6 Most Hopeless HBO Shows, Ranked by the Pain Their Characters Endure
Westeros Crushes Innocence
In Game of Thrones, Ned Stark (Sean Bean) comes to King’s Landing believing honor and duty still matter. He soon encounters a political world shaped by harsher rules, as noble houses struggle amid betrayal, war and supernatural threats.
Shireen Baratheon (Kerry Ingram) is a kind, intelligent child who enjoys reading and shows warmth to Ser Davos (Liam Cunningham). Her father, Stannis (Stephen Dillane), allows her to be sacrificed in a desperate bid to improve his military prospects. The act does not win him the victory he sought, and Davos’s discovery of her fate is devastating.
A Mobster’s Lost Escape
In The Sopranos, Christopher Moltisanti (Michael Imperioli) hopes for a respected place in the mob, a Hollywood career and a future with Adriana La Cerva (Drea de Matteo). But his loyalty to Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini), a New Jersey mob boss, comes with dangerous costs.
After Adriana reveals that she has been cooperating with the FBI, Christopher seems ready to leave with her. Seeing a struggling family at a gas station makes him reconsider, and he chooses his criminal life instead. Adriana is killed, and Christopher later dies at Tony’s hands. Tony spends years in therapy and can describe his unhappiness, but that rarely makes him kinder.
Hope Meets Repeated Setbacks
The stories presented here share a pattern: characters can glimpse another way forward, but their circumstances or choices pull them back. In Westeros, Shireen’s death brings no military success; in The Sopranos, Christopher turns away from escape and Adriana pays for it.
The result is a bleak kind of suspense. Survival does not guarantee peace, and understanding what is wrong does not necessarily lead to change. For viewers invested in these characters, even brief hope can make the next loss harder to bear.
Key points
- Shireen’s sacrifice does not secure the military victory Stannis seeks.
- Christopher rejects a chance to escape with Adriana and remains in his criminal life.
- Adriana is killed, and Christopher later dies at Tony’s hands.
- Tony’s years in therapy rarely make him kinder.