2023 in Review: The 24 Most Heartbreaking TV Character Deaths
The Grim Reaper is wrapping up a banner year on the small screen.
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As TVLine’s Year in Review continues, we’re looking back at 24 characters who met particularly tragic ends across broadcast, cable and streaming shows. And while many other characters bit the dust on TV this year, we’re zeroing in on the deaths that dealt the biggest emotional blows, with only one loss per show represented.
Huge SPOILER ALERT. Bookmark this post and return later if you haven’t caught up on the following shows (listed alphabetically): 9-1-1: Lone Star, A Million Little Things, All American, The Blacklist, Doom Patrol, The Fall of the House of Usher, Fatal Attraction, Fear the Walking Dead, The Great, The Last of Us, Mayans MC, NCIS Hawai’i, Secret Invasion, Sex Education, Snowfall, Star Trek: Picard, Succession, The Summer I Turned Pretty, Sweet Tooth, Teen Wolf: The Movie and The Way Home.
But if you’re up for a good ugly cry, scroll on for 24 of the most heartbreaking deaths this year, and then leave a comment with the one(s) that hit you the hardest.
Aimee, Sweet Tooth
She was sick long before she left us, but that didn’t make it sting any less. While Aimee and Big Man worked to free the children, the virus wreaked havoc on her health. Despite knowing she would die, she still refused to take any treatment made from hybrid blood. There may have been heaps of tears — on screen and in our living rooms — but Aimee Eden undoubtedly died a hero.
Date of Death: April 27, 2023
Alex Forrest, Fatal Attraction
You could note that the character wasn’t just a psycho but a killer, so who cared if she got murdered? You could also argue that Paramount+’s adaptation of the thriller wasn’t good enough to get all worked up over. But the way Lizzy Caplan played Alex, you still kinda had to feel for her when the threat that she posed was… eliminated.
Date of Death: May 28, 2023
Bill and Frank, The Last of Us
The fact that we’d watched the entirety of curmudgeonly Bill and optimistic Frank’s love story play out against all odds — and a zombie apocalypse — made their loss that much more acute. So when Frank decided he no longer wanted to live with an advancing degenerative condition, Bill didn’t want to stick around, either. Some dosed Beaujolais and a letter to Joel later, they were headed to that great strawberry patch in the sky.
Date of Death: Jan. 29, 2023
Billy, All American
The loss of All American‘s beloved father figure was a complete surprise to viewers, who came to learn that Billy had died while trying to evacuate his players from a bus that had crashed and overturned on the edge of a cliff. We’re not sure it would have hurt any less to know about Taye Diggs’ exit in advance, but Billy’s sudden demise — and the profound effect it had on every other character — remains one of this year’s biggest heartaches.
Date of Death: Feb. 13, 2023
Borgnine, The Young and the Restless
Goodbye, kitty. If fans of the soap weren’t already out for Cameron’s blood when Sharon’s long-ago tormentor dared to show his face again in Genoa City, they sure as s—t were after he amped up his renewed terror campaign by making his first victim her daughter Faith’s innocent cat.
Date of Death: June 6, 2023
Charlie, Fear the Walking Dead
After surviving not only the zombie apocalypse but radiation poisoning and a lotta godawful writing, the young woman we watched grow up before our eyes died by suicide in order to… Lord, this just makes it even more tragic. She killed herself to keep Madison from revealing to resurrected baddie Troy the location of the much-ballyhooed PADRE island.
Date of Death: Oct. 29, 2023
Charlie 1, NCIS: Hawai’i
“Jane Tennant, I came all the way here to keep you safe, and that is exactly what I am going t—.” With a bullet, Charlie 1’s arrival in Venezuela to watch Jane’s six was cut short by a vengeful Adrian Creel. And while we’d like to hope that the enigmatic operator somehow survived and is playing dead, that shot to the head looked pretty decisive.
Date of Death: May 15, 2023
Colton, The Way Home
We’ve seen enough time-travel shows to know that Kat wouldn’t be able to prevent her father’s death – but to find out that her trip to the past caused Colton’s fatal accident? Crushing! To make the scene even more heartbreaking, future Kat (an emotionally devastating Chyler Leigh) then cradled her father’s body in her arms as he passed away (shortly after recognizing his grownup daughter?!).
Date of Death: March 19, 2023
Derek, Teen Wolf: The Movie
First of all, Tyler Hoechlin is just a really nice guy, so you never want to see one of his characters die. But it hurts even more when that character is a beloved anchor (so to speak) of a franchise. Even though Derek sacrificed himself to save everyone, and besides the fact that his teenage son watched helplessly as he met his tragic demise, the most heartbreaking part was seeing Derek’s eyes change color in his final moments. (Eye color is a big deal in the Teen Wolf universe, but we don’t have time to explain it. If you know, you know.)
Date of Death: Jan. 26, 2023
Erin, Sex Education
Despite Erin’s best efforts to stay clean, Maeve’s mom still sadly succumbed to her drug addiction. While her demise happened off screen, it killed us to see Maeve dealing with loss at such a young age. The fact that their relationship was so rocky made it that much harder on the poor girl as she struggled to find the right words and deliver a proper eulogy.
