Ship Sinking / Live-Action TV

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Buffy Season 8 issue #15: Buffy isn't Willow's type. Damn!
  • Buffy/Satsu in the season 8 comics (despite the mixed signals), since Buffy doesn't want anyone to get hurt because of her and is firmly stated be straight. She also starts having feelings for Xander. She eventually decides that the reason why she was interested in either of them was because there were few options available, as she hadn't had much social contact with anyone other than her friends/family and the other slayers for a long time.
  • In "Band Candy", Giles and Joyce have sex while under the influence of candy that causes them to act like teenagers. It kills any and all sexual tension between them, despite the fact that Giles is effectively Buffy's surrogate father.
  • In "Graduation, Part 2", Wesley and Cordelia (who have been infatuated with one another since they met) finally kiss. The kiss is awkward enough to wipe out half a season's worth of chemistry, and when the two of them end up on Angel together, they hardly ever so much as flirt again and they end up with a Like Brother and Sister relationship.
• In the fifth season of Angel, Fred hooking up with Wesley sank any possibility of Spike/Fred ever happening, even though there was some subtext that supported it. But when Illyria came on the scene, it suddenly became plausible again.
• Doctor Who:
  • The new series is a strange mixture of both ship teasing and sinking, resulting from the change of focus to the relationships between the characters while still being influenced by the No Hugging, No Kissing policy of the original series. After Rose spent two seasons as the Doctor's Implied Love Interest, she was trapped in an Alternate Universe with no hope of return. The end of season 4 has them briefly reunited, but then the Doctor fobs her off with a half-human clone of himself and leaves her again, in a spectacular example of confirming and sinking a ship simultaneously.
  • The Eleventh Doctor's first series effectively shoots down the much-teased Doctor/Amy pairing in "The Big Bang" when Amy and Rory marry, and River hints that she is or will be the Doctor's wife. With the very unexpected revelation that River Song is the daughter of Amy and Rory in series six, the Doctor/Amy ship is very, very thoroughly sunk as Amy becomes his mother-in-law. (Not that this prevented the Doctor from kissing father-in-law Rory later on...)
    • There were also a small faction of Amy/River shippers who were even more unhappy about the revelation of their true relationship.
  • "The End of Time" sank Martha/Tom Milligan, which had become a popular Ship Mates to Doctor/Rose and was canon in the revived series four, by showing that Martha had married Mickey.
  • "The Power of Three" utterly sank the Doctor/Alistair ship of the classic series. (Barring rule one: "the Doctor lies".)
  • Doctor/Sarah Jane was Ship Teased heavily throughout the Fourth Doctor/Sarah Jane years, but shot through both of its hearts when she gets unceremoniously Put on a Bus. After the departure of Leela, the producer at the time had wanted Sarah Jane to return as companion and to develop the relationship in a more blatantly romantic direction, but Elisabeth Sladen declined to return and so Romana was created as a (very loose) Suspiciously Similar Substitute. It wasn't until Sarah Jane returned in the 2006 episode "School Reunion" that it was finally confirmed on screen that she'd been in love with the Doctor, but the series did not pursue this further.
  • Doctor/Master is a bit of a Yo Yo Plot Point. At first The Reveal was going to be that they were brothers and so he was the Doctor's Friendly Enemy. One of the actors dying meant that the reveal never happened, leaving the reason for the Doctor's affection for him ambiguous. Fans speculated. "The Deadly Assassin" attempted to sink it hard by re-envisioning the Master as a sexless rotting corpse powered by hatred and willpower, and the new Doctor feels nothing but disgust for him and mentions several times he wants him dead for real. Then, when the Master was brought back in "The Keeper of Traken" and "Logopolis" by a much more gay-friendly regime, the Foe Romance Subtext is obvious, due in part to him being played in a more Camp style, partly due to him getting a handsome new body and partly due to Tom Baker clearly playing his part of the relationship like a contemptuous ex-girlfriend. The Ho Yay is even stronger throughout the Davison era but scales back a little by the McCoy era due to the Master being played in a more cold, calculating style. Then the new series, run by people who openly shipped the pairing back in the day, goes about as close to stating it as possible, as well as Jossing the idea that they're brothers (and having the Doctor mock people who think this). Then in "Dark Water" a Gender Flipped Master refers to the Doctor as her 'boyfriend' and kissed him.
  • Doctor/Romana, one of the most popular pairings of the original series, was thoroughly sunk when the new series made the Doctor the Last of His Kind. Some fans still hold out hope, though. After the saving of Gallifrey in the 50th anniversary special, it's up in the air whether Romana is alive or not and whether the Doctor might meet her again one day. (The hope became greater than ever at the end of Series 9 when it was confirmed that Gallifrey is still very much a going concern in the universe.)
  • Doctor/Jack seemed like a legitimate possibility between Jack and the Ninth Doctor — they flirted a lot, and even snogged at one point. However, while Jack maintains interest, the Doctor loses all of his due to a combination of 1) him regenerating into someone with a personality that does not enjoy adversarial flirting and 2) Jack getting Touched by Vorlons in such a way that time doesn't work normally on him, which the Doctor can sense and finds thoroughly disturbing.
  • The Eleventh Doctor and Clara Oswald definitely fancied each other, and their mutual flirting fuelled much of their initial interaction. Both of them seemed to respect each other and their incompatible lifespans too much to ever go beyond a close bond and some friendly canoodling. The Twelfth Doctor, though he continues to love and admire Clara as a friend he trusts utterly... just wasn't interested in her romantically, at least not at first, leading to a very necessary display of brutal honesty (which actually served as on-screen confirmation that the feelings existed in his predecessor):
    Twelfth Doctor: I've made many mistakes. And it's about time I did something about that, starting right now... Clara... I'm not your boyfriend.
    Clara: I never thought you were.
    Twelfth Doctor: I never said it was your mistake.
    • Word of God was contradictory on whether the ship was ever sunk, with Peter Capaldi both saying the relationship was platonic, and in the same week saying it was romantic! Capaldi was also quoted as calling the relationship romantic as early as August 2014 during a world tour to promote his first season. Coleman, for her part, has stated repeatedly that the Doctor and Clara had a loving relationship, being quoted in a cover story for Doctor Who Magazine as saying "her heart belongs to the Doctor." The trope was ultimately subverted. Clara's boyfriend Danny was Killed Off For Real in the finale of Series 8, and Series 9 made her the Doctor's loving Distaff Counterpart. That season finale saw the Doctor risking the safety of the universe when she was Killed Off For Real, whereupon they became an Anchored Ship: She's now Only Mostly Dead, but he has been wiped of memories of her appearance, voice, etc.; he knows they were friends, but not lovers. It would take a miracle to get them back together now — but it could happen, someday.
