There's nothing quite like a good kiss to break a heart or two — as fans of these shows will tell
you. Whether it's a tragic farewell, a shocking betrayal, or even a chance to save a life,
each kiss easily ranks among the greatest tear-jerking moments in TV history.
Few shows manage to throw more tragic obstacles between a couple than The Good Place. Heck,
the fact that Eleanor and Chidi's relationship survives past that horrifying clown bed to
begin with is a testament to their deep bond. But through reboot after reboot, the pair continually
finds their way back to each other, giving fans some hope that true love does, in fact, endure.
Sadly, all good things must come to an end — at least for a while, that is.
By the later seasons of The Good Place, Eleanor and Chidi just aren't themselves
unless they're sacrificing their happiness to save not only the world, but the afterlife too.
So it only fits that the season 3 finale sees the pair wipe Chidi's
memory to save the Good Place, and the souls of all humanity, for good.
As if that weren't enough to tug at the heartstrings, demon-turned-good-guy
Michael sets up a "greatest hits" montage of Chidi and Eleanore's moments throughout
their hundreds of reboots. Of course, Eleanor can't help lighten the mood…
"I know you're deflecting by making jokes about how hot you are."
"It's not a joke, I'm a legit snack."
...But there are tears all around when she kisses Chidi, and the season, goodbye. The brutal blow
of this not-so-final kiss between Eleanor and Chidi is only softened by the knowledge that,
in the end, these two get the happy ending they deserve — however bittersweet it may be.
Supernatural's Dean and Jo had a will they/won't they vibe from the moment
she showed up in season 2, but Dean was careful not to cross the line. However,
Dean's self-restraint gets thrown out the window in "Abandon All Hope" when the apocalypse comes…
again. And for the first time ever, Dean tries unsuccessfully to pick someone up.
"Sweetheart, if this is our last night on Earth,
I'm gonna spend it with a little thing I call self-respect."
Clearly surprised at being rebuffed, Dean finally sees Jo as an equal and a genuine potential match.
Sadly, hell hath no fury like a Hellhound scorned. While the hunter's brigade attempts to kill
Lucifer, Jo's guts end up as puppy chow. Knowing she's on death's door, she decides to sacrifice
herself in a supernaturally charged blast to give the Winchesters an open shot at Lucifer.
With regret and grief in his eyes, Dean kisses Jo on the forehead — but it isn't
enough. Teasing what their relationship could have been, he passionately kisses
her before tearing himself away to have a few words with the devil. The kicker? All
that sacrifice is for naught. Not even Samuel Colt's gun can take out the root of all evil,
and Jo and her mother, Ellen, die in vain. Talk about a cruel farewell.
Criminal Minds isn't known for killing off its main characters too often,
but the death of Hotch's wife Haley was one of the most shocking moments in the show's history.
And while fans love to hate the episode, it's hard to argue that it isn't one of the most
brilliant of the whole series. Chilling and gut-wrenching, sure. But brilliant.
Later, as Hotch is fighting for his own life in the hospital,
he meets up with Hailey in a trance-like vision. They watch her son's home videos
at a theater — an apparent homage to watching over someone after death.
Haley then convinces him to move on and be happy — because it just isn't his time to die.
After years of tormenting himself with blame, still full of love and light,
Haley tells him that it's okay. She lets him go with a kiss and her ring,
promising to always love him. Whether the vision was real or Hotch's coma-addled imagination,
the scene provides beautiful closure for her tragic — yet somehow hopeful — arc.
LGBTQ+ relationships often meet tragic ends on TV, but the one thing going for The Walking Dead,
in this case, is the show's general propensity to kill off pretty much everyone anyhow.
Eric and Aaron were already dating when the walkers began taking over — and
even the coming of the walking dead couldn't tear them apart. Surprisingly,
Eric's death isn't a result of the undead, but a group of survivors called the Saviors.
Aaron pleads for him to keep going, making it all that much more painful to watch.
"You know I love you. You know i'm right."
Finally, realizing that his boyfriend's death is inevitable, Aaron kisses Eric goodbye — and
fans are left to pick up the pieces of their shattered hearts. Even worse, Aaron leaves
Eric to die without killing him, allowing his boyfriend to become a member of the undead.
Most Doctor Who fans tend to prefer Rose and the Tenth Doctor as a couple to Rose
and the Ninth Doctor, but the fateful kiss that causes Nine's regeneration into Ten
is the spark that lights their love story — and changes the course of the series forever.
The writers made the bold but inevitable move to kill off Nine, who was the first Doctor
featured in the show's 2005 revival, once actor Christopher Eccleston decided to leave the show.
"It's a bit dodgy, this process. You never know what you're gonna end up with."
And so, thanks to the creative differences with Eccleston and the needs of an epic
save-the-world story, the minute Rose and Nine lock lips marks the end of Nine's existence.
