Terrible mistakes in killing off a character in a tv show or film

[TriggerWarning]

Captain Lorca from Star Trek Discovery: Total Nerd Rage. By far my favorite character of the show. I loved his military mind and his flaws. He was my favorite captain since Sisko. Absolutely hated what they did to his character at the end. Dropped Discovery and didn't give Season 2 a chance.

So much this. I loved Lorca and he is my favorite Star Trek Captain for being sarcastic yet effective. While the time jump in Disco makes it unlikely I'm hoping that they find a way to bring this universes version of Lorca onto the show just to get him back in some fashion.

[AnakinFlair]

Interesting corollary is when an actor or actress dies and they absolutely will not kill off the character they played.

On the Andy Griffith show, I think they were still making references to having just talked to Floyd the Barber several years after Howard McNear had died.

Granted, that could be considered a tribute especially in a comedy where it's depressing to talk about characters dying.

Aside from killing off characters, especially on older shows, there was a tendency to never speak of a character again if the actor left the show, almost as if the character never existed. Again, from TAGS, there was the decision to never mention Elle Walker again after Elinore Donahue left after the first season.

There is one notable exception to that rule that comes to mind immediately: Mr. Hooper on Sesame Street. The show took his passing and turned it into a lesson on death for their young audience.

[Tofali]

I thought the actor who played John Abbott retired, and wanted off the show?!?!? Killing Brad made no sense especially when they were going to send the actor off to Bold and the Beautiful anyway.

nope a maniacal head writer took it upon herself to kill the patriarch of a family just because she couldn't believe that a single father who had enough wealth to own a mansion and hire help to take care of his kids could not have the time to be the head of a cosmetic company. Her stories were illogical just like her reasons to explain her writing.

[Starter Set]

Yeah, McNear left the show about a year before it ended because he had severe trouble remembering his lines.

That's like a guirarist having trouble remembering the chords, it can be a serious problem for his career lol.

[C_Miller]

Isaac Mendez from Heroes. He definitely would not have saved the show, but he was one of the more interesting characters on the show with a power that I felt like I had never really seen before or at least in a way that I've never seen it manifested before. It's true that I likely find him interesting because they killed him off before he could get annoying like Hiro, Claire, Peter and Mohinder, but that doesn't change the fact that I think he would have been a valuable addition to the rest of the show.

[Somecrazyaussie]

Killing certain characters in Sliders killed the show little by little.

*goes off to cry a little... still*

This.

Thankfully, most of the cast are prepared to come back and do a revival. Provided it picks up from the end of series 2/the start of 3. Davies wants it to return to the level of thought provoking storytelling present in the first 2 series. Even the creator is keen to come back and do the series the way he wanted (before Fox got more "hands on").

[KCJ506]

Randy in Scream 2. I think everyone involved in that decision realized it was a mistake the second they did it.

I was gonna mention this. While I understand the reason they did that was to show that even characters that survived the previous film weren't safe, I think they could have waited until at the near the end rather than him being killed so abruptly halfway into the movie. It was a missed opportunity to have a showdown between him and Mickey.

[KCJ506]

I know not everyone watches soap operas but killing off John Abbott and Brad Carlton on The Young And The Restless were major mistakes IMO.

But I could start a whole thread on wrongful soap opera deaths. (General Hospital's Quartermaine family!!!)

It seems some certain GH writers really have it out for the Quartermaines. I'm still a bit bitter at how they handled AJ the last time he was on. They had promised his actor various things in regards to the character only for those promises to be broken and then killing him off(again).

[titanfan]

with the death of catherine in the old ron perlman beauty and the beast tv series , the female co-lead ,it doomed the series and it managed to crawl into one more season before it was canceled.

What do they do in this case when the actress wanted to leave the show? Like with Derek on Grey's Anatomy, you can't have a situation where one character would abandon the other without them dying so you have to kill them off.

[Nate Grey]

It seems some certain GH writers really have it out for the Quartermaines. I'm still a bit bitter at how they handled AJ the last time he was on. They had promised his actor various things in regards to the character only for those promises to be broken and then killing him off(again).