    • That miracle may have happened in "Twice Upon a Time", in which Bill restores the Doctor's memories of Clara - she appears to him briefly and teasingly says that she finds his forgetting her "insulting". But now that the Doctor has changed genders, it's hard to say whether her interests would include Clara, even if they do meet again; indeed, any Male Doctor-Female companion ship may well have been sunk by this change. (except of course for the fact that the Doctor has mostly been played as pansexual by the New Series; it is a lot more ambiguous with Clara of course, and not even implied at all with many other companions)
  • The Eighth Doctor Adventures novels sunk Doctor/Leela by heavily implying that Leela was the half-human Doctor's mother. The Big Finish Doctor Who Fourth Doctor Adventures audio dramas, which take place in a separate continuity, ignore this and ramp up the UST further than what they got on the show, to Implied Love Interest levels. (Thanks to the 2013 mini-episode "The Night of the Doctor", the Big Finish audio dramas are now considered canon...although that's pretty meaningless given that the show's been going since the 1960s, it's had several mutually exclusive spin-offs (more than one of which is still running) which have nevertheless been referenced by the show and each other, and the BBC can't actually treat any of the spin-offs as canon because of their status as a public service broadcaster.)
  • Missy sinks a romantic ship between her and the Doctor in "The Witch's Familiar", while at the same time confirming even further a platonic one.
    Clara: Mmm! Must be love.
    Missy: Oh, don't be disgusting. We're Time Lords, not animals! Try, nano-brain, to rise above the reproductive frenzy of your noisy little food chain, and contemplate friendship. A friendship older than your civilization, and infinitely more complex.
    • In the above scene, Missy also attempts to sink Clara/Twelve by reminding Clara how transient his relationships with humans are, comparing Clara to a new puppy. Events later in the episode undercut Missy's efforts.
  • The Doctor/Donna initially seemed like it might end up romantic, especially with the two of them constantly being mistaken for a couple, leading to a lot of She Is Not My Girlfriend moments. It didn't help that Donna first met the Doctor after being abandoned on her wedding day, leaving her conveniently single, or that the Doctor would affectionately refer to her as his best friend. Sadly the ship was ultimately sunk when he was forced to wipe her memory so she couldn't remember anything about him. It was also explicitly stated that if she ever did, her mind would burn up, making this pretty permanent. The next time Ten sees her, she is getting married.
• Star Trek: Enterprise spent its first two seasons establishing a fairly obvious ship between Captain Archer and T'Pol, only to sink it in Season 3 by having her unexpectedly take up with Trip Tucker. After the finale though, in which Trip is killed and there's a certain amount of Ship Tease in Archer and T'Pol's last scene together, everything's up in the air again. This should have sunk Trip/T'Pol except that the large amount of hostility towards the finale led to the post-series novels effectively declaring the episode Canon Discontinuity and having Trip and T'Pol live Happily Ever After. (Breaking up the Archer/T'Pol pairing, upsetting though it might have been to some fans, was an example of Truth in Television, however, as such a relationship in the real-world military would have been forbidden anyway.) The whole mess was a result of behind the scenes turmoil which included factions of writers who preferred T'Pol with Archer versus those who preferred her with the arguably more popular Trip, and a writing team that had no ability or interest in writing a love triangle that might have been an interesting first for a Trek series. Bitter fan wars ensued.
• House:
  • Even though they still tease the pairing, the House/Cameron fans were crushed when "Kids" and "Love Hurts" happened. In the former, Cameron telling House that she would only come back to work if he would go out on a date with her was seen as blackmail, and in the latter their distastrous date consists of small talk, an extremely misguided Cameron and House eventually telling her that she doesn't love him — only pities him because he's crippled and emotionally damaged.
  • The Cameron/Chase ship, after being an Official Couple for two years, got sunk in season 6. She effectively declared that she considered Chase mentally incompetent.
  • House/Cuddy, after becoming the second Official Couple at the very end of season 6, got sunk as well when the two broke up a season later, and Cuddy left the hospital on very bad terms with House. The pairing already got a nice nod to ship sinking quite early on in the show:
• Kamen Rider:
  • In Kamen Rider Den-O, if Hana being de-aged didn't derail Ryotaro/Hana shippers, revealing that she was his niece surely did.
  • Kamen Rider Double:
    • The Shotaro/Akiko ship was sunk by making Akiko and Ryu the Official Couple in episode 44, although by then she had started getting ship tease with both. Fully sunk as of Movie War 2011, where Akiko and Ryu marry.
    • The awkward attraction between Wakana and Philip is both ruined and justified with the revelation that she is his long-lost, barely remembered sister. It's the reason they seem to feel drawn to each other but romance would be a bit...awkward.
  • Kamen Rider Gaim has all three of the main male characters as potential love interests for Mai, but she finally becomes the "Woman of the Beginning" along with Kouta and ascends to another planet, sinking the other two ships. By this time Kaito has died anyway, and Mitsuzane kidnapped her partly because he believed she loved Kouta instead of him.
    • Gaim also played up Minato as a love interest for Kaito, but this ship is sunk when she dies to protect Kaito. Although he's kind to her as she's dying, in the next scene he says he still wants Mai.
  • Kamen Rider Amazons sinks the possibility of Haruka/Mizuki at the end of S1 with the revelation that they have the same genetic mother and are blood-related siblings - not just adoptive. The potential of a romantic angle is then dropped in the second series.
• In Scrubs, the end of the third season and beginning of the fourth season seems to sink JD and Elliot forever. There's JD realizing he only wants her because he can't have her, and the final torpedo seems to come in "My Common Enemy" with JD's quote, "That's when I realized that Elliot and I had absolutely no romantic feeling for each other anymore. No matter what the situation. It was a little sad, but maybe it meant we could be friends today". It was stated definitively by Word of God that J.D. and Elliot were not supposed to end up back together but both the fans and the actors liked the pairing too much to let it go. The ship is revived at the end of the sixth season and gets back into Ship Tease before they finally get together in the eighth season. Rather nicely for the trope, though, is that they expressly comment on the fact they were both too immature to work as a couple and spending several years as Just Friends allowed them to grow up. The ninth season/spinoff shows them married with a baby on the way.
• How I Met Your Mother:
  • In the first episode, after playing up the Ted/Robin romance, they revealed that Robin would be the honorary aunt of Ted's children, thus killing any future relationship before it begins. This ship was finally sunk in the episode "Symphony of Illumination" (Season 7), where it is revealed that Robin cannot be the mother of Ted's children. Subverted; the finale reveals that the mother died six years before Ted tells the story to his children. After that, Ted decides to move on and rekindle his relationship with Robin.
  • The much disliked finale sunk both Barney/Robin. They divorce three years after their wedding because she travels a lot for her work and they never got back together. The alternate ending subverts this, keeping them together.
  • Every major Love Interest for Ted has had this happen at the end of their arc. Victoria moved to Germany and then broke up with Ted after he tried to cheat on her with Robin, and later left him again after they tried to get back together when he wouldn't choose between her and Robin, Stella left him at the altar for her ex-husband, and Zoey lied about deleting a recording of Ted and tried to use it against him in court. Victoria in particular seems to have been brought back in season 8 because the initial sinking didn't take and she had managed to remain a popular ship with Ted, which the writers saw as a threat to the canon ships.
