5 TV Character Deaths That Had The Show’s Audience Cheering – TVLine

The annals of television history are filled with fictional deaths so heartbreaking they almost test our will to keep watching. For the time being, we aren’t interested in any of those. As cathartic as the pain of a tragic demise can be, there’s just nothing like the thrill of watching a fan-hated monster get what’s coming to them.

But for their deaths to be meaningful, it comes down to much more than the misdeeds these villains carried out in life (see the demise of the “Brain Surgeon” in the final season of “Dexter”). The kind of bad guys we’re talking about were beautifully written and portrayed to be as intentionally loathsome as possible, both because they’re plausibly formidable within their respective worlds and because the story has the audience viscerally invested in their hero’s mission to stop them. Executing deaths like these is a truly rare feat worth celebrating — plus, who doesn’t want an excuse to relive the “Purple Wedding” one more time?

Nearly a decade after “The Walking Dead” aired “Too Far Gone,” the violent and explosive midseason finale of Season 4, David Morrissey still remembered the first time he laid eyes on the script. The actor — who had played Philip Blake, the villainous Governor of Woodbury, since early in Season 3 — was made aware of his demise well before he got to set via an infamous “death call” from showrunner Scott Gimple. What Morrissey didn’t know until he entered his trailer that day was that he’d be taking Scott Wilson’s beloved Hershel Greene with him.

“I just couldn’t believe it,” Morrissey recalled in 2022 at Fandemic Tour Atlanta. “I was like, ‘Oh no, I’m never going to be able to walk down the street again. This is going to kill me.'” His fears were not unfounded. The Governor had never been one of the more likable characters on “The Walking Dead,” with Season 4 featuring a forced faux redemption arc for the character before setting him up to single-handedly reignite his feud with Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln). Beheading Hershel in front of his daughter, Maggie (Lauren Cohan), was just the tip of the katana — he also destroyed the most stable stronghold Rick’s group had found, out of sheer pride and selfishness, no less.

Season 4 made the Governor the most hated antagonist in the show’s run up to that point. Fans were overjoyed that Michonne (a target of his violent obsession, played by Danai Gurira) got to skewer him with the same blade that killed Hershel.

Ralph Cifaretto is, albeit intentionally, the most insufferable, disgusting, and reprehensible character on a show already filled with such low-lifes. Joe Pantoliano’s abrasive capo was introduced in the third season of “The Sopranos,” and quickly established as a sociopathic smart-mouth with a genuinely dangerous lack of respect. He’d told costly jokes about a rival capo’s overweight wife, intruded upon and negatively influenced the mourning Aprile family (tacitly encouraging Jackie Jr.’s transgression before OK’ing the hit on his quasi-stepson), and brutally murdered a young dancer at the Bing who was pregnant with his child.

Season 4’s “Whoever Did This” is actually his most sympathetic episode. An accident with a bow and arrow sends his son to the hospital in critical condition, forcing him to contend with his child’s fate and incoming medical bills. Tony (James Gandolfini) is aware of Ralph’s predicament when he learns that Pie-O-My, the racehorse they shared ownership of, has been killed in a suspicious stable fire. The two have a tense conversation at Ralph’s house, where Ralph furiously denies killing the horse for the insurance money, and resents Tony’s interrogation over something so meaningless to him. Either unconvinced or fed up with his inhumane disregard for life, Tony beats and strangles Ralph to death in his own kitchen.

Ralph’s death is fascinatingly ambiguous, even by “The Sopranos” standards. Pantoliano and creator David Chase disagree about whether or not Ralph actually killed the horse. For the actor’s part, his love for the series does not extend to the character that won him an Emmy. “F*** him,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2020.

We won’t be the first to describe Todd Alquist as arguably the most evil character in “Breaking Bad.” This wasn’t as common a take when Season 5 of the series was first airing, before audiences had really taken the time to digest what he’d done to Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), especially through the sequel film “El Camino.” Plus, Jesse Plemons is such a likable actor that, even after you see him kill a child in cold blood, it’s tempting to buy into the idea that he’s a dumb, violent criminal who’s mostly dangerous because people like Walter White (Bryan Cranston) make him useful.

That may be somewhat true even by the end of the series — but, also by that point, we’ve seen him enslave Jesse, torment and degrade him for months without rest, and ultimately break him by murdering Andrea Cantillo (Emily Rios). We’ve also gotten a heavy dose of his cringe-worthy interactions with Lydia Rodarte-Quayle (Laura Fraser), which add an even creepier texture to his obviously antisocial personality. When he helps lure Walt back to the compound in the series finale, “Felina,” it’s hard to imagine anyone sincerely rooting for Todd. Creator Vince Gilligan presumably had this in mind when he wrote Todd as the sole character (save for Walt and Jesse) who would be spared from Walt’s remote-control trunk turret — only so that Jesse could vengefully strangle Todd to death himself.

Though he becomes less and less popular as the franchise gets deeper into its Disney+ phase, David Tennant’s Kilgrave remains a uniquely horrifying Marvel Cinematic Universe villain. He isn’t a warlord or a misunderstood revolutionary — he’s a man with the power to control almost anyone in the world, who is obsessed with exerting his will over the one woman capable of resisting him.

To describe Kilgrave as ingeniously evil and self-preserving would be an understatement. Throughout “Jessica Jones,” he is always and frustratingly one step ahead of the titular detective (played by Krysten Ritter). This, compounded with the audience’s understanding of the assault and abuse he subjected her to prior to the series (when he was still able to control her every action and emotion with his words), made the first season of the Netflix-Marvel series as compelling as it was difficult to watch. Serious media outlets wrote at length about how Kilgrave as a character explored the actual causes and impact of sexism and sexual assault, the portrayal adding a layer of realism that understandably stoked passionate hatred of what he represented.

Jessica’s final confrontation with Kilgrave at the end of the season is nothing short of cathartic. Duped into believing his enhanced powers have restored his control over Jessica, Kilgrave gets close enough to her for her to snap his neck.

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN’s National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).

Joffrey Baratheon is the character that inspires articles of this kind. Given the unprecedented contemporaneous and enduring popularity of “Game of Thrones,” he might well be the most hated character in television history.

If you’ve somehow still not gotten around to watching the show, the death of Jack Gleeson’s young king will surely feel mercifully quicker than it did when we had to wait for a new batch of episodes every year. Gleeson appropriately played him as ruthless, violent, psychopathic, entitled, and irredeemably stupid. There wasn’t a single quality about him worth rooting for. In the context of the story, that was the entire point of the character — he outlives the honorable Ned Stark (Sean Bean) by nearly three seasons, and has the power to decide the fate of the Lord of Winterfell when he was a teenager. His arc was a commentary on the cruel, senseless, and unjust nature of power.

Outside this analysis, it was miserable to watch him whine and win for three-plus years. When “The Lion and the Rose” aired, it was a cause of widespread celebration. Joffrey is poisoned at his own wedding by the grandmother of his bride, moments after humiliating Peter Dinklage’s fan-favorite Tyrion Lannister. The Washington Post reported at the time that YouTube was flooded with hundreds of reaction videos immediately afterward, the vast majority of them being unapologetically euphoric in nature. A decade later, it’s the ninth-highest-rated episode of “Game of Thrones” on IMDb, and is critically regarded as a high point in the series.