25 most heartbreaking Arrowverse deaths of all-time

11. Iris West

Before you read on: No, Iris West is not dead, but that certainly didn’t stop The Flash from trying to convince us that she was now, did it?

The show’s third season spent much of its time teasing us that Savitar was going to kill Iris before it came to an end, and thus, Barry and Team Flash had to figure out how to stop it. And yet, after a relatively small-scale penultimate episode in which it was clear that they were going to save Iris, the writers threw a curveball by having H.R. Wells inadvertently tell the self-proclaimed God of Speed where she was.

Then, just as we had seen so many times before, the speed demon prepared to launch his dagger into Iris’ back, and we kept waiting for some last-minute Deus ex Machina interference. Instead, we got a slow-motion montage that took the time to show us every pain-staking second as the Fastest Man Alive was too slow to save the love of his life

And how do you make this scene even more emotional? Well, you intercut said scene with clips of Iris filming her wedding vows that Barry would presumably never get to see her say in person and play Aurora’s “Murder Song (5, 4, 3, 2, 1)” in the background.

Everything about this, from the close-ups on the helpless faces, to Iris’ voiceover made this seem like it truly was the end that, by the time she actually was stabbed, our hearts were already broken. Drama at its absolute finest.

Thankfully for Iris… all was not what it seemed…