• Robin Hood:
  • Poor Guy/Marian shippers. It was always doomed considering that the show was called Robin Hood, but then Guy went and killed her. If that wasn't enough, after his Heel–Face Turn he eventually admits to Robin that "she was always yours." Then Robin dies and is reunited with Marian in Heaven, at which point she tells him that she's his wife: "now and forever."
  • For the very few people shipping Robin/Kate, Robin's Together in Death with Marian sinks that one too. Just prior to the scene, Kate tries for a Last Kiss from Robin, but he deliberately turns his face away and she has to settle for a Last Hug.
• Super Sentai:
  • Samurai Sentai Shinkenger, in the fourth episode, hints on the eventual Ryuunosuke-Mako pairing, with Ryuunosuke being the first visual victim (of the opposite sex anyway) of Mako's Cooldown Hug, first eater of her cooking, and they slept on the same futon TOGETHER. When Ryuunosuke wants to finally officialize it, Mako sent down a torpedo to the ship before it even sailed. And afterwards, they never get a pair-episode again and Ryuunosuke never bothers to mention it again.
  • The popular Masumi/Natsuki ship in GoGo Sentai Boukenger was sunk when both actors stated in an interview that they considered the characters' relationship akin to a father and daughter. They never became an Official Couple, although it was hinted that they might.
  • Nanami and Isshu were an Official Couple in Ninpuu Sentai Hurricaneger, but when the show got a reunion movie titled 10 Years Later (and actually made ten years after its initial run), the characters were no longer together and Isshu has become a playboy. In the crossover movie with Hurricaneger's successor Bakuryuu Sentai Abaranger, Nanami turned down a date with Isshu, so the ship may have been sunk as early as that.
  • Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger has Amy, Yayoi and Meeko as potential love interests for Daigo; so his Last Minute Hook Up with Amy sank the other two ships. Nossan and Candelira were also shown to be attracted to each other, but the final episode sinks this when she chooses not to stay with him.
  • Ressha Sentai Tokkyuger sinks Schwarz/Gritta when Schwarz sacrifices his life for Gritta's.
• The Burn Notice episode "Where There's Smoke" is devoted to two things. The first is Fiona saving the client from kidnapping/murdering Mexicans while being kidnapped herself and generally being a badass. The second is hammering in the point that Jesse has absolutely no chance of getting between the big Tsundere love of Fiona and Mike. Maddy even takes Jesse aside and talks to him specifically to makes sure he knows it.
• Dollhouse: Claire and Topher is a ship at the beginning of Season 2, when Claire enters his room and forces herself onto him. He protests, she works out her emotional issues due to being a doll and being too afraid to give up the body to whoever had it before, and then she admits she hates the smell of him.
• Chuck:
  • Sarah and Shaw. First, it was revealed that Sarah killed Shaw's wife for her "red test" to become a member of the CIA. Then, when Shaw decided to betray the CIA and tried to kill Sarah, Chuck killed Shaw with three bullets to the chest. It didn't take, but still...
  • More drastically, this was done to Morgan and Anna, who were heading toward being an adorable Beta Couple...then she was used very sparingly in the second half of Season 2, then fired altogether in Season 3. In one of the most crushing, aggravating moments in shipping history, Anna returned in a special appearance at the end of Season 3, for thirty seconds, JUST for Morgan to shoot her down and dump her for good. This episode was hyped as the "return" of Anna.

• A small version of this may have just occurred on the FX show Justified between Raylan and his ex-wife Winona in "Hatless": Winona's husband gets into trouble with some bad men over land and Raylan comes to her rescue to ensure she won't be hurt. The potential for Big Damn Heroes is completely averted since Winona doesn't want to leave the house, especially since her husband is MIA. Later, she explains why she chose her new husband over Raylan (even though Raylan is tougher, funnier, and better looking) and still goes back to him at the end of the episode despite his bad decisions that endangered her. If there were any Winona/Raylan shippers, they're probably feeling pretty bad right about now. Happily, the ship has been temporarily refloated as of "Father and Sons", but the two still have loads and loads of problems to deal with in the meantime.
• 30 Rock: Tina Fey has often said in interviews that Liz/Jack will never ever happen. Didn't stop them from being accidentally married for the duration of an episode, though. The ship was fully sunk in the seventh season, when Liz married someone else. A few episodes after that, in "Florida", Jack and Liz actually discuss how stupid it would have been for them to get together.
• CSI NY:
  • Many fans ship Mac/Stella, but it was sunk when Melina Kanakaredes did not return for season 7.
  • After this, the pairing of Mac with Stella's replacement Jo became popular with some fans; but was sunk when the show ended with Mac proposing to his girlfriend Christine. According to Word of God, it could have gone the other way: one idea considered if the show had continued longer was that the next anniversary episode would show Mac's wedding, ostensibly to Christine but with a Bait-and-Switch reveal that he was marrying Jo instead.
• Skins:
  • Naomi and Cook's bantering developed into an Odd Friendship, but some Nookie shippers (mainly those on the Everyone Is Bi horse) saw plenty of UST there, despite the fact that Naomi's Single-Target Sexuality is firmly pointed in Emily's direction. The book tried to sink it with some very impassioned statements from Naomi; the show finally managed it.
  Cook: I'm never going to get to bone you, am I?
  Naomi: No. I love someone.
  • Cook/Effy was sunk when Effy addresses Cook as "a friend".
• Law & Order: Special Victims Unit:
  • The producers continue to insist that Elliot and Olivia are Platonic Life-Partners/Like Brother and Sister/The Not-Love Interest (which there is plenty of evidence for within the show), which pisses off the Bensler nuts.
  • Olivia has said that she's straight, thus pissing off the Alex/Olivia shippers. Stephanie March, however, has saved the Alex/Olivia ship from sinking. She has said that she has not discounted the possibility of an Alex/Olivia romance in her own mind, and finds it quite possible that they have been quietly in love for years.
  • Popular Beta Couple George/Alex (to Elliot/Olivia) got sunk when after years of debate, George was canonically confirmed to be gay.
• The producers of Passions decided to pair Luis with Fancy and then they decided to pair Sheridan with Luis' lackluster brother Antonio. Needless to say, Sheridan and Luis fans were NOT happy.
• Merlin:
  • Season 3 hammered some nails into the coffin of Arthur/Morgana, establishing that they are half-siblings.
  • After the show had hinted at Merlin/Gwen in season one, the ship was sunk in the following season when Gwen falls in love with Arthur and Merlin meets Freya.
  • Fan-Preferred Couple Merlin/Arthur supporters knew it was never going to happen, but even after Arthur falls in love with Gwen, there's still hope for an unspoken unrequited love story from the side of his servant, right? Enter Merlin, Arthur/Gwen Shipper on Deck. He ships it more than the couple does. Whenever a threat to the pairing emerges, he becomes a rabid fan-girl in the throes of Die for Our Ship.