All the compelling darkness and grief that Christopher Eccleston had brought
to the usually vivacious Doctor was lost — after just one season.
This sense of inevitability and melancholy permeates the whole episode,
making the final kiss between Rose and Nine both cathartic and tragic. Sadly, it is, to date,
the last time the Ninth Doctor has appeared on screen outside of stock footage, as the drama
between Eccleston and Doctor Who's producers continued for years after he left the show.
Buffy and Angel are the poster children for tragic first love.
"A vampire in love with a Slayer. It's rather poetic, in a maudlin sort of way."
In simpler terms, their relationship is doomed as all hell. Over the course of the show, Buffy
and Angel have seen their fair share of tragic farewells — but none of their goodbyes are as
cruel as the season 2 finale. Buffy ends up in a battle for Angel's soul after their participation
in a few minutes of "bad touch" gives Angel one moment of happiness too many — causing him to be
transformed into the nefarious villain known as Angelus. After going on a rampage, things get a
little out of hand and Angelus opens a portal to Hell. While Buffy succeeds in bringing back Angel,
it's too late by that point, and the only way to close the portal is to chuck him right in.
So, in tears, Buffy kisses her vampire lover one more time before stabbing him as the portal
sucks him in — and she loses her first love forever. Well, not forever. But for a while.
Michael and Sara just can't catch a break, as they're always consistently torn apart whenever
they find a moment to be happy. Given that the show is called Prison Break, no one expected
the innocent fugitive Michael to stay free for long after escaping during the first season.
So where did they go from there? Well, he ended up in prison... again — and was forced to break
out... again. Yeah, it's a little convoluted, but it is kinda the whole point of the show.
When Michael's girlfriend Sara kills a rogue FBI agent in Panama,
she has a fairly understandable breakdown. So Michael makes the impulsive decision to
fake taking her hostage at gunpoint when they get caught. They also both exchange verbal "I
love you"s for the first time, sealing the declaration with a desperate kiss.
"You sacrificed everything for me once… No! Don't move! Now it's time to say thank you."
As Sarah frantically protests, Michael takes the blame for the killing and is subsequently arrested
and imprisoned. The next season, the writers wrote out a pregnant Sarah by shipping her
character's decapitated head to Lincoln, a move which wasn't exactly warmly-received by fans.
They later retconned that particular arc, after those same fans demanded her return with e-mails
and boycotts — but it doesn't make Michael's premature goodbye any less heartbreaking.
Dealing with loss is hard enough when it happens on one occasion,
but Grey's Anatomy likes to doll out death blows like candy. In Izzie's case, after
losing her love Denny once, she loses him all over again when she herself is on the brink of death.
Izzie initially watches Denny die when he suffers from a stroke after a heart transplant surgery.
Still, he lives on to haunt her in her mind — which makes sense, as she cut his LVAD device
against his will to move him up the transplant list, risking losing her medical license.
When Izzie suffers from cancer symptoms, she hallucinates Denny for a while — believing
he's a ghost. As she kisses him one last time, he disappears into thin air,
ripping them apart yet again, and leaving her more lost and confused than ever. Fans will never
quite know whether Denny was spiritually there, or if it was just a hallucination.
It's hard not to feel for Izzie, given all she's been through, but the true tragedy lies with
Denny and her refusal to let him go — which may be the real reason she lost him in the first place.
Game of Thrones easily wins the award for forging more family connections
than any of its characters really ought to have. And that's definitely the case
for Princess Myrcella, whose uncle, Jaime Lannister, is also her father.
Now, Game of Thrones fans meet many of the series' deaths with ambivalence — or
even celebration — but Princess Myrcella's demise was nothing less than heartbreaking.
Luckily — or unluckily — the princess' mother, Cersei, is no stranger to revenge,
and in Myrcella's case, her kiss of death happens twice.
Because her mother is kind of the worst, Myrcella is forced to flee Dorne and go back
to King's Landing after her life is threatened. Still hoping to avenge Prince Oberyn, however,
the nefarious Ellaria Sand dons a fierce shade of poisonous lipstick and kisses Myrcella before
the young princess leaves. Only Ellaria has the antidote, of course, and Myrcella is basically
doomed from the moment she leaves. Aboard the ship home, Jaime, who is accompanying her home,
reveals that he's also her father. She admits she's always had a hunch, accepting him anyway.
Myrcella's nose begins to bleed, and it becomes clear that something has gone very wrong indeed.
Jaime cradles Myrcella as she dies, and not even the incestuous reveal is enough to take
away the ironic Shakesperian tragedy of it all. As one of the only genuinely innocent
characters in the series, her brutal death stands out as particularly cruel and unfair.
Myrcella's death doesn't go unavenged, however,
and Ellaria also gets her just desserts — in the form of a poisonous kiss to her daughter,
courtesy of Cersei. But hey, that's life in Westeros , for you.
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