Cleaning Up Romantic Loose Ends - Television Tropes & Idioms

Well there's a rose in a fisted glove,
And the eagle flies with the dove
And if you can't be with the one you love
Honey, love the one you're with

Stephen Stills, "Love the One You're With"

Characters B, C, D etc. have been chasing Character A. Now it's time for Character A to choose Character B as their one and only.

What a happy couple (hopefully). The audience should also feel happy for them, even though this very act has crushed the hearts of characters C and upward (but usually C the most).

This is awkward, especially if Character A was being foolish in stretching this situation for most of the series. The audience is supposed to support the final couple completely, but this is difficult if the pairing has "casualties" (or competition that's still floating around). This is especially problematic if the show has fallen victim to a lot of Shipping. It's especially bad if the writer-preferred pairing cannot compete with the other possibilities due to a lack of communication and relationship building.

So, the writers tend to quickly whip up some contrivances to deal with this. Given the romantic resolution occurs late in the series, this has to be applied rather quickly, as there isn't much time left. This can create a subset of moderate shippers, who aren't bothered so much at being unfulfilled as it being done in a silly manner.

Common variations have former competitors:

Revealing that they weren't really in love ''that much'' with Character A.
Deciding that what they want the most is to have Character A be happy, and that Character A can only be happy with Character B. The sheer irony here is that anyone who does this is probably more deserving to be the love interest.
Quickly falling in love with someone else, sometimes even with C going for D or a character pining over a now-taken B; two birds with one stone!
Going insane (or flatout evil), so they are no longer worthy of Character A's love.
Getting killed off.
Eventually being paired off with Character A, Jr.

Often the fate of Schoolgirl Lesbians. As a type of backlash, sympathetic Fanfic will often get rid of the heterosexual competition in this fashion as well.

Some ways of making it so that cleaning up loose ends doesn't have to happen are for all characters to be paired up from the very beginning or reach a mutual Tenchi Solution.

