Endless Love
TV series often veer into the idea of a love that seems foretold by fate. But in science fiction and fantasy, sometimes this can literally be true: two people can share a love that's part of the fabric of space and time, surviving partnership with others, insuperable separations, and even death and afterlife.
Sometimes this takes the form of two people who are fated to come together, life after life, across an endless string of reincarnations: so for example Birgitte and Gaidal Cain in Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time. But most often we get paranormal confirmation that two people were meant to be together.
The Series:Lois & Clark, 1993-1996
The Stars: Dean Cain and Teri Hatcher
The Setup: Kansas farm-boy Clark falls for sharp-tongued city girl Lois.
Fateful Meeting: Though Clark is clearly impressed in his first encounter with Lois (in which she snubs him), their real fateful meeting comes later at Lex's ball: all decked out in formal wear, she strides across the ballroom and demands Lex's attention (and immediately gets it). Clark's reaction: He famously rises up and hangs, floating, a foot about the dance floor.
Forever Love: Not only do they learn, by way of time traveler H. G. Wells, that they're fated to found a utopian society together, and are wed by their guardian angel, but in the final episode the universe gives them a baby!
The Series:Smallville, 2004-2011
The Stars: Tom Welling and Erica Durance
The Setup: Kansas farm-boy Clark falls for sharp-tongued army brat Lois.
Fateful Meeting: Lois, visiting Smallville for the first time, encounters an amnesiac Clark Kent standing in the middle of a cornfield, buck naked.
Forever Love: While early versions of the Lois/Clark/Superman relationship were all about the love triangle, here destiny pairs them more sensibly. Though he's with Lana when Lois first enters the picture, Clark eventually understands that Lois is the one fated to help him achieve his destiny -- a realization confirmed by both future visitors and his own glimpse, provided by Brainiac, of their forthcoming reporting/superheroing partnership.
The Series:The Dead Zone, 2002-2007
The Stars: Anthony Michael Hall and Nicole de Boer
The Setup: Hockey-playing science teacher emerges from six-year coma to find his true love married to a cop named Walt. Oh, and he's psychic now (even more than he was).
Fateful Meeting: As a kid, Sarah witnesses Johnny's accurate prediction that another kid would get stuck under weak ice; little Sarah wisely tells Johnny the kid should have listened.
Forever Love: You have to really hold out for this one. After years of Johnny very carefully walking the line of respectful friend to a married woman (raising his child), Walt is killed, and Johnny eases naturally into his originally destined role of husband and father.
The Series:Roswell, 1999-2002
The Stars: Jason Behr and Shiri Appleby
The Setup: Alien hybrid Max and soulmate science-loving human Liz find love at Roswell High.
Fateful Meeting: After knowing each other since the third grade, Max risks discovery to save Liz's life when she's accidentally shot in the stomach.
Forever Love: After a second-season episode in which a Max from the future shows up with the news that their destined, eternal love will have the crummy side-effect of ruining everyone's lives (because it drives away Tess, another alien whose help they need), that future is later rendered moot (Tess betrays them) and in the end Max and Liz, who's acquired alien snap-crackle-pop syndrome, marry and drive off into their future. Aww.
The Series:New Amsterdam, 2008
The Stars: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Alexie Gilmore
The Setup: After saving the life of a shaman, a 17th-century is granted freedom from aging and death until he meets his one true love.
Fateful Meeting: Sara is the doctor on call when John has an unexpected heart attack and dies, and is perplexed when the corpse disappears (John got up and left). The encounter convinces John that she is the One.
Forever Love: There's nothing more forever than an immortal awaiting a love foretold, but New Amsterdam was canceled after only seven episodes, so we'll never find out how John's story ends, and with whom.
The Series:Now and Again, 1999-2000
The Stars: Eric Close and Margaret Colin
The Setup: Michael, his brain transplanted into a new body after a fatal accident, still yearns for his wife.
Fateful Meeting: Though we don't see their beginnings, the Wisemans are still in love after being married long enough to have a teenage daughter.
Forever Love: When it comes to eternal love, a devotion that survives death is hard to beat. In this case, Michael has been given a new, engineered body possessed of abnormal strength and speed and has been recruited by the government as a secret agent (albeit one without any personal freedom), and all he can think of is his wife and family, more than once risking his life just so he can see Lisa again.
The Series:Journeyman, 2007
The Stars: Kevin McKidd and Gretchen Egolf
The Setup: A loving husband and father develops the uncontrollable ability to time-travel.
Fateful Meeting: Dan and Katie marry even though they're originally paired with the wrong mates: Dan's girlfriend Olivia is thought dead, and Katie, comforting Dan, realizes she loves him and not his brother.
Forever Love: Dan, forced into a constant life of vanishing into the past "on assignment" -- uncomfortably like his print photographer dad, who left his family when Dan was a kid -- is plagued by fear he'll abandon Katie too; and the traveling strains their marriage. But in the pilot on Dan saves his marriage by proving his time travel, and by the end he knows that with Katie is where he truly belongs.
The Series:Legend of the Seeker, 2008-2010
The Stars: Craig Horner and Bridget Regan
The Setup: The long-foretold Seeker falls in forbidden love with his Confessor.
Fateful Meeting: Kahlan undertakes a great journey to the distant Hartland to find the prophesied Seeker, only to discover, much to her dismay, an untrained rustic youth.
Forever Love: Richard and Kahlan fall deeply in love in the course of their journeys, but both seek to suppress it because to physically express it would cause Richard to become enslaved to Kahlan's powers. In the finale, however, they discover that their epic love is so potent, so pure, that it can overpower any magic -- even a Confessor's. A passionate kiss ensues, and the credits roll for the last time.
