Final Love Duet

"A whole new world!"/"A whole new life!"/"For you and me..."

"Once in every show
There comes a song like this
It starts off soft and low
And ends up with a kiss.
Oh, where is the song that goes like this?"

— Spamalot, "The Song That Goes Like This"

In musicals, the leads often sing a love duet towards the end of the second act. It's the moment right before they end up Happily Ever After or part in bittersweet fashion. It may be an original song or a reprise. More common in older musicals, this song is usually sweet, sentimental, and often includes a kiss at the end.

Most of the time, you can identify one of these just from the playbill, by the fact that the leads sing a duet towards the end. May or may not be preceded by an Eleven O'Clock Number.

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Examples:

Fan Works

• Princess Tutu Abridged:
  • In Episode 12 Act 2, Rue and Mytho have a dark version of this in "The Raven of the Ballet" ^note  a cover of the title song from The Phantom of the Opera, where Rue is essentially the Phantom, enrapturing Mytho, before the cliffhanger ending leading into the mid-season finale.
  • In Episode 24 Part 2:
    • Duck lampshades this:
      Duck: Another musical episode? What does this mean?! And why isn't Fakir in it? I would've thought we'd get a duet.
    • After all the characters get tired of being forced to sing in "The Last Musical" ^note  a cover of "The Last Midnight" from Into the Woods, Rue subverts this by speaking her love confession to Mytho (as she does in the original series), breaking the musical.
• At the end of season 2 of Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series, Marik and Florence perform a duet of "Stand by Me" as they are about to be obliterated by Mega Ultra Chicken.

Films — Animation

• The Swan Princess: "Far Longer Than Forever (Reprise)" occurs to show that, despite hiccups earlier in the movie, the true love is strong here.
• "Love Will Find A Way" from The Lion King II: Simba's Pride.
• Aladdin: "A whole new world... A whole new life... ...for you and me..." is sung by Aladdin and Jasmine as they go on a post-engagement date at the end of the movie.
• The Cut Song "If I Never Knew You" from Disney's Pocahontas would have been one, and is in the extended re-release, happening when Pocahontas goes to visit John Smith whilst he's being held captive by her father awaiting his execution.

• Strange Magic: The titular song, "Strange Magic" by the Electric Light Orchestra, serves as this for Marianne and the Bog King. It references the false love created by the love potion and how this couple is experiencing the real deal.

• The final scene of The Nightmare Before Christmas where Jack sings to Sally that he does reciprocate her feelings and they embrace and kiss on top of Spiral Hill.

Films — Live-Action

• "You're The One That I Want" from Grease is the final musical of the film, shows the leads reconciling and then driving off into the sunset. It replaces the similar "All Choked Up" from the stage musical, which survived until the movie.
• Parodied in Enchanted when the heroine meets her Prince Charming and falls in Love at First Sight:
  Edward: You're the fairest maid I ever met!
  You were made...
  Giselle: ...To finish your duet!
  • Later subverted when the prince finds her again at the end, sings his part...and Giselle doesn't join in. She doesn't have one with her true love because he doesn't sing.

• "Secret Kingdom (Reprise)" from The Slipper and the Rose. It's the final song in the musical, sung by Cinderella and Prince Edward after the Fairy Godmother has dealt with all the objections to their marriage.

Live-Action TV

• "Where Do We Go From Here"/"Coda" from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer musical episode "Once More, With Feeling" both lampshades it and plays it straight, though on a more somber note than is typical. Just as the rest of the cast sings, "The curtains close on a kiss, god knows / we can tell the end is near...", Buffy follows Spike outside. The two finally acknowledge their mutual feelings of needing someone who makes them feel, reprising lines from their earlier songs, before the episode ends on their kiss.
• "Two Hearts" from the Lexx musical, "Brigadoom". Subverted in that their reconciliation in the song is followed by a doomed Last Stand in defense of their planet, with a reprise of the love duet that ends, "It's a good way to die."
• "Nothing is Ever Anyone's Fault" is this for season 3 of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, being a stirring love duet sung in which Nathaniel confesses his love to Rebecca right before the end of the season. But since this is Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, of course it's an Anti-Love Song, all about how Rebecca helped Nathaniel to see that because he had a really sad childhood, none of the bad things he does are actually bad at all!
  Nathaniel: We can't control the things we do / Just like I can't control that I'm in love with you.
  Rebecca: Wow, that first part was kind of amoral, but that last thing was really sweet?
• "Two in a Million" from Austin & Ally, sang by Austin and Ally themselves. Fittingly, since the final episode is the only time this song happened.

