Chances are that you fall hard and fast for TV and film characters all the time, forming a bond with them that makes you root for their highs and grit through their lows. And when those characters are dealt the ultimate blow and taken out of the equation, it can feel like a gut punch that makes you question your faith in the writers, producers, and filmmakers in charge of your favorite shows and movies.
This weekend, The Walking Dead wraps up its sixth season with the introduction of Negan and his bat, Lucille. The chances are fair that a show that has dispatched several beloved characters (and showrunners) may do it again, so its fans are no doubt bracing themselves for Sunday night. In the meantime, however, we decided to look back at the most impactful TV and film character deaths that we’ve seen and we’d like you to do the same in the comments below.
Warning: There are spoilers here for multiple TV shows and films.
Osgood from Doctor Who
The dorky, meta-Doctor Who fan Osgood (Ingrid Oliver) was one of the best new additions to the British science fiction show’s canon in the 50th-anniversary special. She was the uber-fan made flesh, and I enjoyed watching her represent my ilk with such nerdy flair. So when she popped back up in the series eight finale, “Death in Heaven,” I was more than happy to see her. Or at least I was until Missy (Michelle Gomez) nuked her during a rather tense scene. The two characters were alone, the Doctor was nowhere to be found, and Osgood was left to the murderous devices of his long-running archenemy. Needless to say, I (and many other Doctor Who fans) was pissed. Good thing showrunner Steven Moffat brought her back in series nine. Frankly, the character deserves her own spinoff, and I’ll never forgive Moffat fully until this happens. –Andrew Husband
Spock’s tragic farewell
“The needs of the many outweigh-” “-The needs of the few.” “Or the one.” –Dan Seitz
Claude Tanner – Degrassi High
When I was 10 years old I didn’t know what suicide meant. I heard the word thrown around but hadn’t quite figured it out. So when I watched Claude say goodbye to Caitlin and tell Dwyane he wasn’t going to class anymore I figured he was gonna go spray paint anti-nuke graffiti at another factory or something. But then he unwrapped a gun hidden in a bandana and smiled sadly to himself. A few minutes later Snake would find his bloodied corpse in the boys bathroom and I would know exactly what suicide meant. I wasn’t expecting him to blow his head off, I didn’t know people did that. Besides, Claude was my favorite character! He was an activist and an artist. He was a post-goth ren fair nerd and I hadn’t yet figured out that wasn’t cool. To this day the image of Claude’s leather buckle boots sticking out of the bathroom stall next to a trail of blood haunts me. Peace out Claude. I hope you’re still writing passive aggressive poetry somewhere in the clouds. –Jimmy Andreakos
Brooks Hatlen – The Shawshank Redemption
When I first saw The Shawshank Redemption in theaters in 1994, I had not yet read Rita Hayworth and The Shawshank Redemption, the Stephen King novella for which it was based. Had I been more familiar with King’s story at the time, I may have been better prepared for the absolute gut-punch that was the fate of Brooks Hatlen. As a prison lifer who got paroled after 50 years behind bars, Hatlen was not equipped to handle living in the free society that had long since passed him by. As Red put it, in prison, he was an important man and an educated man. But on the outside, he was nothing. Still, the image of him dangling from a rope inside his bare apartment after giving up on life so soon after his release is one that has stuck with me since I first saw the movie 22 years ago. And near the end of the movie when Red found himself in the exact same predicament — couldn’t the parole board at least get him a different apartment? — the lump in the back of my throat could not have been any bigger.
Please don’t do it, Red. Please don’t do it.
