Darkest Hour / Live-Action TV

Darkest Hours in live-action TV.

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• In Angel, arguably one of the darkest moments is the end of season three where Wesley has betrayed the team and been abandoned, Cordelia has Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence, and Angel's been trapped at the bottom of the sea by his own son.
• Arrow:
  • "Streets of Fire", the penultimate episode of season 2, reaches the darkest hour when Oliver decides that he cannot beat Slade and that the only way to prevent more suffering is for him to surrender himself to Slade to be killed. Felicity manages to talk him out of it with a You Are Not Alone speech.
    Felicity: You are not done fighting!
  • Season 3's darkest hour comes in the mid-season episode "Left Behind". In the aftermath of Ra's al Ghul killing Oliver at the end of the previous episode, Team Arrow is falling apart, and criminals are taking back the streets of Starling City. Things do start to look up at the end of the episode, however, as Oliver is revived by Tatsu, and Laurel takes up the Black Canary mantle.
    • The season's true darkest hour doesn't start until the episode "Public Enemy", wherein not only does the League of Assassins successfully frame the Arrow for multiple murders, but Ra's personally tells Captain Lance that Oliver is the Arrow, which leaves Oliver on the run and out of resources and options. And then Roy takes the fall for him.
• Babylon 5:
  • "Hour of the Wolf", where The Hero is dead after his Heroic Sacrifice, but didn't even manage to kill Morden. Garibaldi has been captured by someone, the Vorlons are done with what little diplomacy they did before, Londo sees his premonition of Shadow ships over Centauri Prime become true and Emperor Cartagia is planning on turning the Centauri homeworld into a giant funeral pyre to light his way to godhood. The Vorlons and the Shadows haven't started shooting yet, but they've thrown out the rules of engagement so it's only a matter of time.
  • Prior to the main series, the Battle of the Line (the final battle in the Earth-Minbari war) was most definitely one of these. The all-but-defeated remnants of the Human fleet have been pushed back to Earth by the numerically and technologically superior Minbari. The Humans know that there is no hope of victory, and the president of Earth tells the defenders to fight hard because every minute they hold out means a few hundred more humans might be able to escape to neutral planets to carry on the species. The Minbari unexpectedly surrender to the Humans when they discover that Minbari souls are being reincarnated in human bodies, and that the captured Captain Sinclair carries the soul of their greatest leader Valen.
• Things rarely go well in Battlestar Galactica (2003). That said, two points in the series count as Darkest Hours:
  • In the first episodes of season 3, the New Caprica arc. Most of the insurgency's leaders are held prisoner on the planet. The free ones, Saul, Anders and Galen are increasingly desperate, with Galen getting careless after Cally is arrested and Saul unhinged after being tortured. Starbuck is missing, held prisoner by Leoben and subjected to Mind Rape with no way to reach her husband or allies. On the Fleet, the two Battlestars are undermanned and have no viable means of penetrating the planetary defence. William and Lee are in increasing disagreement on what to do, feeling hopeless and unable to help the people they love.
  • Starting at the middle of season 4, the Fleet finds Earth after years of searching, but the whole planet is a radioactive wasteland. The friendly Cylons have been all but decimated, with only one sheep surviving. Galactica herself is wounded and falls apart with old age. People fall prey to suicidal and auto-destructive behaviors, a situation that culminates in a bloody mutiny. The one child that symbolizes humanity's future is kidnapped by the bad Cylons... and it keeps getting worse until the beginning of the Series Finale.
  • Let us not forget that the ENTIRE SERIES takes place immediately following the deaths of all but 50,000 humans, and the decimation of 12 worlds, each comparable in population to modern Earth.
• Breaking Bad:
  • In the episode "Crawl Space", Gus has fired Walt, and stated his intention to kill Hank because he's peeking far too much into his criminal activities. Gus tells Walt that if he interferes, he will kill his entire family. Walt desperately has Saul anonymously tip-off the DEA and then help him disappear his family so that Gus will not be able to reach them, but Saul warns Walt that it will cost more than half a million to disappear all four of them. When Walt goes to retrieve the money, he discovers that most of it is missing, because Skyler had to use it to pay off Ted's tax debt. Having interfered with Gus's plan to kill Hank and now with no way to escape Gus's wrath, he goes absolutely insane with despair.