• The Vampire Diaries:
  • Stefan/Elena is sunk in "Our Town". Possibly Caroline and Tyler too.
  • Caroline and Tyler got a permanent end after she slept with Klaus.
  • Katherine and Stefan came to a complete halt after she possessed Elena, nearly tricked him into killing his own brother, and tried to rape him.
  • Elena and Stefan sank after her repeatedly choosing to be with Damon in seasons 4 and 5.
• True Blood:
  • Tara and Jason has been sunk twice.
  • The season 5 finale does a painful ship sinking; Jason and Jessica (after two seasons of UST gradually progressing into Friends with Benefits and Stupid Sexy Friend whenever they try to be friends) was sunk with Jason, apparently brainwashed into a new level of vampire hate by hallucinations of his parents, telling Jessica "I could never love a vampire". Likewise, Jessica's relationship with Hoyt is also ended with Hoyt running off to Alaska after asking her to glamor him into not remembering the relationship.
  • Even more painful was the sinking of Bill x Sookie. She tries to stop him from drinking the blood of Lilith by reasoning that their legitimate love should make her meaningful to him. He retorts by chewing her out before drinking the blood anyway.
  Bill: For all you know, everything I did was an act, calculated to elicit a certain response.
  Sookie: But you are unique among all the vampires I've ever met. You are capable of love, and sympathy!
  Bill: I told you the first night that we met. Vampires often turn on those they love the most.
• The Mary Tyler Moore Show's penultimate episode, "Lou Dates Mary" addressed the MaryLou ship. They went on a date, kissed... and immediately burst into giggles and both admitted it would never work.
• iCarly: The three main ships on the show were thoroughly Zig-Zagged:
  • The end of iOMG, 10 episodes after Sam revealed she had a crush on Spencer, pretty much sunk what little chance the Sam/Spencer ship had. Then Spencer reminded Sam of the crush in a later episode.
  • Sam/Freddie shared their first kiss, then looked sunk as Carly/Freddie happened in "iSaved Your Life". Then "iOMG" happened, made the Sam/Freddie relationship canon... until they sunk the ship by spending 3 episodes showing how bad they are as a couple. "iPear Store" then sank it even deeper by having Freddie go on a massive rant against Sam and her personality after she spent the entire episode ruining a job he just got.
  • Carly/Freddie was torpedoed, split in half, sunk followed by dropping depth charges on the wreck after "iSaved Your Life" ended with the pairing breaking up, never referencing the relationship and then having Sam and Freddie get together in "iOMG". When Sam and Freddie broke up it gave hope to the shippers. "iOwn A Restaurant" saw Freddie ask Carly if it was 'too late for you to love me' which re-floated the wreck, and then the finale "iGoodbye" had Carly initiate a kiss with Freddie.
• Wizards of Waverly Place:
  • The writers sunk the Justin x Juliet ship by turning her into an old lady. Then they dropped depth charges on it by having Harper pretend to be Juilet and tell him to move on, Alex repeating 'Juilet's never coming back', Justin dating an O.C. Stand-in at the last minute, and Old Lady Juliet looking on and approving of this. The Icing on the Cake? The plot was used up in 15 minutes, so the second half was nothing but the first half repeated. The episode served no further point than to make fans forget about Juliet. (Then Juliet returns AND is a young girl again in "Wizards Vs. Everyone", with no logical explanation what-so-ever. Huh?)
  • The writers had a few torpedos left, so they sunk Justin X Harper too, by having Harper tell Justin that she was in love with his sidekick, Zeke.
• La Femme Nikita (the original TV show, not the 2010 remake) ends Season 4 with Nikita saying to Michael "I don't love you. I never did", and walking away without looking back. The next season revealed that that wasn't the truth, but in the end there's no Happily Ever After for these two because Nikita ends up running the restructured Section One and Michael ends up being one of very few to leave Section alive, needing to take care of his son, whose mother suffered a Bus Crash, and trusted by Section's new leader to keep its secrets. It's an ironic twist on where they started - Nikita was strong-armed into joining and Michael was the consummate agent, and so each wound up where you thought the other would.
• Smallville:
  • Chloe Sullivan/Lex Luthor used to be fairly popular, until an episode where after it's revealed that Chloe is a mutant, Lex kidnaps her and has his scientists perform sadistic experiments on her. Naturally, the ship became noticeably less popular after that.
  • For years, a rather vocal contingent of fans wanted Clark to end up with Chloe. Chloe eventually moved on to other relationships, and many former Clark/Chloe shippers got on board with these new ships. Then the Grand Finale finally showed, in no uncertain terms, that Clark married Lois, and Chloe got married to someone else (heavily implied to be Oliver) and had a son, as seen in the final scene Distant Finale.
• Stargate Atlantis: Sheppard/Weir is sunk when she turns into a replicator, and Teyla/Sheppard when she becomes pregnant with a random off screen guy no-one had ever seen before. Which hasn't stopped the lead writer of the relaunch novels from marginalizing the father of her child and bringing back the Teyla/Sheppard Ship Tease. The Katie Brown/Rodney McKay coupling is sunk when Rodney makes it known he's thinking about proposing, but isn't sure to go through with it. This makes her think he wants to break up, and she goes back to Earth.
• Stargate Universe: If Eli being symbolically shown as Chloe's 'brother' in Cloverdale didn't do enough to convince viewers that pairing was sunk, Epilogue torpedoed it then dropped some depth charges on the wreck just to be sure. The killing blow may have been Eli entering a relationship with Ginn. Most Eli/Chloe fans had long given up any real hope of seeing them together, so when Eli did find someone, they jumped ship.
• Lost:
  • The writers took perverse delight in zig-zagging this trope, long after the majority of its fandom had stopped caring about Jack/Kate vs Sawyer/Kate. If Kate was interested in one of them, it was only a matter of episodes before a plot twist drove them apart and seemingly killed off the ship for good... only for it to be resurrected next season when Kate fled the other one's arms. The rival Fan Dumbs fell for it every time, going both sides through a cycle of gloating and trolling the supposedly dead/sunk ship, only to retreat and grumble about "endgame" when their own ship was pushed aside. Jack/Kate ended up as endgame, but Sawyer/Kate fans seemed angrier about Sawyer/Juliet.
  • Sun and Michael's mutual interest was killed dead after Jin was humanized and Sun fell back in love with him.
  • Ben's interest in Juliet was revealed to be very much one-sided. And creepy.
  • Jack/Juliet was firmly sunk after Juliet realized he was in love with Kate and let him go.
  • Daniel/Charlotte was the rare ship not to get a revival in the sideways timeline. The two interacted briefly but did not "flash" off each other like so many other pairings, both platonic and romantic. Although neither were seen in the afterlife, so theoretically they could eventually get together.
