When Star Trek Into Darkness was about to be released in 2012, everyone involved insisted the film's villain was John Harrison when it was actually Khan. In hindsight, the film's screenwriter, Damon Lindelof, now thinks this secrecy was a mistake.
In an interview with Variety about The Leftovers, Lindelof brought up the idea of being mysterious just for mysterious' sake, and he named the Khan twist as an example of that.
"When we did Star Trek Into Darkness for example, we decided that we weren’t going to tell people that Benedict Cumberbatch was playing Khan," Lindelof said. "And that was a mistake, because the audience was like, 'We know he’s playing Khan.'"
Director J.J. Abrams has expressed similar regrets, saying in 2013 that this was done partially because Paramount didn't want people to feel like they had to be familiar with the original series to see this new movie.
"I can understand their argument to try to keep that quiet, but I do wonder if it would have seemed a little bit less like an attempt at deception if we had just come out with it," Abrams told Screenrant in 2013.
Lindelof did note, however, that he admires Abrams withholding information about the new Star Wars movie.
"I’ve not come across a single person who’s like, 'I wish I knew a little bit more.' We are like, 'Thank God he’s protecting us from all the things that will be revealed in the movie theater,'" Lindelof said.