  • By the end of the episode "Ozymandias", Hank's investigation has gone up in smoke with him and Gomez dead in the desert, Jack and his crew have taken almost all of Walt's money and kidnapped Jesse to force him to cook for them, Skyler and Walt Jr. have turned on Walt and exposed him, forcing Walt to go on the run.
• The end of the episode "Spiral" in season 5 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Hellgod Glory has kidnapped Buffy's little sister/cosmic MacGuffin Dawn/The Key, and is going to use her to end the world. Plus, Giles is badly injured and the gang are stranded in the middle of nowhere.
• In the last episode of Charité at War, the war is in its last days, Berlin is about to fall, most of the hospital has been shot to shreds, and the doctors are basically shut in there, desperately trying to keep the hospital running because they must; there are so many injured people, but the medical supply situation has broken down entirely. They all want the war to end, and except for a few leftover fanatic Nazis, they know that they're defeated and are ready to welcome it, but they still have to wait for the definitive fall, because there is no way out.
• Chuck:
  • The end of "Chuck Versus Sarah" is arguably the most depressing moment of the series. Not only has Sarah lost her memory, but after seeing her video logs, she starts to realize just how crucial the last five years of her life were and how different she became after falling in love. She sets out for Quinn with the knowledge that killing him won't actually make that any better, and Chuck watches the love of his life walk away from him knowing that she remembers almost nothing of their time together.
    Sarah: I just wanted to tell you that I believe you. I believe everything that you told me about us. But the truth is, Chuck, I don't feel it. Everything that you told me about us and our story, I just... I don't feel it.
  • For some viewers, depending on how you interpret the last few moments of the series, that doesn't actually get better.
  • The end of the first half of the third season finale, "Chuck Vs. the Subway", isn't much better: Chuck's father has just been murdered by Shaw, Chuck suffers a Heroic BSoD because of his father's death which leaves him unable to access the Intersect 2.0, and Chuck's mind is slowly dying because of faults in the Intersect, while the only thing that can prevent its effects on him has been stolen by Shaw. Chuck, Sarah, Casey, and Beckman are falsely arrested as traitors in the CIA, and Chuck, Sarah, and Casey are all taken away by Shaw to be executed.
• Class of '09: The worst loss the FBI ever suffered, with 44 agents dead in a single day, comes from two simultaneous attacks by far-right terrorists. One infiltrates Quantico and shoots several agents or trainees, while others pose as workers at their headquarters, collapsing it through using work on the foundations as cover to destroy them, bringing the whole building down.
• Doctor Who:
  • "The Daleks' Master Plan": The Daleks have got back the last component of the weapon with which they hope to conquer the star system, and the Doctor doesn't even know if he can get back to their base to stop them.
  • "The War Games": The Doctor pragmatically summons his people, the Time Lords, knowing that he will then have to face their judgement and even the ever-optimistic Second Doctor knows he cannot run from them any more. By the end of the story, the Time Lords have separated the Doctor from his companions and he faces trial by his own people. This ended the Second Doctor's tenure and finished off the black and white era of the program.
  • "Logopolis", the final story of the Fourth Doctor (the longest running Doctor on television to date). One tenth of the universe, to be specific (which is still a hell of a lot), has already gotten destroyed, the situation has gotten so dire that the Doctor's future self has to bail him out, and the Master finally decides to take the remaining universe hostage.
  • The Trial of a Time Lord has the Doctor's trial suddenly have introduced a charge of genocide.
  • "The Sound of Drums" (which again features the Master) counts as a Darkest Hour, for the Doctor and for the Earth. The Doctor has been aged up and captured, along with Jack, and the Master has had the Toclafane slaughter one-tenth of the Earth's population, as Martha escapes to watch it happen.