• Power Rangers Zeo contains a Ship Sinking so big that it still can cause arguments in the fandom nearly 25 years after it actually happened: Kimberly, offscreen, sends Tommy a "Dear John" Letter.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Irri and Rakharo, two background Dothraki characters who shared plenty of Belligerent Sexual Tension despite not really interacting in the books. Promotional material for the second season confirmed that Irri had a thing for him. The season two premiere also had a heartfelt scene that inspired quite a lot of shipping between Daenerys and Rakharo. The second episode crushed any hopes for both ships by killing off Rakharo, who is still alive in the books.
  • The sinking of the very popular Dany/Jorah ship was moved to the middle of season two. In the books, Dany becomes aware of his attraction at the beginning of A Clash of Kings and didn't spurn his affections until the next book. The ship's popularity can be attributed to Iain Glen, who is much more handsome than Jorah's book description.
  • Due several changes that contradicted the books, Jaime/Brienne is slowly sinking in Season 6. Though the two are still in good terms, Jaime is still in love with Cersei despite seeing her flaws and is completely oblivious about her affair with Lancel whereas Brienne is shipped with Tormund after their small encounter at Castle Black in "Book of the Stranger". However, Jaime/Brienne returns with a vengeance in the Season 7 finale, in which Jaime finally gets sick of Cersei's callousness, ditching her to ride North and help fight the White Walkers. In Season 8 Brienne is the one who convinces everyone to give Jaime a chance, vouching for his honor. Then he makes her lifelong dream of becoming a knight come true by knighting her himself, with both of them gazing intently into each other's eyes the whole time. After the Battle of Winterfell, Jaime and Brienne slept together which may seem to look like a happy ending for them....except that, Jaime has to leave her because of Cersei, leaving Brienne heartbroken. The ship eventually sunk in "The Bells" when Jaime and Cersei died together when the Red Keep collapses on them and the series finale, Brienne becomes a member of the Kingsguard.
  • Bran/Meera sunk in Season 7 after having returned to Winterfell. Because of Bran's evolution as the Three-Eyed Raven, his goodbye is very emotionless, causing Meera to call out on him for not being grateful for everything they have gone through most especially when her brother Jojen, Hodor, and Summer sacrificed their lives to save him. After that, she left him.
  • Arya/Gendry sunk in the middle of Season 8 despite the two ended up making love together. Arya rejects Gendry's marriage proposal explaining that it's not her life. By the end of the show, Arya leaves Westeros to travel to the west while Gendry becomes the new Lord of Storm's End.
  • The series finale torpedoed two ships: Jon/Daenerys and Jon/Sansa. Jon reluctantly kills Daenerys to stop her mad quest for world domination after she went mad and burnt King's Landing to the ground. As a result, he's forced into exile in the far North, and Sansa is crowned Queen of the North without Jon and the rest of the siblings at her side.
• As a political satire, The Thick of It isn't exactly famous for exploring personal relationships, yet the tensions between Nicola Murray and Malcolm Tucker in Series 3 led to shipping by many fans. In series 4, however, Nicola Murray goes from a minister to Opposition Leader, where she is awful. The ship-sinking happens when Malcolm's irritation with Nicola messing up (yet still grudgingly appreciating her work as a minister) is replaced with utter contempt and hatred for her incompetence dooming the entire party, and culminates in him orchestrating her political downfall. It is VERY clear that the love/hate relationship between the two is now just hate.
• House of Anubis:
  • Joy and Fabian seemed to be doomed to be the Titanic. No matter how much Joy tried, Fabian kept rejecting her advances as he loved Nina. Then Joy went kind of crazy to get his attention and temporarily became the most hated person in the house. In season three, when Nina was finally out of the way, she still got rejected and Fabian didn't even attempt to sugar coat it. So, basically, if you shipped Joy and Fabian, there was really no chance to set sail. Which is alright, with the addition of Joy and Jerome's pairing, which is wildly popular and has managed to stay afloat.
  • The ultimate fate of the after-mentioned Fabian/Nina ship due to a major case of Real Life Writes the Plot two episodes into Season 3.
• Pretty Little Liars:
  • Emily tells Alison that she is done with her after her latest lie results in an innocent man being framed for her kidnapping. The Emily/Alison fandom would later take a torpedo to the hull during Season 6, when both characters were set up with two new love interests. The pair never discussed their feelings for each other (despite the showrunners assuring fans on social media that they would). The writers also never even bothered to continue exploring the pair's romantic history, and their storyline was basically dropped completely. Needless to say, shippers were enraged, due to the ship being constantly hyped-up over the previous two seasons.
  • Erza and Aria break up after it is revealed that he was using her and her friends to write a book on Alison, who he had previously dated.
  • Emily dumps Paige for telling the police that Alison was alive, thereby endangering her to A.
  • Caleb and Spencer was hit hard with this after he kissed Hanna behind her back. When she found out, she spiraled out of control to the point where she nearly had a one-night stand.
• Graceland did this to Mike and Paige in the second season. After she learned that he covered up the death of one girl during an investigation into a human trafficking ring, she ratted him to one of the bad guys. This led to said bad guy possibly killing him in the season finale.
• Once Upon a Time:
  • Regina/Robin is in jeopardy, as Emma's time travel trip brought Maid Marian back with her and it turns out Regina was one who previously killed her.
  • Graham/Emma was repeatedly given Ship Tease and even kissed until it sunk with Graham's death at Regina's hands, only seconds after the kiss. Word of God has also dictated that once a fairy tale character dies in Storybrooke, they're gone forever, destroying any future chances of Gremma.
  • "Selfless, Brave, and True" torpedoed Emma/August when the latter is rejuvenated into a little boy. August did regain his old body in Season 4 and Hook was even jealous at how close the two seemed, only for Emma to confirm their relationship is Like Brother and Sister.
  • Mulan/Aurora ("Sleeping Warrior") was sunk when Mulan was to confess her feelings for Aurora to the princess, only for Aurora to announce that she was happily pregnant with Philip's child. Heartbroken, Mulan joined Robin Hood's Merry Men. Not surprising, however, since Philip broke Aurora's sleeping curse with "true love's kiss".
  • Emma acknowledged that she might be able to get back together with Neal at the end of Season 3a. However, it was sunk when Neal is Killed Off for Real in 'Quiet Minds'. Diehard fans of the ship hoped for some kind of reunion when Emma traveled to the Underworld, only for Neal to reveal that he Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence, leaving no doubt as to the chances of it actually happening.
  • Belle/Rumplestiltskin (whose members are married) seems to have been sunk in the Season 4 winter finale, as Belle laments how she'll never be first in his heart, says she can't see any good in him anymore, and then banishes him from Storybrooke. However, it's on its way to righting itself again in Season 5, until Belle learns she has been lied to by Rumple. It wasn't until the end of season 6 that they fully get back together, following Rumple doing a legit selfless dead.
• Friends:
  • Several longer-term relationships of the main gang were sunk. Phoebe/David was temporarily sunk early on, when he went to Minsk and permanently sunk at the end of the series when she picked Mike over him. The hated Ross/Emily ended with their messy divorce.
