History DownerEnding / LiveACtionTV

* The ''Series/{{Smallville}}'' episode "Ryan", where despite all his fantastic powers, and even conquering his fear of heights, Clark Kent still fails to save his adoptive little brother Ryan from a brain tumor.
** While Ryan dies, Clark has given him peace and friendship. "Pariah" on the other hand, with the death of Alicia certainly counts as a downer ending.

* ''Series/PlanetOfDinosaurs'': The final episode, of course, involves the famous asteroid impact and subsequent mass extinction, and even shows the world following the impact: a desolate wasteland of dying plants and struggling ''Triceratops'' and ''Tyrannosaurus'', accompanied by a sad musical score.

* ''Series/Loki2021'': TheBadGuyWins at the end of the first season. Sylvie, desperate for revenge, kills He Who Remains despite his warnings that other, more malevolent Variants of himself will emerge from alternate timelines and cause another Multiversal War. Loki finds himself in a version of the TVA where nobody remembers him and the final shot of the season is Loki staring in horror at a statue of ComicBook/KangTheConqueror. Roll credits.

* ''Series/WonderWoman1975'' did this with backdoor pilots. "The Girl from Islandia" finished with [[BigBad Bleeker]] escaping and Tina, the titular Girl, being trapped and unable to return to her home. "The Man Who Could Not Die" ended with Diana and "The Man" himself, Bryce Candle, bemoaning how [[CursedWithAwesome terrible their lives are.]]

*** "[[Recap/TheXFilesS2E23SoftLight Soft Light]]" involves a man who through an accident during an experiment is altered so that anyone who is touched by his shadow dies. He doesn't want to hurt anyone, and is afraid of being caught by the government and experimented on. The episode ends with the reveal that exactly that fate has befallen him, with little hope of rescue since as far as most people are concerned he's dead.
*** "[[Recap/TheXFilesS3E3DPO DPO]]" involves a psychotic teenager with electrical powers, who kills several people. The episode ends with the teen likely to get away with it all, as the tests performed on him show that he seems to be normal, meaning that they can't prove he killed anyone -- and it's made very clear that he still has his powers.
*** "[[Recap/TheXFilesS3E19HellMoney Hell Money]]" involves a secret lottery where people who enter can either win money or lose an organ depending on their luck. It turns out that the man in charge of it has rigged the contest so that he won't ever have to pay up...but he gets away with it anyway, as most of the people involved refuse to talk, and the one witness willing to talk dies horribly before he can.
*** "[[Recap/TheXFilesS4E6Sanguinarium Sanguinarium]]" has a doctor who commits multiple murders to perform a ritual that will let him change his appearance to a younger -- and completely different-looking -- man. He pulls it off, and the final scene shows him getting a job at a new hospital, where he will presumably eventually start killing again, as it's shown that this ritual is one he has already performed multiple times.
*** "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" features the titular character, who has the psychic ability to [[ISeeDeadPeople see exactly how people will die.]] Mulder and Scully team up with him to help capture a serial killer who's targeting other psychics. After Mulder successfully traps and kills the murderer, Scully heads back to Bruckman's house to thank him...only to find that he's [[DrivenToSuicide committed suicide]], as the pain and suffering that came with his power have finally broken him. Scully breaks down and cries as she holds his body.

** "Protection": This episode follows three main plot strands involving children on a social worker's casebook. In the first, a couple's young daughter accidentally kills a friend of the family who had been sexually abusing her. The parents hide her to prevent the authorities taking her away from them; but this happens anyway when the truth is discovered. In the second, a boy tries to find out the truth about his sisters, who were taken into care after suspected abuse. He exposes the real culprit, and the older sister comes home -- but the younger one is put up for adoption, exactly what he'd been trying to prevent. In the third, the social worker testifies against a couple suspected of beating their son, despite medical evidence proving that his bruises are caused by a genetic disorder. The parents are finally cleared on a doctor's evidence, and the child goes home, but by this time he's learned to walk and his parents have missed his first steps.
** "River's Edge": A rich tycoon who likes to drug, rape and strangle young women, and was repsonsible for the deaths of three of his victims (as well as a family who were killed on his orders, to cover up one of the deaths) gets away with it -- there isn't enough evidence to hold him on any charges, so he escapes back to Canada. A police officer who was [[{{Retirony}} one week away from retirement]] was ''also'' murdered, trying to get justice for the victims while he still could -- so his death is completely in vain. Meanwhile, a woman who tried to expose the culprit has her life and career ruined; she ''was'' involved in helping him cover up his crimes, but she'd pretty much been forced into it, and it's suggested that he had preyed upon her too.

* Also in ''Series/{{Zoey 101}}'', in the episode "Chase's Grandma", Zoey and friends plan a surprise birthday party for Chase. At the same time, Zoey discovers that Chase's grandmother shares the same birthday and she is sick. Finally at the day of the party, just after Zoey prepares for it, she is told that Chase is gone, which upsets her. Michael reveals that Chase's grandmother died from, according to him, something "more than a flu". Immediately Zoey looks for Chase, catching him in the PCA's fountain, mourning his late grandmother. The final scene reveals Zoey comforting a depressed Chase.

** In Season 2's "Soldier's Return", the title soldier Granville Whipple succumbs from his morphine addiction after struggling with his guilt for having abandoned his colleagues at the battle of Shilow and telling his mother he'd confess everything to his fallen colleague's family, only to steal more morphine and overdose on it, leaving poor Mrs. Whipple heartbroken by the loss of her only child.
** Season 7's "Sylvia" is one of the standalone examples: After enduring her father's emotional abuse, being raped by a masked stranger and forbbiden to tell anyone about it, and then scandalized when she discovers that she's pregnant and Mrs. Oleson spreads the news claiming her boyfriend is the father, she dies after her rapist tries to attack her a second time and she falls off a ladder while trying to escape him, leaving her boyfriend heartbroken and scarred, and presumably her father devastated that he'll never be able to make up for his mistakes.
** Season 8's "Gambini the Great": The title character, an aging circus daredevil, continues to perform his dangerous escape numbers and disowns his sons for not wanting to continue his legacy, winds up burning to death when he fails to escape the coffin on fire, in fronte of the entire town.

** ''Series/KamenRiderOutsiders'': The first half of the crossover series wraps in one of the, if not, most ominous and somber endings for a ''Kamen Rider'' spin-off. The good guys managed to render the Ark off the grid. Unfortunately for them, the AI Zein comes out as the [[TheBadGuyWins real winner]] and the [[EvilAllAlong true villain]] of ''Outsiders'', managing to con the heroes into acquiring a [[TheMostDangerousVideoGame certain forbidden video game]] as the means to [[FinalSolution exterminate humanity]] unopposed, with Tachibana, Horobi, and Brain can only do nothing but watch in horror as Zein sets its plan into motion.

** "Grievance Culture": Although the villains of the week (a pair of serial killers) are caught, one of the potential victims turns out to be an unrelated case of suicide. As a result, his family can't claim on his life insurance policy, and will lose their house - which he borrowed against when he was too ill to work.