Examples

Anime

Marmalade Boy is the number one example. The anime spends so much time doing this sort of thing after Miki and Yuu pair off early in the series, it's almost impossible to take it seriously. Enter boy C who wants Miki, and girl D who wants Yuu. They team up, agreeing to work together to make Miki and Yuu break up. They fail, but it's okay — because they fall in love in the process and get together! Repeat twenty times, and you have Marmalade Boy. The word "marmalade" has become a standard name for this plot device in the vocabulary of shoujo anime fans.
Digimon Adventure 02 played this trope straight as an arrow. The writers decided which pairings to make official at the end of the series at complete random, with the only limits being that pairs had to be heterosexual and only 3 couples could be made official.
- Only two couples were official in the epilogue of the series: Ken/Miyako and Yamato/Sora. The last had foreshadowing, as Yamato and Sora were dating near the last half of the series; the former did not.
- She was drooling over the guy for most of the series... and she punched him once. That's practically true love on its own.
- She had a crush on him until she found out that he was the Kaiser. After that, anything else is up for debate.
Kimagure Orange Road had Character C rather quickly turned down once they got to the end, with her taking it bizarrely well that the main character lead her on for so long "in order to not hurt her feelings." A later OAV subverts this, however, and touches more on the emotional ramifications.
In Card Captor Sakura, we find out that Syaoran's, and to some extent Sakura's, romantic feelings for Yukito were not simply crushes but in fact caused by magical attraction.
- Tomoyo from the same series is the archetypal I Want My Beloved To Be Happy character. Unusual in that Tomoyo acknowledges Sakura is a little dense with subtley, and decides to explain more fully when they're older. It doesn't really come up again once Syaoran enters the picture; Tomoyo was both a Muggle and largely defined by her relation to Sakura, so it was a pretty serious Road Cone.
  - Likewise Mei-Ling drops herself out of the race by annulling her engagement to Syaoran now that she sees he has found someone he loves more; this completes her promise she made to him when they were younger. As an aside, Mei-Ling tells Tomoyo later that night that she cannot hate Sakura for it as it is not her fault.
Magic Knight Rayearth resolves the love triangle between Hikaru, Lantis and Eagle by nobly killing Eagle off. (Which does not occur in the manga, where Hikaru does not feel a pressing need to choose just one...)
Shuffle does this twice to the main obstacle of the final pairing, both by having her go nuts, and then having a two-second implication that she falls in love with another of the girls in the ending credits.
Schoolgirl Lesbian Shizuru from Mai-HiME has had two of these occur. In the anime itself, she goes insane, though a combination of her popularity and the Reset Button nature of the ending save her in the end. The video game based on this, which is aimed at a different demographic, has her committing suicide if the main character chooses to be with Natsuki.
Subverted to an extreme in the Tenchi Muyo spinoff, Tenchi Muyo! GXP. Seina marries his entire harem. All of them. Even his ship's cute animal avatar. This also includes the Trickster Mentor's Girl Posse, who suddenly arranged to get shotgun themselves into the wedding, not entirely for ulterior motives.
In the last episode of Speed Grapher, Ginza's long-time obsessive crush on Saiga is abruptly pushed aside by a sudden change of heart, after she hears him tell Kagura that he loves her. Later, we hear other characters saying how surprising it was that she decided to hook up with Ryougoku, another character on the show whom she hardly knew—presumably so that Saiga and Kagura can be happy together after Kagura comes back.
And then there's Fruits Basket where it turns out that Yuki wasn't really in love with Tohru, he has been only looking for his mother in her; then he is quickly paired off with another girl. Seeing that this happened after fourteen volumes of pining and even a confession of love, many fans found it less than convincing, and many people regard it as only an excuse to get rid of Yuki so Tohru and Kyo can be together.
- Not to mention how Akito was revealed to be a girl so that she can suddenly be paired with Shigure. Because everyone, including horrible villains, should be nicely paired off and have a wholesome happy ending.
Almost averted in Love Hina. Even the day before the wedding of Keitaro and Naru, Suu and Shinobu both admit they still have it bad for the former... and when Motoko chides them for their fixation, Shinobu pulls out Motoko's latest bodice ripper manuscript which involves a swordswoman cutting down the bride at a wedding and ordering the groom to "Take me now!" Fortunately, they all are willing to let the happy couple be.
By the end of the manga of Ranma 1/2, when Ranma and Akane have admitted their love for one another, three major "competitors" have been paired off, with varying degrees of success: Ryouga has chosen to stand aside while he pursues a relationship with Akari. Ukyou had a tolerable suitor in the form of Konatsu. Shampoo doesn't quite hate Mousse as much as she used to. However, only the first instance is in any way successful, as the two others went on to summarily ignore their "consolation prizes" and outright attacked the bride at her own wedding though Ranma got in the way entirely by accident.
Also from Rumiko Takahashi, Maison Ikkoku presented a long-running, but less complex Love Dodecahedron. Protagonist (and dropout) Godai is in love with Kyoko, who is actively pursued by suave tennis coach Mitaka, while Godai reluctantly dates Kozue. All this, while Kyoko pines for her dead and perfect husband. Eventually, Mitaka discovers an engagement with a girl who loves dogs (his crippling phobia) and soon warms up to her. For her part, Kozue outgrows her infatuation with Godai and breaks up with him.
- Don't forget Godai's third "relationship," Yagami. He was continually apalled at her advances, but it was a romantic complication nonetheless.
The Love Triangle in Inuyasha is resolved for good when Kikyo dies and her soul ascends to heaven, enabling Inuyasha to finally get over her and focus on Kagome.
The Love Dodecahedron of FAKE is sorted out in the epilogue "Like Like Love". First, there's the obvious flagship couple of Dee and Ryo. Bikky and Carol's relationship is solidified (we get to see them talking about college). Berkeley finally realizes how important Diana is to him. Finally, JJ is paired off with his assistant Drake as consolation for his one-sided crush on Dee. These pairings seem to be sticking in the second season, but a new Love Dodecahedron is promised to form as new characters enter.
The extremely melodramatic love triangle in the Kashimashi Girl Meets Girl anime gets resolved when Hazumu finally chooses Yasuna over Tomari - even though she is the girl who turned her down first when she still was a boy. This doesn't bode well for their relationship and Yasuna decides to break Hazumu's heart again by dumping her several months later - which enables Hazumu to go after Tomari in the OVA. With Yasuna helping things along (and remaining friends with the couple after the whole thing.
- It should be noted that Yasuna originally rejected Hazumu not because of any of Hazumu's qualities that carried over through the change, but simply because Hazumu was, at the time, a boy, which, due to her odd affliction, made things a no-go. The later breakup was unrelated.
- Also, it was rather less complicated in the manga, where Hazumu chose Tomari from the start, because she was the one who didn't hesitate to save Hazumu's life.
While the majority of LelouchXC.C. fans hope to see Kallen paired off with Gino, they themselves have to deal with post-series materials that indicate that the LelouchXC.C. bond was beyond genders.
- Kallen/Gino, in the meantime, falls under Relationship Writing Fumble.
Creed from the Black Cat anime, after realizing that Train will never return his feelings (or anyone else's, for that matter), does a Heel Face Turn and ends up with Echidna. Kind of funny how this never happens in the manga...