  • "The Stolen Earth": Rose's presence in Donna's alternate reality in the previous episode means the walls of reality are breaking down. And then, the Earth (and 27 planets) is snatched from its current location right in the middle of the Medusa Cascade, and we have a Dalek fleet closing in. Every military outpost falls, humans are being taken away and UNIT hands Martha the Osterhagen key. The end of the episode has the Doctor shot by a Dalek and regenerating, Sarah Jane Smith driving into a group of Daleks (vehicles are forbidden) and a Dalek entering Torchwood. In the following episode, we find out that Davros (back from the dead because of course he is) is going to detonate a reality bomb powered by the stolen planets, the Daleks' Zed Neutrino energy and and every ounce of ham he produces. Also, we find that the Osterhagen key is a Godzilla Threshold for if humanity lost so much hope that death is better. Sarah also has a crystalized nova explosion that could be used to blow up the crucible. Before they can use their respective plot devices, they get transported to the Vault. Then the TARDIS appears and a meta-crisis Doctor and Donna run in, guns blazing. They get zapped back and imprisoned.
  • Possibly the darkest hour in not just the show's history, but in the whole of fiction occurs in "The Pandorica Opens" when it is revealed that the apparently Back from the Dead Rory is actually an Auton duplicate with the original's memories created as part of a huge trap for the Doctor by an alliance of all his enemies, who kills Amy just as she remembers him. The Doctor is shut in the Pandorica, an inescapable prison, despite his pleas for them to listen to his warnings of the impending destruction of space and time. It's in vain, because the TARDIS explodes with River inside of it, creating the cracks that set the season in motion in the first place and causing every star in every universe to explode at every moment in history, making it as if reality never existed in the first place. It all gets better in the finale though.
  • "A Good Man Goes to War", where the Doctor rose so high, and saw everything taken away, when Melody is taken away from under his nose, so she can be raised to kill him. Doubles as a You Can't Fight Fate.
  • "The Day of the Doctor", while actually being what is possibly the Doctor's finest hour, contrasts this by showing what is undoubtedly the darkest moment in the Doctor's history: the Time War, when the War Doctor is forced to use The Moment to destroy Gallifrey and the Daleks all at once. This is subverted when the Eleventh Doctor proposes the idea to simply seal Gallifrey away rather than destroy it, using all of the previous (and future) Doctors to aid with the calculations and the logistics of it.
  • "Death in Heaven" is supposedly the Earth's darkest hour, and the Doctor's, according to him. Considering all the other darkest hours he's had, this pronouncement may not be taken entirely seriously.
  • "Heaven Sent", where the Doctor is trapped in an And I Must Scream situation following the death of his companion, and must spend 4.5 billion years punching his way through a thick wall made of a crystalline solid stronger than diamond.
  • "World Enough and Time", where the Doctor fails (for the time being) to get Missy to perform a Heel–Face Turn, sees Missy/The Master reunite with her previous incarnation, Harold Saxon, discovers that he failed to save Bill from being cyber-converted into a Cyberman, and that Bill's cyber-conversion is supposedly the "Genesis of the Cybermen".
• The Flash (2014) episode "Killer Frost". The episode starts with Barry getting his ass kicked by new Big Bad Savitar, a seemingly unstoppable evil speedster who appears to be as faster than Barry than Barry is to normal people, and things get worse from there - Caitlin is taken over by her Superpowered Evil Side Killer Frost and reveals to Cisco that one of the consequences of Barry changing the timeline was Cisco's brother's death, shattering the friendship between Cisco and Barry. Ultimately, Barry is forced to quit his job as a CSI to prevent Caitlin going to jail for her actions as Killer Frost, leaving Julian in charge of the Central City Police Department Crime Lab and Julian is secretly working for Savitar as Dr. Alchemy.
• Game of Thrones:
  • The Battle of Blackwater for House Lannister. The Hound and Joffrey flee, Lancel and Tyrion are grievously wounded, and Cersei is about to poison herself and Tommen as Stannis's men are on the brink of taking the walls. Then The Cavalry arrives to drive the attackers into the sea and win the battle.
  • The aftermath of Blackwater for Stannis Baratheon. The crushing defeat has left him once more severely short on men, money, and supplies and deeply disheartened by his first-ever defeat. He spends the next two seasons trying to rebuild his strength for another attempt.
  • The Red Wedding for House Stark. Robb, Catelyn, and Talisa are murdered; their supporters are slain, captured, or dispersed; their castle remains in ruins; Bran, Rickon, and Arya are presumed dead; and Sansa remains a captive of her enemies. However, things soon begin to turn when their enemies turn on each other, Sansa and Arya break free of their captors, and Bran's power is increasing with every passing day.