Music

• "Let us sleep now" from Benjamin Britten's War Requiem is effectively a homoerotic final love duet, though the accompanying chorus, "In paradisum," is really what gives it a transcendental quality.
• "Another Heart Calls" by The All-American Rejects featuring The Pierces is a duet between the two singers about a failed romance.
• The track "Ragnarok V: End of the Line" from the The Mechanisms' album "The Bifrost Incident" features a short duet with Loki and Sigyn, reprising part of Sigyn's earlier eponymous song. It is the second to last track on the album and the last track that is sung and not just narration.

Theatre

• "Still" from Titanic sees Isidor and Ida Straus enjoy a glass of champagne, re-affirm their love and devotion to each other with a glass of champagne (which Isidor crushes underfoot, mirroring the final rite of Jewish weddings), as the Ship of Dreams sink.

• Hello, Dolly!:
  • "It Only Takes A Moment" is the Beta Couple's big moment in the penultimate scene. Cornelius starts singing it as a solo, and then Irene joins in, showing that she reciprocates his feelings.
  • When Dolly and Horace finally get together at the very end of the final scene, they duet on a reprise of the title song.

• The quote, from Monty Python's Spamalot, isn't a Final Love Duet, but its reprise — "Twice In Every Show" — is.
• "Perfect Strangers" from Drood — the audience chooses the pair that will sing it.

• "For Good" from Wicked fulfills this trope, since the relationship between G(a)linda and Elphaba appears to be more important than Elphaba's relationship with Fiyero (and their duet, "As Long As You're Mine", comes close to the beginning of the second act.)
• "In Whatever Time We Have" from Children of Eden, which is also final in that it's about staying together in the time they have before God wipes out the earth with a flood.

• Subverted in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Mrs. Lovett and Sweeney join for a final duet to the tune of "A Little Priest"... as he waltzes her into her oven.
• From Urinetown, "We're Not Sorry (Reprise)," sung by Cladwell and Pennywise. Subverted in that this is as Cladwell goes to be thrown off a building
• Opera example: in the fourth act of La bohème, Rodolfo and the dying Mimi have a few minutes by themselves to sing one last duet, including musical reminiscences of the first meeting scene. Its interruption by Mimi's convulsions is heartbreaking, though she still lives for another minute.

• Brigadoon has multiple love duets for Tommy and Fiona — "The Heather on the Hill", "It's Almost Like Being In Love", and, depending on the production, "There But For You Go I" — but the true Final Love Duet is "From This Day On", when Tommy leaves Fiona behind toward the end of the second act, as the two promise that they will always love each other. (Needless to say, he goes back to her in the end.)

• "Not Alone" from A Very Potter Musical, with a twist: on the last third of the song, Harry and Ginny are joined by Ron and Hermione, making the song about friendship as well as romantic love.
  • The reprise with Voldemort and Quirrell plays this straight and it is the final song of the show.

• The Phantom of the Opera provides a heartbreaking twist: Christine and Raoul sing a reprise of "All I Ask of You," but the focus of the scene is on the Phantom, now alone and devastated after letting them go free.

• "All the Wasted Time" from Parade. Lucille manages to finagle a picnic with her imprisoned husband, Leo. They enjoy some rare time with each other and sing about how they failed to appreciate each other while they were married and free. Lucille goes home after this, and that night a mob of men broke into the prison, spirited Leo away, and lynched him, making this song the last time the Franks ever saw each other.
• The Wedding Singer musical somehow manages to have three for the same couple. Robbie and Julia sing "If I Told You", "If I Told You (Reprise)" and the actual final duet, which is "Grow Old With You".
• The heartbreaking "A Little Fall of Rain" from Les Misérables, where Eponine lies dying in Marius' arms. After which, Marius happily runs off with Cosette.

• Aida features a heartbreaking reprise of "Enchantment Passing Through" for Aida and Radames as they take their final breaths.

• The "One Alone" reprise from The Desert Song. It starts out as a solo outlining the hero's ideas on "Eastern vs Western Love" and becomes a Leitmotif, finally becoming the last duet between the hero and heroine.

• "Life Plus 99 Years/Finale" from Thrill Me is a mildly creepy duet between Richard and Nathan where Nathan sings about how now they'll never be apart. Ever.

