Big Love's 12 Most Memorable Moments

When Big Love began in 2006, the Henrickson family's problems were at first limited to the challenges facing four adults in a plural marriage: questions of sharing, solidarity, and personal secrets. They were an ordinary family in some extraordinary circumstances and creators Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer opened a window into a world that few of us will ever see: one of compounds, fundamentalists, intense faith, and vengeful adversaries.

Article - Lacob Big Love The cast of Big Love on the set of their season finale. (Photo by Chuck Zlotnick / HBO)

Over the course of the show's groundbreaking run, the family was besieged by both external and internal threats as the four main characters—Bill (Bill Paxton), Barb (Jeanne Tripplehorn), Nicki (Chloë Sevigny), and Margene (Ginnifer Goodwin)—and their ever-expanding brood of children attempted to find their way, to grab hold of those fleeting moments of joy, and to struggle with the pain of loss, betrayal, and ignorance.

In its final episode, Big Love pushes the Henrickson clan to their breaking point, as Bill faces both a lengthy prison sentence for statutory rape charges and the loss of the family's business. But Bill also receives his true testimony in his church—a nod from Mormon founder Joseph Smith's wife Emma (Rebecca Wisocky)—and he restores the true balance that had been thwarted at Juniper Creek. Bill can now lead his flock of believers into the light.

Or he would have—if his life hadn't been so brutally taken from him by a former friend. But Bill's death accomplishes something that Barb, Nicki, and Margene had struggled with for the past five seasons: it finally unifies the three sister wives in an unbreakable bond. In the final minutes of the show—11 months after Bill's shooting—these three find the common ground they've been fighting for throughout the entire series. And Barb, who struggled with her questions of faith, gains the priesthood she's long sought after and leads the righteous into a new beginning.

For a show that, at its core, has been about families and faith, it was a perfect way to end the remarkable series, as heartbreaking as it was. The 12 scenes selected below from Big Love's five seasons exemplify the way that the show shifted effortlessly from domestic drama to faith-based vision quest, and from the mundane to the divine.