  • The season 5 finale becomes the darkest hour for nearly the entire surviving cast: Jon Snow is dead, as are Stannis and his wife and child (marking the extinction of the last true Baratheons); what remained of Stannis's army is destroyed by the Boltons in a Curb-Stomp Battle; Sansa and Theon are on the run, left to fend for themselves in the wilderness of the North; Daenerys is alone in the middle of nowhere surrounded by a horde of Dothraki; her followers back in Meereen have to deal with a civil war brewing; Arya is being punished by her sole remaining ally for straying from his teachings; Jaime fails his mission by letting Myrcella die; and Cersei is stripped of all real power and subjected to a Humiliation Conga. The characters spend Season 6 recovering from their losses and preparing to strike back, which arguably makes their eventual victories all the more satisfying to watch.
• In the second season of The Good Place, all hope seems lost after the four humans trick all the demons into thinking that they have fled to The Medium Place, only for Michael to reveal that he was lying when he said he could get them into the real Good Place, and now they're all going to be tortured as soon as Shawn works out where they are.
• Gotham Knights (2023): "City of Owls", the penultimate episode before the season-turned-series finale ends with The Gotham Knights along with Brody apprehended by the GCPD and framed for the Court of Owls murders. Not to mention Duela is drugged by her own mother so she can be turned in for the reward money and Rebecca has sent Talons to kill the Gotham Knights and has nefarious plans for Harvey.
• Kamen Rider Ex-Aid:
  • First one occurred as early as #10. Emu has epidemy of Game Disease on his hands, can't get others to stop arguing, and is pretty much helpless.
  • The story took a nosedive pretty early after #10 so this comes again in #13. Kuroto is immortal, has murdered Kiriya with his new upgrade, tries really hard to murder the current patient and no one can do much against that.
  • Gamedeus Cronus's endgame in #44. He started Zombie Apocalypse, proclaimed himself to be god, managed to back it up and turned into giant monster. It takes two Heroic Sacrifices to slow him down enough to be beatable.
• Kingdom (2019): Done both figuratively and literally. The Queen has engineered an outbreak within Hanyang's citadels to make sure that no one will have the throne, the zombies' advances are unimpeded and Prince Chang's forces have to make a Last Stand in the frozen courtyard pool with absolutely no backup...
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Just as the Southlanders, Númenórians, and Galadriel celebrate their victory, at Adar's instructions, Waldreg uses Sauron's sword to cause the lake behind the Ostirith watchtower to drain into the orcs' tunnels and trench, which leads into Orodruin's magma chamber. The volcano erupts, sending lava bombs raining down on Tirharad and a pyroclastic flow sweeping across the Southlands. The Orcs take the Southlands for themselves, and many people die, go missing, or are horribly injured as a result.
• Lost, season 6, episode 14. The ep is called 'The Candidate', but could very well have been called "Darkest Hour" instead. The Man in Black is in full-on murder-everyone mode, 4 main characters are dead—including the only person capable of piloting the Ajira plane—and the submarine has been destroyed, meaning there's no way of getting off the Island.
• The two-part finale of the fifth season of Malcolm in the Middle, "Reese Joins the Army", was the point where the family was at its closest of being ruined forever, with Hal going to prison for a crime he didn't commit, Lois becoming mentally unstable due to stress and anguish and Reese fleeing from home after Malcolm steals his girlfriend. It really seemed like the series was coming to a very sudden Downer Ending.
• Master of Study: Episode 11 in a nutshell, the class got disbanded after they failed to achieve their targeted scores, the special class teacher went missing without notice, and the school (especially Principal Kang who got angry with Seok Ho for rejecting her) is not friendly towards them and Han Soo Jung.
• Merlin:
  • The two-part opener of series four is called "The Darkest Hour". Furthermore, the tagline for the season as displayed on the posters is: "The darkest hour is just before the dawn." It's also a line of dialogue in the first episode, as said by Prince Arthur.
  • Camlann in the Series 5 finale. If you know the myths, you can guess. Only this time, Merlin breaks out of the cave and performs a Big Damn Heroes, although not in time to save Arthur.
