It Still Stings: Chuck Ended 30 Seconds Too Early
Photo Courtesy of Warner Bros Television
Editor’s Note: TV moves on, but we haven’t. In our feature series It Still Stings, we relive emotional TV moments that we just can’t get over. You know the ones, where months, years, or even decades later, it still provokes a reaction? We’re here for you. We rant because we love. Or, once loved. And obviously, when discussing finales in particular, there will be spoilers:
Long before she was racking up award nominations for her work as Gilead’s most complex villain-turned-antihero on Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Yvonne Strahovski played super-spy-with-a-heart-of-gold Sarah Walker on NBC action comedy Chuck, which aired on NBC from 2007 to 2012. For four and a half seasons, viewers (and Chuck himself, played by Shazam! star Zachary Levi) fell hard for Sarah’s no-nonsense badassery, fierce loyalty, and deep kindness… until suddenly, in the show’s final season, it all went away.
The premise of Chuck was simple, if a bit silly: After being emailed a top-secret archive containing the entirety of the NSA and CIA databases by his former college roommate, a nerdy Buy More (a Best Buy analog) employee finds himself unwittingly embedded with knowledge and skills that turn him into the world’s most valuable weapon. Of course, the NSA and CIA immediately send out two of their top agents to investigate: Sarah for the CIA, and John Casey (Adam Baldwin) for the NSA. But after realizing that Chuck isn’t a covert operative and really is just a well-meaning doofus in way over his head, the three eventually team up. And while Sarah originally only poses as Chuck’s girlfriend to gather information, the two gradually fall in love and ultimately get married at the end of Season 4.
Unfortunately, everything falls apart in the last three episodes of Season 5, when Sarah has her memories erased by final boss Nicholas Quinn (Angus Macfadyen). Suddenly, she is an even more ruthless version of the stone-cold Sarah we met at the beginning of Season 1, with no recollection of her husband, family, friends, or any of the character-defining experiences she’d been through over the past several years. And although Chuck tries his very best to help her regain her memories in the series finale by using the same Intersect technology that gave him his unwanted powers in the pilot, he is ultimately forced to use it to disarm a bomb instead.
Shortly thereafter, during the bomb-disarming sequence, Sarah surprises everyone by bringing up an old computer virus from Season 1 as the solution to their problem, hinting that her memories may be coming back on their own. But by the end of the episode, she still can’t remember her romance with Chuck or any of the personal details that defined her. As the series drew to a close, it seemed that it may actually end with Sarah and Chuck as strangers, which felt unspeakably cruel for viewers who had invested five years in their relationship.
But then, in the final moments, as the two sit beside each other on a beach—mirroring a scene from the pilot episode—Chuck shares a theory from his best friend, Morgan (Joshua Gomez), that one magical kiss might restore Sarah’s memories. After thinking about it for a second, Sarah decides it’s worth a shot, uttering the show’s final line: “Chuck, kiss me.” And Chuck does.