Heartbroken Badass / Live-Action TV

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• 24: Jack Bauer becomes this very often: the most notable cases being the second season (after his wife died at the end of season one), the fourth season (when Audrey breaks up with him after he's forced to sacrifice the life of her husband whom she also has feelings for) and the eighth and final one (after Renee Walker is killed).
• Arrow: Oliver Queen. The Trauma Conga Line is too long to list, but the one death that breaks him the most is Laurel Lance. Even though Oliver wasn't with her when she died, it becomes very obvious throughout Season 5 that he still loved her then and that he always will. Laurel was his First Love, and arguably the love of his life — losing her drove him closer to the brink than ever before, causing him to regress on his Thou Shalt Not Kill rule. It's fairly obvious that after her, Oliver really can't take much more before he breaks completely.
• Babylon 5:
  • Lennier loves Ambassador Delenn, who does not return his affection and goes on to marry somebody else (the human Captain Sheridan). He's devastated.
  • Marcus Cole falls in love with Susan Ivanova, who staunchly refuses to return or even acknowledge any feeling she might have for him. He ends up sacrificing his life to save hers. She goes on to say "All love is unrequited."She then leaves the station altogether to grieve. May be that both of them did this to the other, in the end.
  • Ivanova again: her lover Talia Winters was Mind Raped by the Psy Corps and had her entire personality erased, turning her into somebody who totally hated Ivanova. But due to the Moral Guardian standards and practices of television companies, the writers couldn't outright say they were lovers, much less tell us how serious their relationship was. However, in a later episode, she confesses to Delenn in confidence, that she believes she loved her.
• The main character in Boys Before Flowers, has Jun Pyo collapsing to the floor in his Armani suit after his love interest told him to take a hike.
• Buffyverse:
  • Most of the cast of Buffy could sometimes or often be described as a heartbroken Badass including Buffy, Angel, Spike (especially in Season 3, when Drusilla breaks up with him), Willow, Anya, and Giles. Some of them suffered Bad Ass Decay as a result, especially Spike and Angel.
  • Mr. Wyndam-Pryce. He was heartbroken before he Took a Level in Badass, but every appearance of his in Angel's fourth season just SCREAMS Heartbroken Badass.
    • In Angel's fifth season, he finally gets together with his love interest Fred, only for her to be killed off the next episode.
• Mac Taylor on CSI: NY spends most of the series as this, after losing his wife on 9/11... he does find love again near the end, though.
• The Doctor from Doctor Who can fall into this. His longevity and lifestyle means that he manages to outlive most of his friends, family and loved ones. Although he rarely breaks down visibly, many an episode has ended with him standing in the TARDIS, alone, the pain clearly on his face.
  • The Series 9 episode "Heaven Sent" is all about this trope as the Doctor spends literally an eternity in a sustained state of grief over the death of Clara Oswald, his companion, leading to a universe-endangering Sanity Slippage.
• Dollhouse: Echo, after Paul becomes brain dead, and later after he is shot.
• Forever:
  • Jo is a tough cop, but was devastated when she lost her husband Sean.
  • Henry is heartbroken when his first wife, Nora, betrays his trust; after she insists repeatedly, Henry finally tells her about his becoming immortal, and she not only doesn't believe him, but has him put in an asylum. He's even more devastated when Abigail, his wife of forty years, leaves him because of the growing apparent age gap.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Jorah Mormont. To quote from The Simpsons: "if you look closely you can pinpoint the exact moment his heart breaks in two" after he returns from battle and Daenerys almost immediately asks after Daario Naharis.
  • Robb suffers this after his lover dies before his eyes.
  • Jon becomes one after Ygritte is killed during the Wildlings' attack on the Wall. To hammer it further down, it's the only moment in the episode and one of the few in the entire show to use slow motion.
  • Brienne becomes this after Renly's assassination.
  • Though she often keeps it to herself, it's clear when Daenerys speaks of her late husband that she still misses Drogo very much. She is also clearly heartbroken when she learns of Jorah's deception and is forced to banish him. Later, when Jorah returns to her and she realizes he must leave again in order to find a cure for his greyscale, she gets heartbroken one more time.
  • Come Season 5, and poor Tyrion is still clearly devastated over his murder of Shae.
• House of the Dragon: Laenor Velaryon, who's a veteran of the War of the Stepstones, cries over his lover Joffrey's body after he was beaten to death by Criston Cole at the welcome feast for his wedding, and is still crying later that night while reciting his marriage vows to Rhaenyra.
• Good Omens (2019):
  • In episode 5 of season one Crowley thinks that his best friend Aziraphale is Killed Off for Real, so he abandons all his previous plans and goes to the nearest pub to get spectacularly drunk. Queen's Somebody to Love highlights his feelings.
  • At the end of series 2 Crowley finally confesses his 6000 year old love to Aziraphale and desperately kisses him, trying to make him stay, only to be rejected and abandoned by Aziraphale. His suffering is almost too painful to watch.
• Chuck Bass falling for Blair Waldorf on Gossip Girl.