Film

A rather egregious use of the trope was in the film Pretty in Pink. Originally the heroine was supposed to end up romantically with her offbeat platonic buddy, but the test audiences insisted that she end up in the arms of the superficial rich pretty-boy instead. Thus was the ending of the film changed, with poor old Ducky going for some girl who merely winks at him from the dance floor, despite his stalker-like fixation with the heroine throughout the entire damn film. It's speculated that this is why the writer created the film Some Kind of Wonderful the next year with the exact same story (save for the genders switched) with the "original" ending.
- The ending was changed because the test audiences pointed out that the original ending creates a hell of a Broken Aesop about not crossing class lines. Ducky going with another girl at a single dance just showed that he was able to move on (contrasting with the girl's father, who let his life fall apart because he never did).
The deleted scenes on the Special Edition DVDs of Return of the King pair Eowyn, who couldn't win Aragorn from Arwen, with Faramir. Granted, this was in the books, but the films emphasized the Love Triangle far more, making the trope more obvious as a side effect.
Resolved quite nicely in the final words of the original Star Wars trilogy: "It's not like that at all. He's my brother."
In Enchanted, Edward and Nancy hook up through an out of nowhere Cinderella moment after their respective significant others hook up with each other.
- This is an Aesop breaker for the movie, but a deleted scene tries to justify it by establishing Nancy as a former romantic who gave up on meeting a prince to sweep her off her feet.
- This troper found it quite natural, in fact; Nancy's reactions to Robert's newfound romanticism and Giselle's fairytale trappings were always fairly wistful and enthusiastic.
After inadvertently causing the end of the world, the heroes and their Soviet counterparts from Spies Like Us decide to at least die happy: Chevy Chase pairs up with the gorgeous Donna Dixon, while the two older Soviet techs hook up together. Since there are two male techs and one female left, it seems that Dan Ackroyd's character and one of the other guys will be left out of the fun. Then it turns out the other two guys are gay, leaving Ackroyd to pair up with the very hot Vanessa Angel; win freakin' win. Oh, and the end of the world part? It gets better.
After winningly declaring her independence from Henry Higgins, Eliza Doolittle in "My Fair Lady" returns to Higgins after all give the audience a so called romantic happy ending, deviating from the source material, Pygmalion, by George Bernard Shaw, who strongly felt that the characters should not end up together.
L.A. Story. Married man Harris K. Telemacher falls in love with a younger woman, but his loyalty to his wife prevents him from going any further. Luckily, he discovers that his wife is cheating on him with another man, so he can proceed with his new romance (presumably divorcing his wife in the meantime).
Kelsi and Jason at the end of the fist High School Musical movie: Kelsi, who seemed to have a bit of a crush on Troy, is randomly paired up with his only friend, (with actual lines,) Jason, that doesn't have a crush/girlfriend/whatever, despite the fact that they never interacted before in the movie and they have nothing in common
Dan's brother and Dan's date in Dan In Real Life