• Happens frequently in Power Rangers, especially in the post-Zordon era where each season is self-contained. However, the Zordon era had several memorable ones;
  • First is part 4 of the Green With Evil saga. The Power Rangers suffer their worst defeat at the hands of Goldar, Scorpina and the Green Ranger, the Megazord is catastrophically damaged and Zordon is still missing with barely any chance of returning.
  • Second is the third season finale (during the Alien Rangers episodes). The Command Center has been destroyed, and seemingly both Zordon and Alpha 5 with it, and the rangers no longer have their powers, and this is just as a new enemy (that even Rita Repulsa and Lord Zedd are afraid of) is coming to Earth. Fortunately, the rangers get better.
  • Third is the finale of Power Rangers Turbo. The Megazords, the Rangers' weapons and soon the Turbo powers are completely destroyed. Zordon has been captured by evil forces and the Power Chamber is leveled by a full-scale invasion from Divatox's army with no chance of Dimitria returning. It ends with the now-powerless Rangers blasting off into space with barely any direction, and unsure of what to do.
  • Fourth is the final episode of Power Rangers in Space, Countdown to Destruction. The evil forces have a grip on the whole universe and the Rangers are outnumbered with most of their Megazords destroyed.
• The Princess Wei Young: About half-way through the series Bai Zhi is murdered and Tuoba Jun apparently hates Xin Er and has just married Chang Le. After that Xin Er declares she's lost the will to live.
• Stargate SG-1:
  • Season 4 ended with such. Teal'c last seen being taken by The Dragon to Apophis. Then, because of the effects of the sun blowing up on hyperspace windows, the ship belonging to SG-1 is flung galaxies away, with zillions of years at maximum hyperspace between them and home. Just after that sank in Apophis comes through the same window and is right on top of them, his command ship docking with theirs the way theirs would dock with a pyramid.
  • Season 5 leads up to this: despite defeating Apophis once and for all at the start of the season, one by one, Earth and its allies are targeted for destruction by Anubis; the Tollan are destroyed, the rebel Jaffa and Tok'ra are scattered, and Earth escapes a Colony Drop unscathed (barely). Anubis turns out to have Ancient technology that can rival the Asgard, and Thor gets his brain sucked out. Oh, and Daniel Jackson is dead. They're screwed, and the next season doesn't give them much more hope.
    • It starts with Anubis attacking the Earth by using a device that will pump the Earth Stargate with so much energy it will explode, destroying all life on Earth. They manage to defeat his plan by strapping the active gate onto a recently-invented starfighter and blasting it into space, but that still doesn't stop the gate from exploding. Luckily, they have a spare. But Anubis is still out to get them, creating a weapon that blows up planets, and trashes other Goa'uld warships by the dozen without breaking a sweat, and uses it to blow up Abydos. The whole of Seasons 5 and 6 play out like a huge Darkest Hour. Things don't get better until the Season 7 premiere.
• In Star Trek: The Next Generation, the episode "Best of Both Worlds" marks a "darkest hour" for the crew and for the series which was facing cancellation. At the end of Season Three, Enterprise is damaged, the Borg have decimated the forces massed at Wolf 359, and they have captured Captain Picard assimilating his knowledge and their one trick shot with the main deflector dish fails and damages the ship. Riker is forced to take command of the ship and appoint his rival Lt Commander Shelby to be his first officer, as the Borg move to assimilate Earth. That's about as bad as it gets on TNG.
  • The cliffhanger at the "Best of Both Worlds, Part 1" (the season finale) has Riker order their hastily-assembled Wave-Motion Gun fired at the Borg ship, with the assimilated Picard onboard. Part 2, the 4th season premier, has it get even darker in the opening scene, as said Wave-Motion Gun, the most powerful weapon the Federation has ever created, hits the Borg ship and does absolutely no damage.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine has quite a few involving the Dominion. The two most likely candidates occur when the station is abandoned at the end of season 5, and is not recaptured until 6 episodes into the next season, and "In The Pale Moonlight", when it appears that Senator Vreenak has discovered the falsified evidence Sisko and Garak had made to get the Romulans to join the war.
