Best of 2025: Romantic Relationships features spoilers for various shows. Please be advised if there’s something you don’t want to know.
Looking back throughout the year, we’ve had more couples fall apart than those who’ve come together. We’re still in the trenches with a lot of slow, slow burns, and in truth, it’s an odd feeling. This is the one list we’re always overflowing with, yet the scarcity this year is so odd. (Is this my way of saying I miss My Lady Jane? Yes, 100%.) Still, we’ve got a few gems we thankfully need to scream about.
For more end-of-the-year coverage, be sure to check out our Best of 2025: Performances, the Best of 2025: Romantic Scenes, the Best of 2025: Found Families, and the Best of 2025: TV Episodes.
1. Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov
Heated Rivalry
It’s indescribable how Heated Rivalry began airing close to the end of the year, and immediately, Ilya Rosanov and Shane Hollander climbed the ranks to land as the number one pairing in our Best of 2025 Romantic Relationships list. (They belong in the top spot on everyone’s list, let’s be real.) What we’re seeing with Heated Rivalry is unlike anything else that’s on TV right now, and it’s entirely because of Jacob Tierney’s vision and his inimitable love for the romance genre, as well as what each actor brings to the table in their means to showcase a life-changing intimacy.
At the moment when this article is being written, we’ve only gotten to Season 1, Episode 4, yet everything that we see is so viscerally moving and deeply profound that there are few words to describe it. Naysayers want to deem the show meaningless smut, but how Ilya and Shane find each other in a crowded room, move around one another, and slowly grow closer is an inimitable showcase of how intimacy evolves during the in-between moments. How sex and a literal heated rivalry turn to love through achingly beautiful depictions of vulnerability. There hasn’t been a pairing like them in decades, and the groundbreaking means by which they can set a new standard is something we’ll be talking about for a long, long time.
2. Belly Conklin and Conrad Fisher
The Summer I Turned Pretty
It’s always been Belly and Conrad—it was just a matter of how we (and they) were going to get to the endgame. The Summer I Turned Pretty’s final season follows the former sweethearts on a journey of growing up and growing back together. Their initial dynamic is elegantly flipped, with Conrad now the yearner from a distance.
More importantly, the show gives them time to grow individually and become their best selves. That way, when they finally do reconnect (over the course of a Parisian sequence that is sexy, tender, and just plain romance-novel perfect), we know it’s real, right, and forever. [BY: Amanda Prahl]
3. Peggy Scott and William Kirkland
The Gilded Age
The season of The Gilded Age is for the viewers who love soft love stories (and hate Charles Fane). It’s for the characters who’ve spent a long time believing and the ones who deserve good things that last. And from the moment Dr. Kirkland expressed interest in our girl Peggy Scott, I hoped for the kind of content that’d allow us to talk about them outside of the show’s review coverage. They’re a perfect example of the strangers to friends to lovers trope—two people who meet in an unfortunate situation but realize that maybe this is the best thing that could’ve happened.
Peggy deserves the world, and Dr. Kirkland is about to give it to her. The beginning of their love story is full of challenges, but every beat where the audience gets to watch them fall for one another is a wholesome treat that makes the season a heart-squeezing delight. With the most gorgeous proposal in the season finale, “My Mind Is Made Up,” and a myriad of sweet moments throughout the season, viewers get a clear sense that they’re it for each other. She needs and deserves someone who’ll support all her endeavors, and he’s already proven that he cares just as much about similar causes. He’s proven that he sees all of her—in every way where it matters.
4. Scott Hunter and Kip Grady
Heated Rivalry
You didn’t think we’d skip SKIP in our Best of 2025 Romantic Relationships list, did you? Because you don’t know us at all, if that thought crossed your mind. Heated Rivalry doesn’t just bring one compelling romance to our screens, but two to showcase how every relationship is not only special but so uniquely moving in a way that feels extra relatable. Scott Hunter and Kip Grady’s romance is for the people with big feelings. It’s for the softies—the ones who fall hard and fast.
What we get between them in Episode 3 is a technical and narrative achievement in delivering a single love story with a short amount of time that’ll later be tremendously impactful to the overall story in a way that’ll leave a mark. From the performances to every beat of their tender romance, the bond between Scott and Kip is so captivating that it proves you can tell impactful stories through a short amount of time, so long as intimacy and sincere vulnerability are at the center.
5. Gregory Eddie and Janine Teagues
Abbott Elementary
Every new development we get between Gregory Eddie and Janine Teagues makes Abbott Elementary shine as one of the most effective and achingly romantic comedies, and 2025 delivers a plethora for the two of them. From their first love declarations to yet another incredible couple’s Halloween costume, everything that we see between them continues to show that finding someone who’s right for you is the best thing to make the ordinary days brighter—better.
And in every way, Gregory and Janine make each other better. They’re there beside each other at school, but outside of their jobs, too, in order to showcase just how much they’re willing to do to make the other’s life a little easier. It’s all so adorably sweet, and really, I stand by the fact that every sitcom needs its it couple to make the narratives lovelier. Abbott Elementary was already a tremendous achievement, but allowing Gregory and Janine to be happy and together is the bonus gift that keeps on giving.
