
LONDON—Bringing closure to millions of fans who had breathlessly waited to see whether the two would ever get together, last weekend’s finale of the BBC nature documentary series Planet Earth II finally resolved the ongoing “will they, won’t they” relationship between a snow leopard and a golden eagle. “Everyone spent the whole season wondering if it was ever going to happen, so it was really satisfying when the two animals at long last ended up with each other,” said Entertainment Weekly writer Benjamin Lynch, describing the moment late in the episode when the mountain-dwelling cat and the bird of prey passionately embraced one another on a windswept stretch of the Tibetan plateau. “The chemistry between them was obvious to everyone watching the show, and it was clear that they had strong feelings for one another, but there were still so many times where it seemed like they’d wind up with other wildlife. They’re opposites in a lot of ways—different biomes, different prey—so seeing that storyline resolve so nicely was truly heartwarming.” Lynch added that the episode made up for the widely panned finale of the original Planet Earth, in which the fan favorite green sea turtle was controversially killed off by a spider crab for reasons that were never fully explained.