  • In the Season 3 finale, after Sisko is promoted to Captain, he and the Defiant crew are manipulated by a Changeling posing as an ambassador. He is discovered and killed, but before dying he tells Sisko something. When asked, Sisko reveals that the Changeling's last words were "It is too late: we are EVERYWHERE:"
• Perhaps the darkest hour of Star Trek: Enterprise is the episode "Azati Prime"—Archer is captured in a failed attempt to destroy the Xindi Death Star (which is to be used to nuke Earth) and the Xindi launch an attack that cripples Enterprise.
• In Star Trek: Picard, Geordi has no choice but to remove the partition in the Soong synth between the minds of Data and Lore in the hopes that Data wins the resulting Fusion Dance. However, as they watch, Lore's red dots keep overtaking Data's blue on the diagram, as Lore keeps taking and seemingly erasing Data's memories. Lore seems to win as Data disappears, and Geordi gasps as he realizes that his friend is truly dead. Moments later, Lore shudders. Data reappears with triumphant music and explains that he realized that Lore's ego and envy would never permit him to just erase Data's memories. Instead, he would take and incorporate them into himself. And, thus, Lore became Data. Data embraces his brother as the latter is dissolving, and both say goodbye. The trope also applies for the whole ship, which is under the control of Vadic and her Changelings. However, moments after Data regains control, he uses his positronic brain to retake control of the systems and vent Vadic into space.
  • Later on, as Jack is assimilated by the Borg Queen and starts transmitting the activation signal to all of Starfleet, causing every officer under 25 to be instantly assimilated. With the entire fleet under Borg control and Sol Station destroyed, Earth is defenseless, as the fleet starts targeting all major cities in order to wipe them out. Then not only does Picard manage to convince his son to reject assimilation by promising to be there for him, but the old Enterprise-D manages to destroy the transmitter at the heart of the cube. With the Queen dead, all the organic drones immediately go back to normal, averting the disaster. The Borg are now truly gone (except for Jurati's friendly Borg Cooperative).
• All of the Supernatural season finales feature Darkest Hours, but the fifth season takes the cake. Sam is possessed by Lucifer, their last chance at stopping the Apocalypse failed, and it seems inevitable that Lucifer and Michael will have their showdown and tear the world apart. Even Castiel, a freaking angel, says it's hopeless.
  • The penultimate episode of season eight comes close. Crowley has a list of everyone the Winchesters have saved, and he's going to kill one every twelve hours unless they agree to his terms. He even gives them a head start on the third victim just so they can watch her die. Faced with every scrap of good they've managed to do in eight years being erased, Sam seriously considers giving up.
• The Darkest Hour for the Super Sentai franchise was shown in the crossover movie with Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger and Tensou Sentai Goseiger as Earth is invaded by the Zangyack for the first time. They're beaten back, but the Sentai are left powerless. Near the end of the series, the Gokaigers are dealt their own moment when the Zangyack invade again and their Greater Powers are useless against them.
• The episode "Too Far Gone" from The Walking Dead (2010), ends with the prison completely uninhabitable, Herschel murdered, the group separated, Judith presumed dead and the team's spirit utterly, utterly broken.
  • Negan's arrival marks the darkest hour the gang have ever faced. The Saviours capture Rick, Carl, Aaron, Sasha, Abraham, Eugene, Rosita, Michonne, Glenn, Maggie and Daryl. The group are finally introduced to Negan, who proceeds to viciously beat Abraham to death as punishment for all the Saviours Rick killed. Then things get even worse when Daryl inadvertently causes Glenn's death by lashing out at Negan. Then Negan forces Rick to cut off Carl's arm, causing Rick to beg and plead until he finally accepts defeat. The last thing we see is the group collecting the bodies of their fallen friends, having lost the will to even fight.
  • The Season 7 finale has The Scavengers pull their guns on Rick and the Alexandria survivors, having disarmed the explosives they planned to use for their surprise attack against Negan and his Saviors. While a few Spanner in the Works moments occur and the Alexandrians try in vain to kick away the Scavengers and Saviors, Rick and Carl, alongside many others, are captured. Negan gives a Breaking Speech to Rick, declaring he's going to Lucille Carl. Cue Shiva, the Kingdom's resident Bengal tiger, pouncing on Negan and mauling several Saviors as the The Kingdom and Hilltop survivors begin mowing down Scavengers and Saviors alike.

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