• Gentaro Kisaragi a.k.a. Kamen Rider Fourze after the events of Movie Wars MEGAMAX. He fell in love with Nadeshiko, a new student he met at Amanogawa high school, but then it turned out she is an alien lifeform, SOL (Seed Of Universe), that took on the appearance of the original Nadeshiko. To make matters worse, Foundation X captures her and uses her to power their latest invention. She becomes Astro Switch after being freed, leaving Gentaro broken from how his (probably first) love turned out.
• Hiiro Kagami starts Kamen Rider Ex-Aid like this, having lost his girlfriend Saki to Bugster Virus on Zero Day. He gets a chance to revive her late into the story, but what started as fairly simple Deal with the Devil turns into extremely emotionally draining Sadistic Choice between her and his allies (and friends). He drops the deal and faces losing her forever.
• Dragon Caesar of Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger becomes extremely depressed in the episode following Burai's death.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: In episode seven, Galadriel finally reveal the existence of Celeborn, her husband that she misses very much, but he disappeared centuries ago, or maybe even died. She recalls the happy times they lived together before begging him to not go at war.
• Sayid Jarrah of Lost, particularly in the episode "Sundown".
• Athos in The Musketeers is the stoic leader but his heart was very much broken by his wife Milady whom he ordered her execution for killing his brother.
• NCIS:
  • Gibbs has been this since before the series started, although it isn't until season 3 that we learn that his first wife and their daughter were killed. By season 10, he has still never really recovered and admits it.
  • Leon Vance's wife Jackie, and Ziva's father, Eli, both die in the tenth season episode "Shabbat Shalom". Each are handling the loss in their own ways, but it's clear that it is going to take a long time to begin to heal.
• John Reese's backstory in Person of Interest — he was deeply in love with Jessica and ready to quit his military career to be with her, until 9/11 led him to want to protect his country. While he was deployed, she waited for him, but eventually she met and became engaged to Peter. When they met again, she made it clear that if he asked her, she would gladly dump Peter and wait for Reese, but he refused to ask her because he believed she would be better off with someone else. Only after she was out of earshot did he whisper, eyes brimming, "Wait for me. Please." Peter turned out to be abusive, and eventually killed Jessica. Reese was half a world away when he got a message from Jessica that Peter wasn't such a good man after all, but by the time he could get back to her, it was too late. He killed Peter in revenge.
• Jen in Power Rangers Time Force seeing her boyfriend being killed before her very eyes, causing her to become The Stoic and disapproving of Wes who physically resembles Alex.
• In Smallville, whenever Clark's Temporary Love Interest dies. He really should stay away from anyone not protected by canon.
  • It still works for long term ones, although they are invariably Not Quite Dead.
• At the beginning of the pilot episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Sisko's wife Jennifer is killed at Wolf 359. It takes him a two-year time-skip and an encounter with the Prophets to start getting over it.
  • In the sixth season finale, Jadzia Dax is murdered, and Worf is incapable of getting over it until he gets a chance to avenge her.
• John, Sam, and Dean Winchester on Supernatural after the deaths of Mary (in the pilot) and Jessica (also in the pilot). Which is why each end up on crusades against those who killed them. Sadly, said crusades are what indirectly led to the deaths of the latter.
  • Castiel after the Season 9 finale, when Metatron kills Dean just to hurt Cas and then gloats about it. His face as he listens...
• Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: La'an is a no-nonsense Action Girl, but she's thrown back in time with an alternate timeline James T. Kirk. Together, they have to figure out where their timelines diverged and stop the event. They fall in love, but he dies. She completes the mission and returns to the future, even contacting her timeline's Kirk. But it isn't her Jim and she weeps.
• S.W.A.T. (2017): Chris is distraught when her friend and housemate Erika, who is only the second woman to get into SWAT, gets killed on duty. She expresses this by not only tears, but drinking very heavily, having one night stands and getting into a fight in a bar.
• Wyatt Cain from Tin Man — like his metallic counterpart in the literature section, he's arguably the best fighter in the party (though Glitch can be pretty scary if he sets his half a mind to doing so), but he's pretty much a broken man at the start, having endured eight years of being Forced to Watch a holographic playback of his wife and son being tortured and dragged away by the Sorceress's Mooks.
• The Vampire Diaries:
  • Damon has been in love with Katherine for over a century. It really didn't go well.
  • Rebekah becomes this when her brother basically disowns her and she learns the love of her life has moved on after 90 years.
• The titular Veronica Mars after she and her longtime boyfriend Logan finally decide to marry, only for Logan to die mere seconds later in a car bombing, set by the man she put away for the Neptune Bombings.
• Mulder and Scully from The X-Files are both good examples of this. Over the course of the series, Scully loses her father, her sister (who took a bullet intended for her), her daughter (whom she only knew about for a couple of days), and her son, not to mention nearly losing her partner multiple times. Mulder loses his sister (a primary driving force in his adult life), his father, his mother, and his son. For both of these characters, the deaths of their loved only make them more determined to fight against the people seeking to tear them apart.

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