Sometimes this takes the form of two people who are fated to come together, life after life, across an endless string of reincarnations: so for example Birgitte and Gaidal Cain in Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time. But most often we get paranormal confirmation that two people were meant to be together.
8. Clark Kent & Lois Lane
The Series:Lois & Clark, 1993-1996
The Stars: Dean Cain and Teri Hatcher
The Setup: Kansas farm-boy Clark falls for sharp-tongued city girl Lois.
Fateful Meeting: Though Clark is clearly impressed in his first encounter with Lois (in which she snubs him), their real fateful meeting comes later at Lex's ball: all decked out in formal wear, she strides across the ballroom and demands Lex's attention (and immediately gets it). Clark's reaction: He famously rises up and hangs, floating, a foot about the dance floor.
Forever Love: Not only do they learn, by way of time traveler H. G. Wells, that they're fated to found a utopian society together, and are wed by their guardian angel, but in the final episode the universe gives them a baby!
7. Clark Kent & Lois Lane
The Series:Smallville, 2004-2011
The Stars: Tom Welling and Erica Durance
The Setup: Kansas farm-boy Clark falls for sharp-tongued army brat Lois.
Fateful Meeting: Lois, visiting Smallville for the first time, encounters an amnesiac Clark Kent standing in the middle of a cornfield, buck naked.
Forever Love: While early versions of the Lois/Clark/Superman relationship were all about the love triangle, here destiny pairs them more sensibly. Though he's with Lana when Lois first enters the picture, Clark eventually understands that Lois is the one fated to help him achieve his destiny -- a realization confirmed by both future visitors and his own glimpse, provided by Brainiac, of their forthcoming reporting/superheroing partnership.
6. Johnny Smith & Sarah Bannerman
The Series:The Dead Zone, 2002-2007
The Stars: Anthony Michael Hall and Nicole de Boer
The Setup: Hockey-playing science teacher emerges from six-year coma to find his true love married to a cop named Walt. Oh, and he's psychic now (even more than he was).
Fateful Meeting: As a kid, Sarah witnesses Johnny's accurate prediction that another kid would get stuck under weak ice; little Sarah wisely tells Johnny the kid should have listened.
Forever Love: You have to really hold out for this one. After years of Johnny very carefully walking the line of respectful friend to a married woman (raising his child), Walt is killed, and Johnny eases naturally into his originally destined role of husband and father.
5. Max Evans & Liz Parker
The Series:Roswell, 1999-2002
The Stars: Jason Behr and Shiri Appleby
The Setup: Alien hybrid Max and soulmate science-loving human Liz find love at Roswell High.
Fateful Meeting: After knowing each other since the third grade, Max risks discovery to save Liz's life when she's accidentally shot in the stomach.
Forever Love: After a second-season episode in which a Max from the future shows up with the news that their destined, eternal love will have the crummy side-effect of ruining everyone's lives (because it drives away Tess, another alien whose help they need), that future is later rendered moot (Tess betrays them) and in the end Max and Liz, who's acquired alien snap-crackle-pop syndrome, marry and drive off into their future. Aww.
4. John Amsterdam & Sara Dillane (?)
The Series:New Amsterdam, 2008
The Stars: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Alexie Gilmore
The Setup: After saving the life of a shaman, a 17th-century is granted freedom from aging and death until he meets his one true love.
Fateful Meeting: Sara is the doctor on call when John has an unexpected heart attack and dies, and is perplexed when the corpse disappears (John got up and left). The encounter convinces John that she is the One.
Forever Love: There's nothing more forever than an immortal awaiting a love foretold, but New Amsterdam was canceled after only seven episodes, so we'll never find out how John's story ends, and with whom.
3. Michael & Lisa Wiseman
The Series:Now and Again, 1999-2000
The Stars: Eric Close and Margaret Colin
The Setup: Michael, his brain transplanted into a new body after a fatal accident, still yearns for his wife.
Fateful Meeting: Though we don't see their beginnings, the Wisemans are still in love after being married long enough to have a teenage daughter.
Forever Love: When it comes to eternal love, a devotion that survives death is hard to beat. In this case, Michael has been given a new, engineered body possessed of abnormal strength and speed and has been recruited by the government as a secret agent (albeit one without any personal freedom), and all he can think of is his wife and family, more than once risking his life just so he can see Lisa again.
2. Dan & Katie Vasser
The Series:Journeyman, 2007
The Stars: Kevin McKidd and Gretchen Egolf
The Setup: A loving husband and father develops the uncontrollable ability to time-travel.
Fateful Meeting: Dan and Katie marry even though they're originally paired with the wrong mates: Dan's girlfriend Olivia is thought dead, and Katie, comforting Dan, realizes she loves him and not his brother.
Forever Love: Dan, forced into a constant life of vanishing into the past "on assignment" -- uncomfortably like his print photographer dad, who left his family when Dan was a kid -- is plagued by fear he'll abandon Katie too; and the traveling strains their marriage. But in the pilot on Dan saves his marriage by proving his time travel, and by the end he knows that with Katie is where he truly belongs.
1. Richard Rahl & Kahlan Amnell
The Series:Legend of the Seeker, 2008-2010
The Stars: Craig Horner and Bridget Regan
The Setup: The long-foretold Seeker falls in forbidden love with his Confessor.
Fateful Meeting: Kahlan undertakes a great journey to the distant Hartland to find the prophesied Seeker, only to discover, much to her dismay, an untrained rustic youth.
Forever Love: Richard and Kahlan fall deeply in love in the course of their journeys, but both seek to suppress it because to physically express it would cause Richard to become enslaved to Kahlan's powers. In the finale, however, they discover that their epic love is so potent, so pure, that it can overpower any magic -- even a Confessor's. A passionate kiss ensues, and the credits roll for the last time.
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