Shawn and Angela broke up in Boy Meets World, leaving viewers to wonder why their relationship failed. Early on in Boy Meets World, it was clear that Cory and Topanga were destined to be the signature couple to emerge from the show. Sure enough, they eventually got married and had kids, with daughter Riley becoming the star of the sequel show Girl Meets World. However, Shawn and Angela were the most dramatically interesting pairing on Boy Meets World.
Shawn (played on the show by Rider Strong) had cultivated a rep as a bit of a bad boy, someone who tended to do well with girls and was all too happy to have brief flings. Then came Angela (Trina McGee), who was a smart and confident addition to the Boy Meets World cast of characters and had no time for Shawn's womanizing tendencies. She insisted on the two of them being equals if they were going to have a relationship.
Angela constantly challenged Shawn on his wort qualities and often succeeded in getting him to see things from a different point of view. While Shawn and Angela's relationship was far from a smooth ride, it was never less than apparent that they cared deeply about each other. Naturally, viewers came to want Shawn and Angela to end up together. However, show creator Michael Jacobs never even considered their pairing being permanent. He felt that despite the intensity of their feelings for each other, every episode featuring the couple made it clear why they were not compatible as long-term partners, unlike Cory (Ben Savage) and Topanga (Danielle Fishel). Jacobs believes that the purpose of Shawn and Angela's relationship was to help them grow and evolve as people before they moved on to better-suited significant others.
Notably, Michael Jacobs has also said that he received an unusual amount of pushback for breaking up Shawn and Angela due to them being an interracial couple, which was sadly still uncommon to see on television in the 1990s. Jacobs put that consideration aside when deciding how to end the relationship, though, as he felt it would be unfair to keep them together solely due to Shawn being white and Angela being Black. In an unexpected twist revealed decades later, Trina McGee claimed that she sometimes dealt with racist behavior from other cast members.
Angela's time on Boy Meets World ended long before its cancellation, with her leaving to spend a year in Europe with her father. However, it was teased that Shawn was going to propose to her but got cut off. It took 15 years, but Angela finally did see Shawn again on Girl Meets World, where it was revealed that she had gotten married and was planning to have kids soon. This encounter led Shawn to finally get closure on the relationship, enabling him to move on with Maya's mom, Katy Hart, whom he would marry by the end of the show.