Surprisingly Happy Ending: Difference between revisions

{{quote|'''Celestia:''' Are you not happy that your quest is complete and you can return to your studies in Canterlot?

'''Twilight:''' That's just it. Just when I learned how wonderful it is to have friends, I have to leave them.

 

Towards the end of a work, it seems like the ending coming up is going to be [[Bittersweet Ending|bittersweet]] if not a full-blown [[Downer Ending|downer]]; but a sudden plot-twist comes around that yields a happier ending than one could have logically expected.

Note that, while the happy ending is logically a surprise to the characters, it might not be one for [[Genre Savvy]] viewers.

 

{{examples}}

 

* The ''[[Xenosaga]]'' anime (and the first game it's been adapted from) ends with KOS-MOS seemingly sacrificing herself to save Shion and the rest. Then, however, she comes back, battered but otherwise fine. It's still a [[Bittersweet Ending]], since {{spoiler|Momo died by [[Heroic Sacrifice]] earlier on}}, but not the [[Downer Ending]] it could have been.

* ''[[Tiger and Bunny]]'' managed to pull this trope twice in the final two epsiodes. {{spoiler|In episode 25 Kotetsu gets up after the is heroic sacrifice to reveal he hadn't died and had only passed out from the pain. A few minutes later Him and Bunny tell their friends they are going to retire from the hero-life, only to [[Time Skip]] a year forward with them both returning to the Hero business.}}

** In the second season of the anime, Saito {{spoiler|makes a [[Last Stand]] while Louise is taken aboard a refugee ship.}} Cue Louise's [[Heroic BSOD]] when she realizes {{spoiler|Saito is dead. But later, he reappears, claiming that faeries brought him back to life.}}

** In the third season, it appears the heroes have successfully escaped a [[Fate Worse Than Death]]... except that they've {{spoiler|taken refuge back in Tristain, where they are wanted criminals. At the trial, Queen Henrietta sentences them to wear mantles, which for all practical purposes is a pardon.}}

* One of the short stories in Alice Munro's ''Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage'' is about a down-on-her-luck woman traveling to see a man she believes is in love with her when in fact he doesn't even know she exists and his love letters to her were all sent by a pair of teenage girls who didn't want her to be crushed by never receiving a reply from him. This can only lead to disappointment and heartbreak for the woman, right? Nope; the man turns out to be lonely and glad for the company and the woman decides that it would be best ''not'' to bring up the letters with him, and it ends with [[Babies Ever After]] and one of the girls in on the love letter plot wondering at how everything turned out all right in the end.

 

* The ending of Series Six of ''[[Doctor Who]]''. Time is no longer going to unravel, but it happened at the expense of {{spoiler|the Doctor's life}}. Except that {{spoiler|it wasn't the Doctor who died, it was simply the Tessalecta disguised as the Doctor}}.

 

* In the original ''[[Peter and The Wolf]]'' the story ends by revealing that the duck that had been eaten was swallowed alive by the wolf, creating only vague possibility that the duck would be recovered. However, it also allows for the possibility that the duck would simply die a slow death inside the wolf, which is the interpretation that [["Weird Al" Yankovic|Weird Al Yankovic]] gave to it. Because of this, many adaptations add the wolf vomiting the still-alive duck back up at the ending.

 

 

== [[Visual Novels]] ==

{{quote|'''Shirou''': "I'm back."

'''Saber''': "Welcome home, Shirou." }}

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Happiness Tropes]]

[[Category:Ending Tropes]]