What a fitting end to a wild Oscar season. Last night’s Oscars were in lock step with the twists and turns we’ve felt over the past five months or so, as this year’s awards race had its fair share of ups and downs and sidesteps. Back in September, we all had our eyes on The Danish Girl, Steve Jobs, and yes The Revenant as the potential heavy hitters in this year’s awards race, but it’s not unique for a couple of the early contenders to fall by the wayside once the season begins in earnest. What is unique is for there to be so much uncertainty surrounding the Best Picture race on Oscar night, and not only did the ceremony give us a bit of a surprise in the biggest category, but there were also a fair amount of genuine shockers across the board.

So as we say farewell to this year’s Oscar race once and for all, let’s take a look at the biggest surprises from last night’s ceremony.

‘Ex Machina’ Takes Best Visual Effects

The first shocker of the night came in the form of a pleasant surprise if I’ve ever seen one. Conventional wisdom will tell you if there’s a Best Picture nominee in the bunch, it will win the Best Visual Effects category—in fact, with last night’s win, Ex Machina became the first non-Best Picture nominee ever to win this award when up against one or more other Best Picture nominees [Edit: Tora! Tora! Tora! won over Patton in 1970, so it's actually the first film in 45 years to accomplish this feat]. So yeah, this was huge, and hugely deserved. Most folks were predicting either Mad Max: Fury Road or The Revenant to take this one, or, if the Academy was going to make history, that they would use this as an opportunity to single out Star Wars: The Force Awakens. But in the end, the stunning and vital visual effects work in Alex Garland’s brilliant sci-fi drama took the trophy, surprising just about everyone.

Sylvester Stallone Denied Best Supporting Actor

This next surprise was not so pleasant for some folks. Despite Warner Bros. being caught off guard by the critical response to Creed—so much so that they didn’t even have Oscar screeners at the ready—Sylvester Stallone pretty quickly picked up steam as a late-entry Best Supporting Actor candidate. It was a swell performance that also paid homage to the legacy of the Rocky franchise as a whole, and a win for Stallone would be a career-acknowledgment of sorts, in addition to honoring his fine work in this particular film.

Nearly every critics group went for Stallone, and though he wasn’t nominated for the Screen Actors Guild Award, he was still the favorite to win on Oscar night. But the Academy went a different route, instead singling out Mark Rylance’s stunningly subtle turn in Steven Spielberg’s somewhat underrated Bridge of Spies. Stallone follows in the footsteps of a number of other actors whose “comeback” narratives seemed to signal Oscar glory, only to come away empty handed at the ceremony (see: Mickey Rourke). But if Stallone was going to lose, Rylance is wholly deserving of the Best Supporting Actor moniker.

Best Original Song Goes to...'Spectre'?

The surprise and somewhat discomfort on Common’s face as he read the Best Original Song winner was a fitting reaction to this trophy not going to Lady Gaga and Diane Warren’s sexual assault survivor-themed “Til It Happens to You”, especially as it came directly after an impassioned plea from Vice President Joe Biden and an emotionally charged performance by Gaga. Indeed, the lackluster and wholly forgettable Spectre song “Writing’s on the Wall” took the trophy instead, and while Gaga and Warren’s song is not terribly great, most believed the Academy would be acknowledging the subject matter with this win. Not to mention the fact that “Til It Happens to You” swept pretty much every other precursor award. And really, if you’re not going to give this one to Gaga, the second “most deserving” song was The Weeknd’s “Earned It” from Fifty Shades of Grey. But the win for Spectre and counterarguments for the other songs being summed up as “not bad” is further proof that the Academy should probably do away with this category altogether.

‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ (Nearly) Sweeps Technical Categories

Okay so this wasn’t exactly a “surprise” per se, but most had their fingers crossed for a strong Mad Max: Fury Road showing in many of the technical categories. And yet, folks predicting a strong The Revenant showing went with the frontier-set drama for at least a couple of these awards, like Best Sound Mixing or Best Visual Effects. Instead, the Academy rightly singled out the technical brilliance of George Miller’s fever dream, as the film took home the most Oscars of the night with six in total: Best Editing, Costume Design, Makeup and Hairstyling, Production Design, Sound Mixing, and Sound Editing. The only technical award it didn’t win was Best Visual Effects, which went not to The Revenant but to Ex Machina. What a lovely day indeed.

'Spotlight' Wins Best Picture After All

How refreshing for the night’s biggest category to be so unpredictable, so suspenseful, and to go the way of surprise. While this was down to a three-horse race between The Revenant, The Big Short, and Spotlight, The Revenant had the momentum and The Big Short had the statistical evidence, so Spotlight was seemingly the “less likely” of these three. The drama still stood a chance of winning, of course, but it also seemed like it could go the way of so many early frontrunners like The Social Network or Zero Dark Thirty, which racked up critical momentum in November/December only to be usurped on Oscar night. It’s been a good long while since there was so much uncertainty surrounding the Oscars’ biggest category, so to see it actually go the unexpected route—and to such a deserving winner—was a positive delight.

With this win, Spotlight makes history as the first film since 1952’s The Greatest Show on Earth to win Best Picture with only one other Oscar win, which in Spotlight’s case came in the Best Original Screenplay category. No matter, it’s an impeccably crafted film covering important subject matter with a terrific ensemble, so what more could you really ask for in a Best Picture winner?

And with that, we put a cap on the 2015 Oscar season once and for all. It was, thankfully, an incredibly interesting race that kept prognosticators like yours truly in suspense all the way up through the final category of the night, which certainly made for an enjoyable (and, yes, sometimes frustrating) awards season. The next bout of jostling, positioning, and prognostication will be here before we know it, but for now I bid awards season adieu with thanks to those loyal Oscar Beat readers who came along for the ride.