Only the Leads Get a Happy Ending: Difference between revisions

This is where a story ends on a happy, upbeat note, with all the problems resolved and everyone getting back to leading happy, fulfilling lives ... but only if they're main characters. Basically, the characters the audience know and care about get their happy ending, but it comes at the expense of minor characters who get stuck with a [[Downer Ending]].

 

 

Related to [[Protagonist-Centered Morality]], [[Inferred Holocaust]], [[Esoteric Happy Ending]], [[Everybody's Dead, Dave]], and [[Dwindling Party]]. If an [[Adam and Eve Plot]] is both apocalyptic and presented as having an upbeat ending, it's also this.

* In ''[[Breaking Dawn]]'', the main characters all get happy endings. Meanwhile, every other secondary character goes back to a nomadic life, presumably on the Volturi's target list.

* The epilogue of [[Lois McMaster Bujold]]'s ''[[Vorkosigan Saga|Shards of Honor]]'' starkly emphasizes that the leads may have gotten their happy ending, but a lot of innocent people died along the way.

 

== Live-Action TV ==

* Similar to the ''[[Family Guy]]'' example below, at the end of the second season premiere of ''[[It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia]]'', Frank very conspicuously says "the important thing is that nobody ''important'' got ''seriously'' hurt" after the gang got in a car accident. The camera then pans over to an unnamed character who was with the group at the time lying in a full body cast in a hospital bed calling them jerks.

 

* The play ''Life Is A Dream'' by Pedro Calderon de la Barca ends with the main couple having a beautiful wedding! Never mind the pointless war the protagonist and his father were having.

* [[Older Than Steam]] [[Shakespeare]]an examples:

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Drama Tropes]]

[[Category:Ending Tropes]]