While they've only ever briefly been together properly, the two are probably one of the most famous superhero couples (and the most well-known Superhero/Supervillain couple). Batman has had many different love interests over the years, but besides Talia, none have come close to Catwoman in popularity or how long they've lasted. DC also has Batman and Catwoman, to the point they even have a trope named after their relationship.
Meanwhile, most Spider-Man adaptations frequently just use MJ as his love interest (the main exceptions being The Amazing Spider-Man Series using Gwen and the Marvel Cinematic Universe using a character based off MJ). DC even based an entire show around their courtship, Smallville built them up similarly (despite originally putting Clark together with Lana Lang, and strong fandom love for Canon Immigrant Chloe Sullivan), and the 2021 series Superman & Lois was a hit with critics and audiences alike (even appealing to people who weren't fans of the Arrowverse beforehand). Both couples took a very long time to hook up in the comics themselves, have had other love interests who've never been quite as popular (though Peter/ Gwen Stacy is also rather popular, they never became this due to Gwen being largely obscure to non-comic fans until recent years), and are still largely the most well-known couples in the superhero genre even to people who aren't fans of the genre. Both Marvel Comics and DC Comics have one, in the forms of Peter Parker/Mary Jane Watson and Clark Kent/Lois Lane respectively.One area where the trope is still going strong, however, is with same-sex couples, as they tend to automatically get showered with attention simply due to their ground-breaking nature.Ĭompare Official Couple Ordeal Syndrome, which this usually involves. Soap writers today usually prefer to use this to their advantage and even those pairings that were once thought untouchable (even the aforementioned Luke and Laura) are not immune from this. These pairings often become more popular than the show's Official Couple, resulting in a lot of Ship-to-Ship Combat. The rise of internet messageboards in the 1990s provided an outlet for fans of alternative pairings. The supercouple is now on its way to becoming a Discredited Trope as audiences eventually tired of seeing their favorite supercouples getting married for the fourth time and knew that as long as both characters of a pairing remained on the show, then any break up would not be permanent. Many articles spoke of this new breath of life in the formula as riveting as well as the daring new directions some couples went, Bianca and Maggie being the first Same-Sex Supercouple ever conceived for example. This Beta Couple would then replace their previous counterparts as the show's Official Couple once the previous couple had gotten married.Įventually, this formula was picked up by other genres, most notably with Ross and Rachel from Friends, who resolved their Will They or Won't They? late in the show's second season and spent the next eight years playing out this trope (Ross even married another woman along the way, as well as marrying and divorcing Rachel at one point).Īfter a lull in the late 80s and early 90s a resurgence of the formula began to gain steam for a new generation in the mid-90s and early 00s, with the likes of The Young and the Restless Nick and Sharon, JT and Coleen, Days of Our Lives Lucas and Sami, Shawn and Belle, Austin and Carrie, All My Children Mateo and Haley, Edmund and Maria, Leo and Greenlee, Bianca and Maggie, General Hospital Sonny and Brenda, Lucky and Elizabeth, Patrick and Robin and so on.
Soap writers took great care to groom their next supercouple long before the first were concluding their arc in order to maintain a certain amount of Unresolved Sexual Tension.
These storylines, if successful, gathered high ratings and press attention for their show. Often Alice would be subjected to an attempted or actual rape along the way, usually by her villainous husband.
This marriage would quickly fall apart and after some more adventures, Alice and Bob would reunite and marry. One half of the couple (usually Alice, but sometimes Bob and occasionally both) would then marry the Romantic False Lead. For example: Alice and Bob, a pair of Star-Crossed Lovers, would fall in love after a short period of Will They or Won't They?, but a misunderstanding would drive them apart. Other Soaps, most notably Sister Series All My Children and NBC's Days of Our Lives quickly sought supercouple pairings of their own, eventually leading to a standard formula for the phenomenon that was repeated endlessly during the 1980s.