  • Richard/Monica was sunk very thoroughly bit by bit: Started in the Season 2 finale when they split up over wanting/not wanting children but as they still loved each other there was some wriggle room. Sunk a bit more in Season 3 when she got over him, dated several other guys including her Second Love who she considered marrying. Further sunk in Season 5 when Monica and Chandler fell for each other and Monica flat out said she felt nothing for Richard and loved Chandler more than anyone else ever before. Sent to the bottom of the ocean in Season 6 when Richard returned and asked Monica to marry him (devastating Chandler), only for Monica to turn around and stage her own proposal to Chandler.
  • This also extends to relationships between the main cast: Joey/Rachel decided they were Better as Friends and the purely Ship Tease Joey/Phoebe ended when she married Mike.
• Revenge ended any chance of Daniel/Emily happening when Daniel shot Emily after learning she had faked her pregnancy to get him to marry her instead of breaking off the engagement for Sara. They stayed married for a while, until reports of the fake pregnancy leaked and Daniel was able to press for divorce without worrying that Emily might try to name him as the shooter. Then the writers got out a giant inflatable life-raft for them, in his dying moments Emily tells Daniel it wasn't always a lie, not with him, and he responds that he knows.
• The Good Wife tried to sink the Fan-Preferred Couple of Will/Alicia several times through the years, but finally managed it with Will's sudden death in a courtroom shooting about two-thirds of the way through Season 5.
• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.:
  • Ward/Skye gets what is quite possibly the most spectacular ship sinking ever. After Ward is revealed to be a HYDRA agent, Skye calls him disgusting, a "lying backstabbing traitor", a Nazi, and a Serial Killer. When Ward insists his feelings for her are genuine, she says she thinks she's going to throw up. Damn. About half a season later, when he helps rescue her from Whitehall, she responds by shooting him three times in the chest and leaving him to die. While he survived, even he got the hint after that.
  • Pretty much any Ward ship was nuked from orbit but special mention goes to Ward/Simmons for Ward becoming awful enough to merit Simmons facing him down and promising to personally end his life if she ever sees him again. This from the woman who spent her post-mission time ensuring that he didn't bleed to death, or develop a lasting injury from combat ops. She attempted to make good on her promise by attempting to kill him with a splinter bomb.
  • Fitz/Ward along with Simmons, Skye, and May but especially because of the lasting impact dropping Fitz and Simmons into the ocean in a supply crate had on Fitz' health. Causing lasting brain trauma and a severe panic attack once Fitz sees him again.
  • With Coulson Killed Off for Real at the end of Season 5, both Coulson/May and Coulson/Daisy are officially sunk. Even when he is effectively resurrected as an LMD, he and May do not resume their relationship, as while he may be Coulson, he is not her Coulson.
• Hart of Dixie:
  • Zoe and George spent most of the series apart, even though he stopped his wedding for her. First, she rejected him so that he could find himself, only to hook up with Wade. Then, he was with Tansy, only to have her wreck that relationship with an ill-timed love confession. He got lost, then he lost Tansy, only to see Zoe hook up with Wade again. After five months apart, they met up only to have him blame her for everything wrong in his life. Since then, he has dated Lavon's cousin Lynly, and reunited with Tansy, only to be led back to Lemon (more on that below). Meanwhile, she moved on with both Joel and Wade.
  • Lavon and Annabeth were the perfect couple, until he couldn't commit to her. After they broke up, and she hated him for a while, everyone wondered why he couldn't be with her. Turns out, he is still in love with Lemon.
  • Wade and Vivian broke up by her leaving him for her ex.
  • Zoe and Joel had lost-distance issues leading to their break-up.
• Starting in Season 4 of The Walking Dead, there was a heated rivalry between Bethyl (Beth/Daryl) and Caryl (Carol/Daryl) shippers. The former was promptly torpedoed in the Season 5 midseason finale, which featured Beth's death.
  • In fact, if you see some Ship Tease between any of these characters but they don't outright hook up while they're on screen, just be prepared for automatic Ship Sinking. The Anyone Can Die nature of the show makes it unlikely for any ship tease to ever last too long.
  • Caryl was further sunk in Season 6, where Carol and minor character Tobin share a kiss. Carol is later seen getting dressed after leaving Tobin's bed. To make matters worse, the two had spoken a grand total of once before hooking up, leading to an unfavourable case of Strangled by the Red String.
• The 25-year Ginnungagap toward the end of the fifth season of Xena: Warrior Princess put paid to the Gabrielle/Joxer 'ship, which the producers never supported beyond Joxer's unrequited love and the characters' permanent friendship. However, the actual purpose was to (as Lucy Lawless put it) "eighty-six the baby" (Eve), thus getting the series out of the corner it had painted itself into by writing Lawless's real pregnancy into the series.
• Stranger Things: Season 3 is cruel enough to sink five major pairings, though there are enough implications that least 2/5 of the pairings can be restored.
  • Steve and Robin get a bittersweet one, as despite her chemistry with Steve, Robin reveals that she's a closet lesbian for another girl who was ironically attracted to Steve during high school, but Robin keeps her feelings hidden because it's still the 1980s. Kudos to Steve, he takes the hit well despite receiving similar heartbreak from Nancy in the previous seasons, and he accepts her sexual orientation easily — Robin's last scene also implies that she still cares greatly for him.
  • Jonathan and Nancy pseudo-break up when the former moves out of Hawkins with his mother, brother and Eleven. However, it's made clear during their farewell that Jonathan and Nancy still adore each other; Nancy even suggests that he could live in her house, but Jonathan reminds her that he won't be going far and she can always call him, which implies a long-distance relationship.
  • Similarly, Mike and Eleven break up when she leaves with Byers, though arguably most of the season concerns their relationship falling apart (thanks in no small part to Hopper being a Boyfriend-Blocking Dad for Eleven). To be fair, the claims that Mike is a bad influence on Eleven are somewhat valid, and much of Eleven's Character Development is her becoming emotionally independent without Mike, which is why Eleven "dumping his ass" is treated as an empowering moment for her. However, the last episode shows that she still cares greatly for Mike.
  • Billy and Karen (though they have a mutual attraction in Season 2) get sunk early in Season 3, as Karen stays loyal to her ineffectual husband Ted while Billy gets possessed by an Eldritch Abomination. It's also explained that Billy's attraction to Karen stems from his Missing Mom. Finally, and most importantly, he dies.
  • By far the most heartbreaking is between Hopper and Joyce as they spend the last two seasons with Unresolved Sexual Tension from their "high school sweethearts" days and are in the verge an actual Relationship Upgrade... until Hopper falls victim to Joyce's Cartwright Curse and seemingly dies during the Final Battle, leaving Joyce to look after Eleven. Of course, the ambiguous nature of Hopper’s death and the creators being tight-lipped implies that a potential reunion isn't completely impossible.
• Dark Matter (2015): One and Two end in a spectacular fashion: he is killed by the real Jace Corso.