Oh, thank goodness. –Brian Sharp
Rita’s death on Dexter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5n0nP16NzM
It was inevitable that Dexter’s love interest, Rita, was going to kick the bucket eventually — it had to happen. She’s was simply too nice for Dexter, and not just nice, but so nice that it became kind of annoying. What I didn’t see coming was how she would become the Trinity Killer’s final victim in the season four finale. John Lithgow’s role as Trinity was the perfect nemesis for Dexter, cunning, ruthless and just plain creepy as hell, with no other killer on the show even coming close to matching up. The remaining seasons of Dexter might have been a mixed bag, but those 12 episodes that culminated with Dexter finding Rita in a bathtub of blood with his son Harrison crying on the floor gave us some of the best TV in 2009. – Bennett Hawkins
Omar from The Wire and Richard Harrow from Boardwalk Empire
The one that sticks out for me is Omar from The Wire. Not only was he one of the great television characters of all time, whose death I took almost like the death of a loved one, but the death itself was one of the all-time greatest. No build-up, it wasn’t the result of some Shakespearian inevitability, just a random act of violence. Which was perfectly suited for the reality of that show. He just got got. As Omar said himself, it’s all in the game, yo.
Not to cheat by choosing two, but Richard Harrow from Boardwalk Empire hit me pretty hard too, enough that I feel compelled to bring him up if no one else is. I loved that romantically-inclined, disfigured cold-blooded assassin like my own kin. –Vince Mancini
Adriana’s death in The Sopranos
In a show that was defined by its penchant for killing characters, the death of Adriana La Cerva near the end of The Sopranos’ fifth season struck a blow that set it apart from its already substantial body count. Since her first appearance in the pilot episode, Adriana was the unflinchingly sweet, naive, and good-hearted person who wanted nothing more than a life with her fiance, Christopher. When it was eventually revealed that she’d been talking to the FBI for the better part of two years, her grim fate was all but inevitable. But the show’s use of a brief, disorienting fantasy sequence beforehand, one that gave us some fleeting hope that she’d managed to escape, made her death that much more devastating. –Christian Long
Hoban Washburne – Serenity
The spike through the chest that Alan Tudyk’s jokey pilot took after yet another insanely lucky landing actually forced me to cry out, “WASH, NO!” in the comfort of my living room when I watched the film for the first time. Whenever I re-watch the movie, I find myself momentarily forgetting and then I experience that gut punch once more in a small way. Great character, sh*tty death scene concocted to keep the audience off-balance.
“I am a leaf on the wind. Watch ho…”
Joss Whedon is history’s greatest monster. – Jason Tabrys
Joyce’s death on Buffy the Vampire Slayer
It was unique in that it was the one major character death on the series that wasn’t supernatural, or at the hands of a baddie, which made it the most excruciating of all. After seemingly making it out of the woods having survived surgery to remove a brain tumor, Buffy’s beloved mother dies very suddenly and unexpectedly. The overwhelming grief viewers experienced was not accidental, as Joss Whedon intentionally wrote the episode to capture his parallel experience of losing his own mother to a brain aneurysm.
He once told an interviewer that he wanted viewers to experience “that weird dumb grief and the various reactions that people have to death.” Mission accomplished, Joss. I’ve seen those episodes probably no less than a half dozen times and if I can ever make it through dry-eyed, it’ll be a goddamn miracle. –Stacey Ritzen
I TOLD YOU! JOSS WHEDON IS HISTORY’S GREATEST MONSTER! – Jason Tabrys
Charlie – Lost
I can say without a doubt that this was the moment I officially quit watching Lost. I had put up with the shows refusal to deliver answers while prompting more questions along with its character shuffling longer than I typically would in a show that so consistently left me frustrated. This ended of course with Charlie’s death. All things considered it’s rather a heroic way to go but it was a still a death that felt unnecessary, especially when his would be/could be relationship with Claire was so woefully under explored. Charlie was a character who deserved more storylines and better ones and instead was written off in a way to service another characters storyline. Is it an emotional crescendo of a goodbye? Absolutely. Too bad it was a character who shouldn’t have died. –Ally Johnson
The slaughter of Col. Kurtz
Hands down the death of Col. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now. This is easily the best war film of all time (with The Thin Red Line coming in behind it) due to so many different factors (the behind-the-scenes catastrophes, scripting issues with the ending, etc. etc.). But what came in the end with this death scene is horrific in every sense of the word. It gives me chills every time I watch it because of its realism. I could write for days about this ending alone, but not many death scenes are as unnerving as this one. –Jameson Brown
So, what TV/film character death left you absolutely heartbroken?