• "Anything but Lonely is a subversion in Aspects of Love. Newly widowed Rose is trying desperately to get Alex to stay. He doesn't.

• In Heathers, Veronica and J.D. sing reprises of all their love duets throughout the climax. "Dead Girl Walking" gets a whole song for its reprise, and a lot of the lyrics take on a very different, more deadly feel. "I Am Damaged" reprises both "Seventeen" and "Our Love is God." And it ends with J.D. blowing himself up to save Veronica.
• In the stage version of Newsies, Jack and Katherine sing "Something To Believe In" about two-thirds of the way through Act 2, finally admitting the feelings that have been developing throughout the story.
• In Kristina the song "Here I Am Again" more or less fills this purpose for the lead characters. They spend the entire musical being happily married but towards the end of the second act Kristina barely survives a miscarriage and is informed she won't live through another pregnancy which in the mid 19th century means she and her husband have to stop having sex. The song in question takes place when Kristina convinces Karl Oskar that it's worth the risk of sleeping together because if God wants her to live she'll live and if He wants her to die He'll find a way whether she abstains from sex or not. The ending of the song is a reprise from a first act song in which Karl Oskar convinces Kristina to keep having sex when she wants to avoid bearing more children when they can barely feed the kids they've got. The lyrics are essentially about how their love and desire for one another is too strong to abstain from physically expressing it.
• "How Could I Ever Know" from The Secret Garden, in which the ghost of The Lost Lenore duets with her husband.
• "Draussen ist Freiheit (Reprise) from Tanz Der Vampire is a subversion. It sure sounds like a traditional example of this trope, until Sarah starts singing in a more guttural voice after she falls and Alfred pulls her up again... and then she turns around and has fangs... and then bites Alfred.
• The Prom's finale, "It's Time To Dance", incorporates a Triumphant Reprise of Emma and Alyssa's Act 1 duet "Dance With You".
• Little Shop of Horrors:
  • While "Suddenly Seymour" takes place near the beginning of Act 2, this technically counts as their Final Love Duet, since they never sing together again, and becomes the moment they officially become a couple. Even more so in the film version, since the song takes place closer to the end.
  • Downplayed with "Don't Feed the Plants/Finale Ultimo", which also has a single line between Seymour and Audrey, as their last postmortem duet: "We'll have tomorrow." This was actually a remnant of a Cut Song which would have acted as the real Final Love Duet had they kept it in.
• Elisabeth:
  • Elisabeth and Death sing "Die Schleier fällt" (The Veil Falls) after Elisabeth's assassination, and he shows up to give her the Kiss of Death. It reprises melodies from three songs:
    • "Rondo - Schwarzer Prinz" (Rondo - Black Prince), the first time Death laid eyes on Elisabeth.
    • "Elisabeth, mach auf mein Engel" (Elisabeth, Open Up, My Angel), the part where Death coaxes Elisabeth to choose him after her husband Franz Joseph disappoints her once more.
    • "Ich gehör nur mir" (I Belong To Me), Sisi's anthem of self-love and commitment of independence to herself.
  • Elisabeth and Franz Joseph also have their own Final Love Duet in the form of "Boote in der Nacht" (Ships in the Night), a Dark Reprise of "Nicht ist schwer" (Nothing is Difficult), their act 1 hopelessly romantic love duet. The reprise is their lament about how they are like two ships passing in the night, with different destinations, that only crosses each other's paths briefly before moving on. Franz Joseph tries to persuade Elisabeth to return to him because he believes in The Power of Love, but Elisabeth considers herself too broken and too different from her estranged husband.

Video Games

• The Golden Ending of Nights of Azure closes out with a song called "Eve" sung by the Official Couple, Arnice and Lilysse, with the lyrics starting with some Intercourse with You before declaring the pair's willingness to Screw Destiny if anything tries to come between them. The songwriter's comment on the song mentions that he imagined the two women courting each other as they sung it, and how he originally wanted it to be titled "Our Eve".

Western Animation

• The reprise of "If Only" from Batman: The Brave and the Bold. Unlike the previous unrequited version between Black Canary and Music Meister, this version declares the love between Black Canary and Green Arrow.
• Central Park: In Season 2 "A Decent Proposal", Owen and Paige sings a reprise of "How It Happened" where Paige recreates their wedding proposal but Paige is the one doing to proposal because she wants to give Owen a happy memory of their proposal and move on from the proposal Owen botched.

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