Yep. That was Ron Calivarti. Its also my understanding that no only did Ron reneg on everything he promised to Sean Kanan, but he also got them to throw in some digs ie AJ being fat, AJ being comic relief, etc.

But the problem with the Quartermaines isn't the various writers per se, its the network thinking Sonny Corinthos is the draw to the show. This started under Guza, but the higher ups seem to agree with him. If he's the de facto patriarch the other patriarchs/families will suffer. No Quartermaines, no Webers, heck we could have had Drakes what with Noah's brief return to pass the torch to his sons. It tied into another family, the Scorpios, plus tied back into, you know, THE HOSPITAL since the Drakes are all doctors.

Its kinda silly how the whole show revolves around one person (three if you count Jason and Carly) and not anyone in the titular place or the other families that existed LONG before Sonny was even created (he debuted in 1993).

[Tofali]

I had to stop watching GH when every body had to be dumb down so that Sonny, Carly or any awful character could become the victors. It is the quintessential gaslighting show where you expect the somewhat good guys to win but at the end of a story arc the villains swoop in to put an end to any great story and then claim they are doing it for their own good

[Nate Grey]

I had to stop watching GH when every body had to be dumb down so that Sonny, Carly or any awful character could become the victors. It is the quintessential gaslighting show where you expect the somewhat good guys to win but at the end of a story arc the villains swoop in to put an end to any great story and then claim they are doing it for their own good

Its still that way. The only person who can kinda sorta be close to a victor given these circumstances, is Jax. Anyone else you're either Sonny's friend or his inept enemy, there is no in between.

I knew the writing was on the wall when Monica thanked Sonny for something. I already forgot what, but the fact that she's thanking the murderer of her only living biological child at the time, AJ, for anything was enough for me to say screw this show. Though I do catch returns like Taggert.

Speaking of which, and keeping this in line with this thread: Taggert returned! A true adversary to Sonny! And...he was killed weeks later after meeting his long lost daughter. WTF.

[caj]

General Hospital is the only soap I don't keep up with at all. And it is because of the reasons you all give - Sonny, Carly, Jason (and Sam). I can't stand any of these characters and it's just not worth my time to watch anymore. Even during the COVID shutdown, most of the 'classic' reruns have centered on this crapfest.

I miss As The World Turns, Guiding Light, Another World, and One Life To Live

[Beaubier]

I’ll defend this a bit. Doakes died when he should have. His character was a big thorn in the protagonists side in season 1 and in season 2 he finally nailed him and had him dead to rights and got swerved and it was a huge culmination of his plot line. If he survived, he would have looked just as incompetent as every other cop on Dexter. Dexter as a show just really should have ended a lot sooner. It was downhill after Trinity. Have the cops onto him in season 5 and it end with his secret coming out and Deb offing him

To add on to this, I maintain that killing off Rita was a mistake. S4 is when the writers clearly started losing their way.. that season was good purely because of Michael C Hall and John Lithgow and their amazing performances. The writing felt like they were making things up as they went along. And they didn’t know what to do with Rita - one minute they wrote her as a shrew, the next as sweet and loving. So they took the easy way out - kill her off in a shocking way. Then they don’t have to deal with her and her impact on Dexter’s lifestyle anymore, and they get to drum up publicity with the shocking twist. But longterm it didn’t work. There was a lot more interesting things that could have happened if she wasn’t killed. Maybe injured by Trinity, maybe finding out Dexter’s persona, maybe killing Trinity herself in self defense and discovering her own “darkness.” Either way, Dexter balancing family life and fatherhood could have led to more interesting stories than what we ultimately got. Instead we got the Lifetime movie that was the whole Lumen story, the half baked love story with the other female serial I forgot her name, and the awful incestuous story with Deb, along with a parade of forgettable killers.

As for a movie series, I firmly believe that the Saw series killed off Amanda Young and David Tapp too early. Amanda was a much more interesting and complex character than Hoffman, and the series would’ve benefitted greatly from Amanda as a longterm adversary to both Hoffman and the cops. David Tapp should have stuck around longer too, and been given Rigg’s storyline.

[Vakanai]

The lead actress on Sleepy Hollow - can't recall the name of the actress, but her and Ichabod and their chemistry was the heart and soul of the show and it just wasn't the same after.