For Labour and the Conservatives, it was a night of what might have been, what if and nearly.
For Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May, there will be disappointment and relief in equal measures.
Labour will be mightily disappointed that they failed to make the dramatic breakthrough they hoped for in London.
The Tories clung on in their previously impregnable – but now much more vulnerable – citadels of Westminster and Wandsworth.
:: LIVE: Mixed council results for Labour & Tories
Was it fanciful to think that Labour might have captured one or both of these twin jewels in the Tories' local government crown?
Apparently, yes. At least that's what Labour politicians were saying as the results came in during the middle of the night. But they weren't saying that a few weeks ago.
Sadiq Khan cut a forlorn figure in a Sky News interview from the Wandsworth count. A former MP for Tooting, one of the three Parliamentary constituencies in the borough, his photo was on just about every Labour leaflet in Wandsworth.
But his stardust failed to rub off sufficiently on Labour's candidates for the party to recapture a borough it last controlled in the 1970s.
:: Local elections – the results as they happen
If you were to add up the votes in Wandsworth's three constituencies in last year's general election, Labour were well ahead of the Conservatives and therefore – potentially – on course to take over the town hall.
But Mr Khan's fear during this campaign, which appears to have been borne out, was that Labour would pile up votes in the safe wards but fail to make gains in the marginals.
In Westminster, Labour had some big gains to cheer, most notably winning a clean sweep of all three councillors in the leafy Maida Vale ward.
But winning control of a borough that has never been Labour since it was created more than 50 years ago was a challenge too far.
So London brought disappointment for Jeremy Corbyn and relief for Theresa May.
The big disappointments for the Prime Minister and the Tories came in Trafford and Dudley.
They lost control of Trafford, in the leafy suburbs of Greater Manchester, after 14 years in power and failed to win Dudley, in the West Midlands.
Jeremy Corbyn hailed the result in Trafford, where he launched Labour's local election campaign as a "huge coup".
Hardly. It might have been a coup if Labour had seized control. But it didn't.
Possibly the biggest disappointment for the Conservatives will be failing to take control of Dudley, a council which used to have a sizeable group of UKIP councillors, whose votes were up for grabs.
The new Tory chairman Brandon Lewis, fighting his first set of elections in the new job, made it his top target, flooding the borough with activists and visits by ministers, including the Prime Minister.
But there was disappointment for Labour in the West Midlands too, losing Nuneaton and Bedworth, always an ultra-marginal Parliamentary constituency.
The Tories will be delighted to take control of Basildon, another renowned Parliamentary marginal, and Peterborough, a loss in last year's general election.
Earlier this year, it looked like the days after these local elections would be the most perilous period yet for the Prime Minister in her battle to remain in Number 10 if the results were disastrous.
They're not disastrous. They're not that bad. She probably has more to fear in terms of her survival right now from the Brexit civil war being fought out in her Cabinet and on the Tory back benches.
Labour, in the other hand, will no doubt stage an inquest into why they didn't do better, particularly in London, and suffered losses outside the capital.
Has the party reached – or even passed – "peak Corbyn" in these polls? Or did it in last year's General Election?
More from Jeremy Corbyn
Many politicians will claim these were just local elections and therefore we shouldn't read too much into them in terms of a pointer to the next general election.
But that doesn't mean the parties are not disappointed – and at the same time relieved – this morning.
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