Date of Death: Sept. 21, 2023
Felipe, Mayans MC
Choosing just one casualty from Mayans‘ bloodbath of a final season was no easy task, but Felipe’s demise in the penultimate episode was a true stunner. We’d hoped, so badly, that Felipe would come out of the Mayans/Sons of Anarchy war unscathed, but he ultimately suffered a gunshot wound to the stomach after some of the Sons broke into his house. Even more upsetting? The men were looking not for Felipe, but Angel, who wasn’t home at the time of the attack.
Date of Death: July 12, 2023
Gabriel Reyes, 9-1-1: Lone Star
No amount of dramatic foreshadowing could have prepared us for the murder of Carlos’ father in the Fox procedural’s fourth season. We can still hear Carlos’ mother screaming in terror as her husband lay bleeding out in the doorway of their home from a gunshot wound, just as we can still feel Carlos’ rage at the monsters responsible for the killing of a Texas Ranger. Maybe it’s a good thing that Lone Star isn’t coming back until the fall — we still nee time to recover.
Date of Death: May 16, 2023
Gary, A Million Little Things
When Gary’s cancer advanced so far that he was no longer able to speak, he let his friends know he wanted to die with dignity. So Rome and Eddie procured the necessary drugs, everyone said their (understandably weepy) goodbyes, and then Maggie — and Colin, poor pup — snuggled up to Gary in bed as fell into a deep sleep. The last thing Gary heard? Maggie’s tearful assurances that she and their son, Javi, would be OK after he was gone.
Date of Death: May 3, 2023
Jerome, Snowfall
When Jerome saw how the drugs and money tore his family apart and decided he wanted out, we hoped that he would live long enough to see that freedom. However, his life was cut tragically short while rescuing Louie, who’d been abducted and tortured. As his wife sobbed over his body, Jerome’s earlier question felt even more poignant: Was it all worth this?
Date of Death: March 29, 2023
Lenore, The Fall of the House of Usher
Of all of the people in Roderick Usher’s family, innocent Lenore was the least deserving of a death sentence. But bloodline curses don’t leave much room for loopholes. So once all of Roderick’s scummy kids had kicked the bucket, it was little Lenore’s time to go. At least Verna had the good grace to feel bad, ending the girl’s life with a single, gentle touch.
Date of Death: Oct. 12, 2023
Logan, Succession
He wasn’t exactly the cuddly grandpa type, so the demise of the bellowing Roy family patriarch played by Brian Cox didn’t hit our heartstrings in the traditional sense. But it was the shockingly abrupt nature of his death, with Logan suddenly collapsing on an overseas flight off-camera — an abruptness that felt painfully realistic — and the flood of wildly mixed emotions experienced by his children in the wake of his death that got the waterworks flowing. Logan Roy was larger than life, and the gaping void he left in his kids’ lives was just as massive.
Date of Death: April 9, 2023
Maria, Secret Invasion
We always hope that a Marvel TV series will have some sort of impact on the larger MCU, but seeing Maria gunned down in cold blood — and by a Skrull wearing Fury’s face at the time! — was NOT what we had in mind. R.I.P., Maria as well as Cobie Smulders’ 11-year MCU run.
Date of Death: June 21, 2023
Peter, The Great
Nicholas Hoult’s proudly crass and cruel ruler was not the most noble of nobility. (If there is a hell, he’s certainly headed there.) But we still loved watching his gleefully devilish antics — and his undeniable chemistry with Elle Fanning’s Catherine — so it came as a real gut-punch when Peter fell through frozen ice on a lake and died in Season 3’s sixth episode. It was an unceremonious ending for such a grandly entertaining character, and watching Catherine manically cycle through joy and grief in the episodes that followed only twisted the knife further.
Date of Death: May 12, 2023
Red, The Blacklist
Even when Red’s death started to feel inevitable during The Blacklist‘s run, we were still skeptical that anything could ever take down a man so formidable — until, of course, he encountered the bull that ultimately gored him in the series finale. Bizarre cause of death aside, we were legitimately bummed to see such a commanding character perish after 10 eventful years.
Date of Death: July 13, 2023
Rita and Cliff, Doom Patrol
The series finale of Max’s underrated DC drama claimed the lives of both April Bowlby’s Rita and Brendan Fraser’s Cliff, the latter of whom had a considerably more heartbreaking demise. (Whereas Rita was at least seen reuniting with her former lover in the afterlife, Cliff’s robot frame shut down after receiving a peek into the future and discovering that his grandson turns out to be the same womanizing piece of crap he once was himself.) Still, we love them equally and would have much preferred that they survived the show’s too-short run.
Date of Death: Nov. 9, 2023
Ro, Star Trek: Picard
The final season of Paramount+’s Trek continuation was a treasure trove of nostalgia for Next Generation fans, but the coolest Easter egg of all was the return of Ro Laren, with the Bajoran lieutenant resolving her decades-old feud with Jean-Luc. We couldn’t enjoy her return for long, though, because she ultimately sacrificed her own life, piloting a shuttle carrying a bomb into another ship to allow Jean-Luc and his crew time to escape. It was tough to say goodbye, but we’re just happy we got to say hello to her again.
Date of Death: March 16, 2023
Susannah, The Summer I Turned Pretty
From the beginning of Season 2, we knew that Susannah had passed away, but that didn’t make watching her decline via flashbacks any easier. When she said her goodbyes to her surrogate daughter Belly in the finale, sharing some comforting relationship advice with her as they cried together in bed, Susannah’s importance in Belly’s life made her death all the more painful.
Date of Death: Aug. 17, 2023
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