Literature

Twelfth Night ends with the good guys rewarded, the 'bad' guys punished, and everyone happily paired up... except Antonio. His constant devotion and implied love for Sebastian goes completely unacknowledged. At least one film version ends with him walking away from the castle all alone.
- You forget Sir Andrew Aguecheek. Despite being rather slow in the head, his ending is quite tragic, as he appears smitten with Olivia and, judging by his comment early on "I was adored once too", he's really not got any other existing prospects.
- Antonio wasn't openly in love with anyone, though. Malvolio, on the other hand... (Though you could say he pretty much got what he deserved.)
  - Oh, yes Antonio was.
Come to think of it, A Midsummer Night's Dream is not all that hot either. Demetrius would still have loved Hermia if it hadn't been for the love juice. Couple this with the fact he was threatening to rape Helena in the woods near the beginning of the play and it does not bode well. Did Shakespeare consider how dodgy this was?
- Knowing Will? He probably cultivated the implications.
Can't forget As You Like It. Four weddings at the end.
1632 does this on a regular basis. The first book started off at the wedding reception of Tom Simpson and Rita Stearns. Then, Gretchen Richter and Jeff Higgins get married, followed by Mike Stearns and Rebecca Abrabanel, with Julie Sims and Alex Mackay at the end. 1634: The Galileo Affair ended in the marriage of Frank Stone and Giovanna Marcoli and the engagement of Sharon Nichols to Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz.
The romantic "tension" in the Twilight series between Edward, Bella, and Jacob is resolved when Bella marries Edward, and Jacob "imprints" (the werewolf version of discovering a soulmate) on Bella and Edward's newborn daughter Renesmee. It's okay because while Renesmee's going to appear 22 when she's 7, mentally she'll be an adult.
- OK, Can I be the first to say Ewwww!!
  - Take a number. Your number is 78,903.
This is done rather wonderfully in Stardust where Tristran gets home, finds the girl he went on the adventure for in the first place wants to marry someone else and promptly informs her his heart's desire is for her to have the happiest marriage anyone ever had before going to find his star.
Ken Follett's two Kingsbridge historical fiction novels both feature a main couple (Jack and Aliena and The Pillars of the Earth, Merthin and Caris in World Without End) who, for various plot contrivances, can't be together in a practical and/or legal (it's 12th or 14th century England) sense for very extended periods of time. As a result, various stopgap love interests are employed, but have to be disposed of when it's time for the main couple to possibly have a shot (which, particularly in World Without End, happens several times before they actually succeed). For example, after Caris is forced into becoming a nun, Merthin leaves for Florence, marries, and has a daughter; then the Black Death kills his wife, and he returns to England, has an affair with a barmaid, who also dies of the Black Death, gets back together with Caris for a while, but circumstances force another breakup, and he has an affair with Lady Philippa, his brother's wife (loveless forced marriage), but Philippa gets pregnant by him and has to pretend the child is his brother's, and her departure coincides with Caris finally getting out of the nunnery.

Live Action TV

This often happened to Buffy's non-Angel boyfriends.
- Anybody besides Riley? She dated Angel, Hope, Parker, Riley and Spike. Pretty much everybody besides Riley and Spike were forgotten.
Parodied on Friends. After Ross and Rachel get back together and Monica and Chandler announce they're dating, Joey asks Phoebe if they should get together, by the virtue of them being the only main characters left. Phoebe reveals that she has a long term-strategy for the two of them in which they make off with Chandler's money and Rachel's children, and kill Ross.
- Ross and Monica are brother and sister, so they're probably the only two characters in the group of six who hasn't been with each other. There are no instances of gay relationships, except for the one time when Rachel and Monica made out in order to win a contest.
  - Actually, every single friend has at least kissed one another apart from Chandler and Ross. Monica's first kiss was with Ross owing to rather a large mix up.
The last few seasons of Star Trek The Next Generation gradually allowed the Official Couple Riker and Troi to drift apart, even having Troi date Worf with Riker's approval. Later appearances by Worf never acknowledged this plot arc, and Riker and Troi were married in one of The Movie sequels. Exactly how they patched things up is left to the viewer.
- Non-Canon explanation: Peter David's [[Fix Fic Triangle: Imzadi II. Let's just say it involved Lwaxana Troi, Thomas Riker, and Sela, and leave it at that.
- A deleted scene has Worf hung over on Romulan Ale. General consensus and possibly Word Of God says it's because of this. Nevermind that Worf married another woman on another show.
Exception: At the end of Man About The House, the main character, poor Robin Tripp, gets ditched by both his love interest and other main character, Chrissy, who prefers Robin's brother Norman. Robin can only acknowledge his defeat, which isn't softened by any narrative gimmick. However, this is only a partial exception, as Robin quickly falls in love with someone else, in the series spin-off Robin's Nest.
Averted on Coupling, at first. Susan and Steve are together, as are Patrick and Sally... But Jeff can't get no girly action from Jane. Jeff and Jane get their own love interests, but neither lasts very long. In season 4, however, Oliver replaces Jeff and does end up with Jane.
In Twin Peaks, the undeniable sexual tension between Agent Cooper and Audrey Horne is quickly defused by the introduction of two new characters: Purity Sue Annie Blackburne and male Relationship Sue John Justice Wheeler. This was supposedly done because Kyle Mac Lachlan didn't think it was proper for Cooper to pursue a relationship with a high-school-aged girl.
In One Tree Hill real life chemistry tossed out Official Couple girl Peyton in favor of Brooke. Then real life divorce tossed out the previous three seasons of "Don't be so insecure, Brooke, I never loved Peyton" in favor of "Duh, it was Peyton all along." And then, in season 5, they threw in a Cheryl Blossom for good measure. Brooke meanwhile, has been through a string of very hot rebounds.
In Petticoat Junction Steve Elliot was introduced as a possible love interest for the Bradley girls, Billie Jo, Bobbi Jo, and Betty Jo. He and Billie Jo became a couple for several seasons. But then the actor playing Steve married the actress playing Betty Jo, so TPTB decided to have them get married on the show too. Out of the blue, Billie Jo mentions to her mother that she and Steve are "just friends." An episode or two later, Steve and Betty Jo declare their love, and Billie Jo doesn't mind at all. She wanted to focus more on her acting career, and wasn't ready to get married like she knew Steve was wanting. And Bobbi Jo, who'd had a crush on Steve all this time, doesn't mind either, because she didn't have that big of a crush on him anyway.