6. Max Mitchell and Cole Ellis
Wild Cards
Wild Cards is a dream for romance fans, and everything we get between Max and Ellis in Season 2 delivers in spades. They’re always a blast to watch, but how they navigate through their partnership with new cases and moments of vulnerability ensures that their bond strengthens. More than that, it allows them to stand out as a procedural couple in a way that we haven’t seen for a while.
They might not be an official couple yet, but from their first (real) kiss to the events of the finale, everything tells us that the way they care for one another hit them both like a bulldozer. Neither expected the impact the other would have on them, and neither knows how to deal with it, either. It’s going to be so captivating to watch them continue orbiting around each other next season and see how their relationship can heal every broken part of them that they’ve never shown to another person before.
7. Percy Jackson and Annabeth Chase
Percy Jackson and the Olympians
No, they aren’t a couple at the moment, but it’s so crucial to watch every moment that transpires between Percy Jackson and Annabeth Chase in Percy Jackson and the Olympians to understand how much they’ll mean to each other in the future. And they’re already so important to each other that every beat that passes between them is a gorgeous example of how you write a young adult love story. It’s so apparent that the team of writers care deeply about honoring their story from the books that they deliver incredible material for Walker Scobell and Leah Sava Jeffries to work with at every turn.
And that’s just it, at the moment, having seen only four out of the eight episodes we’ll get in Season 2, there’s something so indescribably special here. Something real and honest. It’s the type of bond strengthening between two people who’d do anything to ensure the other is safe. There’s a maturity between them and so much softness that it’s effortless to want to see more in the future. It’s effortless to root for them.
8. Sam and Jay Arondekar
Ghosts
As one of the most well-written examples of an on-screen married couple, Sam and Jay Arondekar set a new standard with their relationship in Ghosts. More often than not, people seem to think that a couple will no longer be exciting when they’re already together, but everything we see between them proves to be the opposite. And more recently, the Season 5 Christmas special is what made me rearrange this entire list to add them on.
In Sam’s version of experiencing the events of It’s a Wonderful Life, she learns that if she had never hit her head and couldn’t see the ghosts, her marriage with Jay would’ve been fractured. He stays at Woodstone Mansion because of her, and everything that he builds with his restaurant at Mahesh is because of her. The life he has now is all because of her. And in those brief moments where she thinks she might lose him forever, Rose McIver does a breathtaking job of showing us just how immensely Sam’s marriage means to her. It’s a breathtaking, gorgeous depiction of love in its most realistic form, and the series’s means of elevating their arc this season is no small feat.
9. Larry Russell and Marian Brook
The Gilded Age
The Gilded Age has been setting up neighbors Larry Russell and Marian Brook from the very beginning, and in Season 3, we not only watch them get together officially, but the angst adds necessary challenges to keep us on our toes. Railroad Daddy and Mommy might be the couple on the show, but while circumstances challenged and pulled them apart this year, Larry and Marian leave viewers with the promise that their love story is only just beginning. There’s so much more coming, and it’s already comforting to witness.
Whether it’s the adorable sneaking around in the first few episodes, the sweet proposal, or the miscommunication that’ll push them both to understand better ways of talking to one another, Larry and Marian scratch every itch we have for the friends-to-lovers trope. Plus, how Harry Richardson and Louisa Jacobson play off one another this season provides a wholesome tenderness that makes the two of them believable as a pair. We’ve watched the two of them go back and forth with other people, but now that they’ve started their own journey, it’ll be exciting to see how they’ll continue growing as a pair in Season 4.
10. Maddie Nears and Wally Clarke
School Spirits
From the beginning, savvy viewers of School Spirits would have picked up that Maddie and Wally were being set up as star-crossed lovers instead of two ghosts finding love in infinite detention, and yet many of us fell for them anyway, desperately hoping for them to get a happy ending somehow. Season 2 built on the unexpectedly sweet bond the two forged, allowing them to continue their steadfast, quiet support of each other, even if Wally’s inclination is usually to be the loudest, if not most endearing, in the room. When the afterlife murder mystery turns into a quest to return Maddie to her body, Wally is still right there by her side, even if he’s terrified of losing her. And Maddie, faced with the idea of leaving the boy who found ways to make her smile when she had very few reasons to, finds it’s just as hard to walk away from him.
In the season finale, our favorite couple isn’t just separated by circumstance, but by life and death, with Wally slipping into his scar in the hope he can be with a facsimile of the girl he lost. Instead, he’s confronted with his door that will allow him to move on, but we’re here hoping there’s a chance for them to share the pancakes he promised Maddie in a beautiful moment of vulnerability before he made the gut-wrenching choice to encourage her to go. [BY: Kate McGinn]
Honorable Mentions: Hetty Woodstone and Trevor Lefkowtiz (Ghosts), Morgan Gillory and Adam Karadec (High Potential), Stella Kidd and Kelly Severide (Chicago Fire), Kat Landry and Elliot Augustine (The Way Home), Emily Lane and Sam Wilner (Mistletoe Murders).
Who are the Best of 2025 romantic relationships you’d add to your list? Let us know in the comments below.