21 TV And Movie Character Deaths That Were Infuriatingly Dumb, Anticlimactic, Or Straight-Up Insulting
It's always sad when a beloved character dies in a TV show or movie, but at least sometimes we get a beautiful death or memorial scene. Maybe they die as a hero, or maybe there's a heartfelt goodbye scene.
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Other times...the character's death genuinely comes across as careless and cruel, like it's an afterthought. And it's genuinely infuriating. Here are 21 that bother me the most!
Also, I'm going to take this opportunity to complain about how many times I had to lighten all the images in this post to even make them visible. These character deaths were so unceremonious, they didn't even bother making the scene light enough for us to see it happen.
1.On True Blood, when Tara was killed offscreen:
I literally cannot stand an offscreen death for a big character. Like, is there something more important, as the viewer, we need to be doing than SEEING A MAJOR CHARACTER DIE???
2.In The Hunger Games: Catching Fire Part 2, when Finnick was killed by lizard-thingies after surviving not one, but TWO Hunger Games:
THIS WILL FOREVER BE ONE OF THE CHARACTER DEATHS I'M MOST MAD ABOUT. I guess I should applaud the movie for staying true to the book, which I think gave Finnick's death literally ONE SENTENCE — still, I was hoping it'd fix the book's errors. If Finnick had to die, fine — give the boy a meaningful death!!! He had Annie waiting at home for him!!! And then in the book Annie is like voting for stuff at the end and seems lucid...dude, she was hardly lucid when Finnick was alive, there's no way she was able to like become a diplomat after his death.
3.In Supernatural, when Dean was killed by a nail after FIFTEEN seasons of fighting demons, Death, and God himself:
This one is laughable to me. What makes it even worse is that Dean just kinda stands there and has like five minutes to talk despite being "dying." It's so lame and stupid and makes Castiel's sacrifice mean absolutely nothing. There was no need to have Dean die at all, but if he was going to, at least give him an epic heroic death. Not...accidentally being thrown into a nail.
4.In Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, when Padmé died of a broken heart despite having two children who needed her and expressing that she still had hope for Anakin:
This one always made me mad. I get that Padmé had to die because this is a prequel and it's established that Luke and Leia were adopted as babies in the original trilogy. But dying "of a broken heart"??? Padmé was a queen and a warrior, and she was what, 19? It was an insult to her character. Padmé would never stop fighting as long as Anakin and her kids were alive.
5.On The Vampire Diaries, when Damon killed Tyler while under Sybil's control:
They really brought back Tyler just to kill him...and people got over it pretty darn quickly. Tyler makes a whole big deal about how no one will forgive him, and then they all do. It's like the writers were like, "Hmm, who can we have Damon kill to prove he's truly gone without sacrificing a character anyone actually likes?" and then they remembered Tyler existed.
Also — WHY DID TYLER NOT BITE HIM? Is he not a werewolf??? Is his bite not fatal to vampires??? All he does after initially pulling a gun is talk at Damon!!! Tyler, you're better than this. You didn't even try, dude.
6.In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, when Fred basically died offscreen:
We see Fred lose his wand while Voldemort is giving his creepy address to the school, but to the casual viewer, it definitely wouldn't have seemed like he died right there. Then Harry sees the Weasleys crying over his dead body...I know that Fred also died in the books, but he at least gets a proper death scene there. It's actually a great scene because it has Percy's redemption...though I guess since the movie dropped that whole plot line (and Percy's character entirely after like the first couple films), that would be tricky. Still, as a fan favorite character and arguably the biggest, most devastating death of the final book/film, Fred deserved a better scene.
7.As did Lupin and Tonks:
Lupin and Tonks don't even get a little bit of a scene — just their bodies. How did they die? No one knows! To be fair, if I remember right it happened in the books like this too. It made me mad then also, especially because they left behind a newborn.
8.And Lavender's fate wasn't even confirmed:
The most insulting death a character can get is having a scene where it looks like they might be dying, and then...just never hear about them again. Like, Lavender was a major character in the sixth film. She's a character that's in every book. This is all we get?
9.In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, when Anya died of a stab wound at Sunnydale High in the series finale:
We BARELY see her die — there's a tiny flash of her getting stabbed, and our only indication she's actually dead is seeing her body as Xander calls to her (which he gives up on almost instantly). It's an insulting death for a fan-favorite character that's been around since Season 3. No one seems to care she's dead but Xander and even he just says, "That's my girl" when he finds out (no it's not???). I wish Andrew would've died instead. I despised him and his stupid "redemption" arc.