Webcomics

El Goonish Shive avoids making a mess of this pretty nicely, with romantic loose ends cleaned up pretty much right after they appear early on (Nanase dumps Elliot, and Justin doesn't have a chance because he's a gay guy with a crush on a straight guy), but in ways that leave open potential for character development later on. (In one strip, Justin looks at Elliot's girlfriend Sarah and thinks, "How dare you be someone I can't dislike?")
- Nanase's part in this gets a very interesting solution: Justin suspected Nanase was a lesbian, and Nanase finds out he's right when Elliot's extremely-similar female copy, Ellen, is brought into play.
Megatokyo's Yutaka Kobayashi seems to serve little purpose other than a potential love interest for Yuki, whose crush on Piro has negative zero chance of resulting in anything.
Fans! had a unique resolution to the Rikk/Alisin/Rumy triangle, after Rumy's attempts at I Want My Beloved To Be Happy didn't take: consensual polyamory. Lucky Rikk.
Tales Of The Questor had a different take on it when it is revealed that Quentyn's close friend, Kestrel, has a romantic interest in him, but decides not to reveal it. Since the strongest moment of temptation to do so is on the night before he left on his grand quest and de facto probable permanent exile outside the Raccoonan lands, she felt that it was too cruel to give him yet another thing to sacrifice and keeps the true depth of her feelings to herself. However, it doesn't end too badly since Quentyn, although unaware of Kestrel's feelings, insists that she join him for a dance at the harvest festival and they both have one last merry time together under the circumstances.

Western Animation

Subverted in Futurama, in an episode where Fry dates a digital copy of Lucy Liu. At the end, Fry deletes the copy after being asked by the real Liu, and hopes that he can get to know the real Liu. However, it turns out that Liu and Bender (who has been against human/robot relationships for the whole episode) have fallen in love. The heart fade-out shows Bender and Liu kissing... then turns to Fry, who is growling at them.
- In Bender's Big Score, the Lars/Leela/Fry triangle is sorted out when Lars turns out to be an older copy of Fry, then dies.
- In The Beast With A Billion Backs, Fry dates a polygamist, the tentacle monster Yivo dates the whole universe, and in the end, Yivo and the polygamist find what they really wanted in each other. (Also herpes)
- Into the Wild Green Yonder may be this trope, as a very minor Fry/Leela subplot provides fodder for the last scene when Fry and Leela declare their love for each other, to each other. Then they ride off into a ~~Sequel Hook~~wormhole holding hands and sharing a kiss.
Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go had this in a way. It was clear in the series that Otto had a crush on Nova, but Nova ends up confessing feelings for Sprx in the finale. Unfortunately, since the show was left on a cliffhanger, there's no way to know if Otto had any issues after this. Fan's thoughts on this issue are mixed. (Though, there were others who kept their ships just fine.)
In Gargoyles, Brooklyn is the series' romantic Butt Monkey, falling for multiple femmes and being brushed off by all of them. Creator Greg Weisman intends to finally fix that in the official comic book continuation where Brooklyn is whisked away for a 40 year journey where he finds his true love and raises a family before they all return to his clan at a time that is five minutes after the moment he disappeared. That journey was originally supposed to be depicted in a Spin Off series called Timedancer. In addition, in the interim after the original TV series cancellation and before the SLG comic book continuation (which will touch bit on that plot shortly), plenty of Brooklyn fans who were Fan Fic writers were happy to supply their own idea of the ideal true love for him.