Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty ImagesJohnny Depp and Amber Heard actually seemed to be taking their time to get to know each other.
They kept their relationship at the "rumored" stage for months, then spent a year engaged before tying the knot on Feb. 3, 2015.
"We connect on a lot of levels but the first things that really got me was, she's an aficionado of the blues," Depp told E! News at the premiere of The Danish Girl in November. "I would play a song, some old obscure blues song, and she knew what it was.
"She's very, very literate," he continued. "She's a voracious reader as I have been, so we connected on that as well and she's kind of brilliant and beautiful. I'm a lucky man."
But less than three months after their first wedding anniversary, it's over.
Heard filed for divorce on Monday—the very day Depp blew Pink's mind on Jimmy Kimmel Live and then hit the red carpet at the Hollywood premiere of Alice Through the Looking Glass.
Now it's time to go back and decode the signs when Depp, asked how he planned to make babies while he and the missus were apart and traveling so much, told E! News that they would "wait for the stork."
His inscrutable, characteristically bemused demeanor makes it impossible to tell—though he must have known, unless Heard's attorney was blindsiding him at that moment. In her divorce petition, their date of separation is specified as May 22. So, Sunday, the day before she filed.
The actress cited irreconcilable differences, but that catch-all box on a form can only reveal so much. This was Depp's second marriage, his first having ended in 1985 after two years before he moved on to high-profile relationships with Winona Ryder, Kate Moss and Vanessa Paradis. He and Paradis were together for almost 14 years and have two children together, Jack and model-actress Lily-Rose.
So, it was pretty surprising when he opted to marry Heard, whom he met on the set of The Rum Diary several years before they actually became a couple.
"They are both passionate, intense and opinionated," qualities that brought them together but have also been the source of friction, a source told E! News shortly before their anniversary.
Depp and Heard swapped vows in a civil ceremony at home, which they followed with an intimate celebration on his private island in the Bahamas.
Despite their idyllic beginnings, the May-December couple had a rocky relationship before they got married—and that didn't change after their I-dos.
"Because of their strong personalities they do not always see eye to eye," the source continued. "They are both stubborn and overly dramatic, which doesn't help when they disagree." The striking stars were hot and heavy, but even that undeniable chemistry served to aid and abet the drama because it would end up clouding their judgment.
The insider also said that Depp, 52, and Heard, 30, are both the type who need his or her own space—and that they understood and respected that about each other. Shortly after they tied the knot, we heard that sometimes a few days of not talking after a fight would usually do the trick—and that when they're busy off making movies, they hardly speak at all.
Still, all of the above could've still just been the mark of two serious actors. But while they were described as being "in a good place" in February, the last few months have been a little strange.
They were spotted hand in hand leaving dinner at Ago in West Hollywood (one of the Depp family's favorite restaurants) in March, but last month, the couple sat stiffly side by side for a video they were required to make as penance for Heard bringing her two dogs into Australia unannounced (as in, she smuggled them in via private jet), and the whole awkward affair was ripe for parody.
And made fun of it was, by everyone from Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel to Depp himself.
"I would really like to apologize for not smuggling my dogs into England because it would have been a bad thing to do," Depp said with utmost mock-sincerity at a press junket for Alice Through the Looking Glass in the U.K., delighting the gathered media. "Because the Australians, though chipper…yeah, they're chipper."
As for the dogs, "I tried to kill them after Australia."
Not that Heard doesn't have a sense of humor, but when it comes to a girl's dogs… Maybe she didn't appreciate her husband being so cavalier.
After that, Heard attended the 2016 Met Gala and the Cannes Film Festival by herself, returning to Los Angeles on May 18.
While we had heard that they routinely had good days and bad days as a couple—and had been that way since the beginning—they had always been able to work through tough times and emerge stronger on the other side.
At some point over the last month, however, someone—if not both of them—decided that the good days weren't balancing out the bad ones anymore.