Kids media is not always all light of happiness. Sometimes kids series have incredibly depressing endings or incredibly dark, bittersweet finales. Sometimes normally happy series will end in major tragedy for the final episodes too.
On that note, let’s take a look at some of the most dark and depressing finales that cartoons have to offer. If you can think of any cartoons that ended on a less-than-happy note, be sure to chime in in the comments!
The Green Lantern: The Animated Series Finale
The Green Lantern Animated Series was a fairly good show that got canceled after one season because the Green Lantern movie bombed. As a result, it ended on a very depressing note. The whole series had been building a romance between Razer, a red lantern guy with the always-required Dead Wife backstory and a robot named Aya.
After Aya apparently died and then suddenly came back, Razer was traumatized and pushed her away, telling her she was a machine and they could never be together. So she could focus on the mission at hand rather than despair over him, Aya shut off her emotions. This was, unsurprisingly, a bad idea- Aya saved the day, but she also merged with the villain of the series, the Anti-Monitor and decided it was her logical imperative to kill all who are driven by foolish emotion.
Aya eventually snapped back to herself after nearly killing Razer, but at that point she’d already put the world in danger, so she sacrificed herself to save it. Razer was left with his number of dead love interests increased to two. Fun times for everyone! Razer, however, seemed to think Aya was still alive and went to search the universe and find her, leaving the possibility of a kinder fate for Aya.
Unfortunately, it will always just be a possibility, since the show isn’t getting a second season. So as it stands now, the series wrapped up with its sole female crew member dead, hopes of a romance dashed to pieces and her heartbroken almost-lover deciding to wander the universe in what might be a vain journey. But he got a nifty Blue Lantern ring out of the deal, so there’s that.
The Teen Titans Cartoon Finale
The original Teen Titans cartoon ended on a very melancholy note that basically seemed to communicate to kids watching that "relationships don’t always have a happy ending and life sucks sometimes, so move on and get over it".
The second season of the show had a girl named Terra join the teenage heroes and start a romance with Beast Boy. But she betrayed them all to the big villain of the series, Slade, revealing she’d been working for him for quite some time. Terra eventually regretted her betrayal and sacrificed herself to stop Slade and save the city, turning to stone in the process. The other Titans vowed to try and cure her.
In the last episode of the series, Beast Boy comes back to the city after being away, only to see a girl who looks just like Terra. He checks to find her statue-self is gone and concludes this girl indeed his former love. But no matter how hard he tries, Terra claims not to remember him and avoids him. Beast Boy is desperate to believe this is really Terra and she didn’t really forget him. He meets up with Slade again, and is told that Terra probably doesn’t want to remember him. Beast Boy completely flips out and blames Slade, beating on him only to discover he’s just fighting a robot duplicate Slade sent for the purpose of…I dunno, rubbing it in that his girlfriend doesn’t want anything to do with him.
When he tries to talk to maybe-Terra one final time, she basically tells him the Terra he knew was a lie and he’s going to have to forget her because “things change.” He watches numbly as she leaves and then forces himself to go help his team with the fight they’re currently in.
The whole thing left a lot of unanswered questions (how did Terra come back, why did Slade send a robot and so on…) which basically hammered it into viewers head “Life sucks and things are usually unresolved and sad. So go deal with that, children.”
The David the Gnome Finale
Show aimed at four-year-olds don’t typically end with a lesson about how the cold embrace of death is inevitable, but David the Gnome is an exception. The happy, wholesome 90’s show ended with an episode where the main character, David, and his wife hit the official death age for gnomes, which is four-hundred. They ascend a hill to die and turn into trees, while their best friend, a fox named Swift, watches their demise.
Swift is left grieving his loved ones, though he does meet a hot lady fox so, uh, I guess the lesson is when all your friends die you can always just hook up with the first person you meet after the funeral to take the edge off?
The ReBoot Finale
ReBoot was a CGI animated series from the 90s that took place in the world inside a computer. The main characters are sentient programs who fight to protect the computer from viruses. The series ends with one of the viruses successfully infecting all the programs in the computer while the heroes can only watch in despair. And…that’s it. The whole thing was never resolved because the show creator was holding out hope for a continuation that he never got. Nobody can save your computers from infection, kids.