• ''Killjoys: Not only did Dutch and D'avin break up after he was brainwashed into nearly killing her and Johnny, but she seems to have moved on with the monk Alvis.
• Victoria: The Doomed by History ship between Queen Victoria and Lord Melbourne is finally sunk when, out of duty and the realization that spending her life with the much older, previously married and non-royal Melbourne was never going to be possible, Victoria proposes to Prince Albert and becomes engaged to him. This didn't stop some fans from begging the show's writer to change history and allow Victoria to marry Lord M instead of Albert.
• General Hospital's legendary Super Couple Luke and Laura of all people were subjected to this. Starting in 1995 when the couple first became estranged when she couldn't deal with his involvement with the mob anymore, then kicking into high gear in 1998 when they were forced to deal with the fact that he'd raped her 19 years earlier, the writers threw one problem after another at them until they finally divorced in 2001, a few months before they would have celebrated their 20th anniversary. Despite the unanimous belief that they still care very much about each other, all attempts at reconciliation have failed. To the point that when he was leaving the show, Anthony Geary, Luke's portrayer, outright described them as being "toxic to each other by now", in response to hopes that Genie Francis (who played Laura) would return to the show so that the two could go Riding into the Sunset—when he briefly returned a year later, it was to escort Second Love Tracy out of town so that they could run around the world together—with Laura's blessing!
  • Happened to Super Couples Sonny and Brenda and Brenda and Jax as well, with Brenda's constant flip-flopping between the two men ultimately making both pairings fizzle out.
• Community:
  • In "Romantic Expressionism," the group admits that since they're not an actual family, any one of them could have sex with any one of the others without it being creepy. There's a lot of Ship Tease as everyone makes eyes at everyone else... except for Pierce.
    Pierce: Let me get this straight—I don't have a chance with any of you?
  • Britta/Jeff get a few of these. The first is in "Anthropology 101," when their attempts to ridiculously one-up another almost lead to them getting married before they admit that they're being crazy. In "Paradigms of Human Memory," Abed reveals that they've been secretly having sex the entire year. They break it off once the others find out, since the secrecy was the only thing keeping it fun. In "Basic Story" and "Basic Sandwich," they randomly decide to get married when it looks like the school is going to be shut down, but break off the engagement once the school is saved when they realize they were being stupid.
    Annie: You two are ridiculous together.
  • Annie/Abed get a few. All their moments of Ship Tease are when Abed is pretending to be someone else; for bonus points, he often explicitly points out that what she's attracted to is Jeff's archetype. In "For A Few Paintballs More" Abed is playing Han Solo and the two share a deeply passionate kiss, but Abed drops the act without a blink when they "die." In "Basic Sandwich," Abed assures Annie that the Britta/Jeff engagement is going to collapse shortly once they realize they're being idiots, and it looks like Annie is leaning in for a kiss... only for Abed to bluntly remind her that he has a girlfriend. She hotly insists she wasn't doing anything.
  • Annie/Jeff, Despite the fact that they both share feelings for each other, they never come to anything and eventually Jeff ends up giving up Annie, so that she can pursue her dreams.
• Daredevil (2015):
  • Matt Murdock / Claire Temple ("Clairedevil") is a case of this. There's strong chemistry between Charlie Cox and Rosario Dawson, but it's sunk by Matt himself as they mutually realize that Claire could not be in a relationship with someone who basically is on a suicide mission every night. This one was also inevitable by the fact that Claire in the comics is Luke Cage's love interest, and sure enough, by the end of season 1 of Luke Cage (2016), Claire has hooked up with him.
  • Matt Murdock / Karen Page ("Karedevil") combines this with Will They or Won't They?. Charlie Cox and Deborah Ann Woll also have strong chemistry. They begin dating partway through season 2, only for the ship to be sunk a few episodes later as the strain of Frank Castle's trial gets to them, on top of Karen finding a wounded Elektra in Matt's bed and mistakenly thinking he's cheating on her. However, the ship is re-righted in the season 2 finale, when Matt privately meets with Karen to tell her that he's Daredevil, with every indication being given that they'll reconcile. Only for the The Defenders (2017) to seemingly sink it again. Karen seems to want a retired Matt to stay retired and possibly live out his life with her. But by the season finale, Matt has taken up the suit again, and makes it clear to Karen that this is who he is and he will never change, and the finale also made clear that Matt still has feelings for Elektra, despite having to defeat her and The Hand. He then sacrifices himself to defeat The Hand once and for all. The ending makes it clear he is still alive, with further reconciliation on-board for Daredevil season 3.]]
• The Punisher (2017):
  • The show's showrunners and producers have made clear that even though many people may ship Karen with Frank, it's not happening in the show.
  Interviewer: I don’t know if you go on Tumblr very much, but people ship the daylights out of Karen and Frank and many were left heartbroken after (their almost) kiss in the elevator. If you look up Punisher on Tumblr, it’s basically just gifs of Karen and Frank in the elevator.
  Felicia D. Henderson: I don’t spend much time on Tumblr, but I absolutely am aware how people are shipping them and it’s so funny because the first time that I heard some sort of fan storytelling about the two of them I thought, "I didn’t even realize that people thought they were about to kiss because it wasn’t what we were doing!" And I think it is just a testament to how strong the chemistry is between them, which is wonderful. It was strong on Daredevil, and it’s even stronger once she then came onto The Punisher.
  But it wasn’t written like “And then they almost kissed.” Like, that’s not in the script. That moment was not built in, it doesn’t really exist. But they have such great chemistry, you can’t really put them in the same tiny place like, oh, an elevator, and that chemistry not explode all over that little space. So that’s what happened, but it’s really a relationship of two people who make a leap at that moment to trust each other even more, to believe in each other even more, to do whatever they have to even more.
  • Frank Castle introduces himself to David Lieberman's wife Sarah as part of a ploy to scare David. Over the course of his partnership with David, he acts as a middleman between David and his family^note since David has faked his own death, and Sarah starts getting more attracted to Frank to the point that she drunkenly kisses Frank. Frank rejects the kiss because he still considers himself married to Maria's memory, and he doesn't want to intrude on David's marriage.
• After a season of Ship Tease followed by a season of separation in Penny Dreadful, Ethan and Vanessa finally reunite in the very last episode of the entire series. Most viewers had the expectation that this would finally result in a much teased showdown between Ethan and Dracula, ending in an Ethan/Vanessa Relationship Upgrade, due to show mythology around Ethan as the Wolf of God and Vanessa's protector against evil. Instead, their ship was brutally torpedoed when Vanessa was Killed Off for Real, by Ethan's own hand, no less.
• H₂O: Just Add Water: Rikki/Zane gets fractured in the third season after Zane reverts to his jerkish nature from the first season. It ends for good when Zane kisses Sophie on a whim, not realizing Rikki is watching them from the water, and Rikki confronts him when he pretends nothing happened. The series finale has them on a positive note again, but Rikki's appearance in Mako Mermaids: An H₂O Adventure shows her still single, and missing Cleo, Emma, and Bella a lot more than Zane.
