a faction of the Chinese government that tried and failed to kill a potential future Prime Minister of China in "Presenting...In_the_Center_Ring...Murder ." (Thus in all probability turning a possible victim into a vindictive enemy, prison could be the safest place for Wo Fat to be!This episode was broadcast 4 months and 15 days short of the 12th anniversary of the pilot episode of Hawaii Five-O, "Cocoon" in which it was McGarrett who was a prisoner of Wo Fat! (Small planet...)
- Sadly Hawaii Five-O was just getting to be too long in the tooth to continue....painfully stereotyped criminals and tacky plot lines...World War II Nazis in Hawaii or Chin Ho Kelly dead and Wo Fat escaping from McGarrett again!
- For 22 years, Hawaii Five-O with its inventory of 278 episodes held a record as television's longest-running crime drama in prime-time...a record that was finally broken on October 9, 2002, with the first-run telecast of the 279th episode of Law & Order on NBC, "Shangri-La."
- After just 3 weeks of repeats, Hawaii Five-O bade a final fond aloha to the network airwaves with the April 26, 1980 repeat of the November 1, 1979 episode, “Good Help Is Hard To Find”; it was replaced by The CBS Saturday Movie.
- With the end of the original run of Hawaii Five-O also came the end of an era: it was the last remaining weekly series from 1960s prime time TV still running in 1980.