The Digimon Tamers Finale
Things got pretty dark in the third season of Digimon. The last half of the series basically showed the spiral of one of its main characters into horrible, suicidal depression due to her loved ones dying- and the character in question was a ten-year-old. Juri was a girl who typically tried to act cheerful, despite her dead mother and troubled relationship with her father and stepmother. But when her Digimon was killed, she broke down completely and was subsequently possessed by an evil being who used her to power its machinations. While imprisoned, Juri had many horrific nightmarish flashbacks to the deaths of her loved ones and even tried to choke herself to death at one point.
I'm an adult and that freaks me out.
But eventually Juri decided to fight back and live and was then rescued. Her relationship with her family was even implied to improve, though we saw no sign of her getting the metric ton of therapy she clearly needs.
Isn’t that a happy ending, then? Well, the series then decided to have the children be forcibly separated from their Digimon, who returned to the digital world. They tearfully had their beloved companions ripped from their arms.
There was a moment at the very end where the main character saw a tunnel of light that might lead to the Digimon but it wasn’t conclusive. And a drama CD set after the end of the series revealed that all they could actually do with the tunnel was send messages to their Digimon, not be with them. Buy hey, Juri’s not the only one who doesn’t have a Digimon anymore, I guess!
The Dennou Coil Finale
The ending to the Dennou Coil series was very beautiful and moving, but also undeniably bittersweet with the bitter part being pretty intense. Throughout the series, a girl names Isako had been working to try to cure her comatose brother- but then she finds out her brother wasn’t actually comatose, but dead all along, something with she had blocked out due to trauma. She herself then ended up comatose, trapping herself in a fantasy world where her brother is still alive and she is still a child. The protagonist, Yasako, goes after her, only to have her beloved dog be killed, leading to one of the most heartwrenching scenes of the series.
However, she manages help Isako save herself, encouraging her let go of her childhood and dead brother and face the future and all the pain that goes with it. “Toward the pain, there’s an exit!” It’s a beautiful message about growing up and dealing with trauma, but geez, it was pretty rough all around and had a sizable death toll. This screenshot sort of sums up how this series rolled:
The Heartcatch Precure Finale
Heartcatch Precure was a happy magical girl show aimed at five-year-old girls and it mostly showed things working out for its characters…except for the fact it brutally heaped trauma after trauma on the oldest of the magical hero squad, Yuri. She started out the series very depressed because her cute fairy helper had died and also her father was missing. Then the series finale had her reunite with her father in the cruelest way possible- it turns out her dad had been taken by the villains and brainwashed to work for them. A big villain of the series, Dark Precure, actually turned out to be a clone of Yuri her father had engineered to fight her. Yuri ended up killing her sort-of-sister. Her dad snapped out of being evil long enough to sacrifice himself and die in front of Yuri. And unlike in most magical girls shows for kids, all these people all stayed dead.
Yuri very unrealistically managed to get over this in the space of five minutes, but realistically? Her devastation should have been brutal. Pretty much everything she touched suffered and died. She now has to go back to her mother and hide the fact she knows that dad is never coming back and also did some incredibly creepy scientific experiments.
The Young Justice Finale
The day is successfully saved in the Young Justice finale, but not without cost. Kid Flash sacrifices himself to save the world and leaves Artemis a grieving girlfriend. She even changes her superhero identity before she can’t be like she was before.
The New Batman Adventures Finale
Batman: The Animated Series was pretty dark, but the last aired episode of the series took the cake. Mad Love centered on the Joker’s sidekick and girlfriend Harley Quinn and showcased how she was hopelessly trapped in an abusive relationship. Harley successfully managed to capture Batman and was about to kill him, but he convinced her to call the Joker about it. The Joker quickly arrived and berated Harley for trying to kill Batman in a way that wasn’t funny, eventually hitting her so hard she fell out the window. Like many abuse victims, Harley told herself she deserved it before passing out.
A heavily injured Harley was later shown later in confinement, swearing to herself that she hates the Joker now and is glad to be done with him…but then she sees a love note from him apologizing and basically runs right back into his arms.
Basically, it’s a pretty horrifying (and in many cases, accurate) look at domestic abuse and shows no indication the victim will ever free herself, which isn’t the kind of thing you typically expect from a kids cartoon.
The Superman: The Animated Series Finale
The finale of the Superman: The Animated series, Legacy, was similarly dour. Superman finally manages to defeat Darkseid, the tyrannical ruler of the hell-world Apokolips. But rather than jump at freedom, Darkseid’s enslaved people rescue him instead. Superman realized because he’s successfully brainwashed these people into being loyal to him despite his abuse, Darkseid can never truly be defeated. Yay….for…truth and justice?