• Westworld:
  • A lot of viewers ship Dolores and William due to the strong chemistry between the two actors and the latter's kind nature to the former. Many viewers prefer to pair Dolores to William rather than her scripted boyfriend, Teddy, who always dies. Then, the season 1 finale torpedoes the ship after it is revealed that William is the younger version of The Man in Black, a guest who had been terrorizing Dolores since the start of the show. The truth on William's slow corruption to what he has become in the present makes all the sweet scenes between him and Dolores Harsher in Hindsight. Even Dolores herself is shaken with the truth. But at least, she gives the guy a huge beating for all the crap she experienced.
  • Season 2 torpedoed the Dolores/Teddy ship after the former forcibly reprogrammed Teddy into a ruthless killing machine. However, after Teddy breaks out from his programming and gains self-consciousness, he calls out on Dolores on what she did to him and points out what her actions are no different from what the humans did to their kind. And in one final conscious decision, he shoots himself in the head. Dolores regrets this and uploads him into the Sublime instead where the rest of the hosts are knowing that it's better that way. The ship is unlikely to return by the end of Season 3 after Serac deleted all of her memories, signaling the death of Dolores. Even there are four copies of her, the original Dolores is gone and unlikely to reunite with Teddy.
• Legends of Tomorrow sinks ships incredibly often.
  • The first season finale sinks Sara/Leonard and Mick/Leonard by killing off Leonard.
  • The third season sinks Nate/Amaya, as well as any possibility of Mick/Amaya, and Amaya/Zari by having Amaya leave at the end of the season and return to her own time so that her daughter and grandchildren will still exist. Rip/Sara is also sunk by having Sara get together with Ava and killing Rip off.
  • The beginning of the fourth season looks set to sink Nate/Wally and Zari/Wally as Wally will be leaving the show and not returning to the Arrowverse as a regular.
• Without a Trace. Both of Samantha Spade's relationships get this—with Martin Fitzgerald because he's fed up with her not wanting to tell anyone about them and of her keeping him at arms length, not to mention suspecting (likely correctly) that she isn't over her ex-lover Jack Malone, and with Jack himself when she decides to try to make things work with her son's father.
• Enforced in Power Rangers Beast Morphers. Ranger candidates Ravi and Roxy were dating when they were chosen to be the Blue and Yellow Beast Rangers. However, one of the rules of being Rangers is that "Rangers can't date Rangers". Though they both hate this rule, Ravi decides to obey this rule and breaks up with Roxy.
• Schitt's Creek:
  • David/Stevie in Season 2. Stevie had assumed David was gay, but they unexpectedly hook up in Season 1 and David comes out as pansexual. They try to be Friends with Benefits, but it fails and Stevie gets her heartbroken when she realizes David does not share her feelings. This leads to two moments. First, David returns to the motel after he thought he'd be gone permanently, and Stevie coldly tells him she's over him. They agree to remain friends. Later, they later go to a bar together and decided to give their romance another try given the lack of options in the town, but they only manage an epically Awkward Kiss and thereafter are just friends.
  • Alexis/Mutt in Season 4: Mutt returns for one episode, just after Alexis has declared her love for Ted and wished him well with his relationship with Heather. Mutt and Alexis spend time together, get along great and he tries to kiss her but she won't sleep with him because she loves Ted. They part as friends.
  • Alexis/Ted in Season 6. Ted returns from the Galapagos Islands for one day (and one episode) to be greeted by a joyous Alexis. He reveals he's been offered a permanent job there, and the two try and realistically work out how they could stay together. Even Twyla tries and fails to find a solution. So, they sadly break up, still loving each other in a devastating scene that feels very final despite some fans desperately clinging to the hope that Ted would return before the end. Writer Daniel Levy made it clear he wanted to show Alexis's growth as a person and that some love stories end because of circumstances, not the end of love.
• The Magicians (2016) has ended a few ships over the years:
  • Kady and Penny ended after he got cancer during his time in the Poison Room in the Library and he died. Even worse, a version of him from a different timeline came on, and he turned out to be in love with Julia.
  • As of the season four finale, Quentin's death destroyed any chance of him being with Alice, Julia or Eliot.
• Frasier: After season 10 spends its time trying to build up a love triangle between Frasier and Roz, eventually ending with Roz demanding Frasier choose between her or his jerkass love interest Julia, which wasn't well received, season 11 begins with new writers immediately dumping the triangle, having Roz emphatically state she has no feelings for Frasier, first to Niles, then directly to Frasier himself, using the argument that if she had any, they would've shown when the two slept together.
  Frasier: So... just to be clear, you haven't been pining for me since we slept together?
  Roz: God, no. Weren't you there?
  • For an encore, the relationship with Julia is sunk in the next episode, when Frasier realizes she's an utterly appalling jerkass, and he's only trying to maintain the relationship out of desperation and denial. He finally comes to at the end, Julia is given the boot and never mentioned again.
• The Sherlock showrunners repeatedly sunk the possibility of Sherlock/John in interviews, stating in plain terms that Sherlock and John's relationship was never intended to be romantic and never would be. This did not stop a Vocal Minority of Sherlock/John shippers from continuing to believe that their ship would become canon and all the showrunners' claims to the contrary were just them deliberately lying to mislead viewers.
• The Umbrella Academy (2019): Allison and Luther had a childhood crush on each other, and when they get back in touch as adults (at the beginning of the show) they still have Unresolved Sexual Tension. In the first season it's given more romantic treatment, but it was unpopular with fans due to the Not Blood Siblings aspect. In season two it was given less screen time. In season 3 the ship was definitively sunk in a very dark Near-Rape Experience scene: Allison turns to Luther for Sex for Solace; he asks Am I Just a Toy to You?; he tries to leave; she uses her Compelling Voice to make him stay, but then changes her mind and lets him go at the last minute. In an interview Luther's actor Tom Hopper said of the sinking:
  Tom Hopper: The fact that they went through that — in a way does kind of bring closure to it, because I think it says... that it shouldn't really be, y'know? It's not right. And it felt wrong as it happened — on multiple levels. That's not really what they both want. It's like a weird sort of security blanket they have, which comes out in a weird, abusive manner, from both sides.
• Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 2 have two that end with the Musical Episode "Subspace Rhapsody":
  • In the third episode, "Tomorrow And Tomorrow And Tomorrow", La'an ends up falling in love with an alternate timeline James T. Kirk, who ends up dying during their adventures. She harbors a crush on the main timeline Kirk and ultimately finds the courage to tell him her feelings. However, he has to turn her down — He's with a woman named Carol and she's pregnant with his kid.
  • Ever since the first season, Spock and Nurse Chapel have had awkward feelings for each other that they ultimately act on in "Charades". The ship is damaged in "Those Old Scientists" thanks to a time-traveling Ensign Boimler but it is fully sunk here. In song form, no less!

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