10.In Avengers: Endgame, when Natasha sacrificed herself for the soul stone:
Clint should've died instead!!! Nat had a family, too. What makes me really angry about this one, though, is that she didn't get the memorial Tony did. She didn't get the recognition as a hero that he did. She didn't get to be reunited with anyone she loved like Tony did, or even get to know that her sacrifice was worth it. Justice for Natasha!!!
11.On Angel, when Cordelia died offscreen in a hospital after spending half a season in a coma (which none of the main characters even visited her during):
We don't even get a death scene — or any kind of funeral — for Cordelia (and we don't even see the rest of the gang's reaction to her death)! I will give the show credit for bringing her back for one last episode (one of the best of the series) as a sort of...ghost I guess? (Though we don't know this until the very end). Still, I will never forgive Angel for the way they sidelined Cordelia in Season 4 (she wasn't even herself for the vast majority of the season) and then had her fall into a coma where she was basically forgotten about for like half a season. Her whole demise was insulting.
12.Also on Angel, when Fred died in a single episode after being struck ill with the spirit of Illyria:
At least Amy Acker stayed on the show to be Illyria, but...still. This is a woman who survived being trapped in a hell dimension for YEARS. She dies because she opens a weird coffin at work? And Angel isn't even there when she dies? At least they give her a death scene, but still, it's devastating in a way that genuinely makes me mad because it's so freaking unfair and cruel. I guess death is that way, but still. Especially coming off the heels of Cordelia's death...it's like, wtf did Angel have against women? Oh, wait...
13.On The 100, when Bellamy was shot dead by Clarke:
This one just made absolutely no sense. There is just NO WAY Clarke would shoot Bellamy dead. It's even more insulting because Clarke does it to protect Maddie...who becomes brain-dead anyways.
14.On Pretty Little Liars, when Maya died offscreen — and it turned out she hadn't even been killed by any of the main villains, but by some guest star stalker who had absolutely nothing to do with the main plot:
JUSTICE FOR MAYA!!! I also hate her death because it made way for the awful Paige/Emily relationship to continue. Maya was by far Emily's best girlfriend. Having her die offscreen after being absent for a long time was insultingly cruel to Emily and the viewer, and then it just ended up being some rando who did it!!!
15.And when Wren was revealed to have died offscreen:
Wren comes back via flashback...only for the show to reveal Alex has killed him. AND TURNED HIS ASHES INTO A GEMSTONE. It'd be funny if it wasn't so messed up...no, actually, it's still kind of funny. I don't feel bad for Wren, but he had a lot of potential to be a bigger part of the final reveal and could have made a far better villain than Alex. His death felt wasted. We didn't even see it happen!
16.On Game of Thrones, when Jon stabbed Daenerys:
The woman has a DRAGON. She's conquered the seven kingdoms. She's survived the White Walkers. And she's killed by a guy with a knife? It's so anticlimactic, but I guess a lot of Season 8 was.
17.In Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi: when Luke died by depleting his life force through astral projection:
We already lost Han and Leia. Did we really need to lose Luke, too? And via such an unsatisfying, stupid death scene? It's like the sequel trilogy was really DEDICATED to utterly smashing the legacy of the original trilogy.
18.On Orange Is the New Black, when Tiffany overdosed falsely thinking she'd failed her GED:
This was so unnecessarily tragic. It was a waste of character development and felt pushed in just because the show was ending. And the fact that she didn't even fail her GED...and that Taystee was the only one to find her, after absolutely awful treatment in the last few seasons...just horribly unnecessary and tragic and stupid!
19.In Glass, when David Dunn/The Overseer — a superhuman — was drowned in a flooded pothole.
To be honest, I haven't seen these movies, but I remember someone mentioning this in the comments section a while back so I looked it up and yep, it's real. Maybe I don't have all the context, but...what the heck? We're really supposed to believe this guy dies in essentially a puddle? Here's a superhuman!
20.On How I Met Your Mother, when Tracy was revealed to have died in the finale and it turned out the whole show was a buildup to Ted and Robin being together:
They didn't even tell us what she was sick with!!! She barely got to be in the show, and her death was SO rushed. We didn't get a chance to mourn or even really get to know Tracy. The whole show is supposed to be about meeting her!!! Ugh. I'm still mad.
21.And finally, let's end on one that was just unnecessarily cruel: when the kids' babysitter Zara was killed in a brutal minute-long sequence in Jurassic World:
This death is just so wildly disturbing and brutal, especially compared to the rest of the film, which frankly wasn't that scary or violent to me. It's to the point of being slasher-level gratuitous...and Zara is just a random character who's done nothing wrong! This is the kind of death you reserve for the villain.
...at least this death was well-lit.
