This week’s question is inspired by Barbie thinking about dying:
What death scene from a movie or TV show haunts you?
I guess we need to be careful about spoilers with our answers. Perhaps we should name the TV show or movie first, before naming the character who dies, so that anyone still planning to watch your choice can skip reading about who died. You can also use the [+] button in the bar below the comment box to create hidden text. Please be more careful in your comments the more recent your choice is.
My pick is from the early 1990s British crime drama series Cracker, in which Robbie Coltrane played a criminal psychologist. The character whose death haunts me is…
…
…
The cop played by Christopher Eccleston. It’s long and drawn out and I was so invested in the character that I walked around in shock the next day.
Your turn…
(You can also discuss this at Substack or Patreon, if you prefer. You don’t need to be a paying subscriber to comment, but you will need to register with either site to do so.)
I am a leaf on the wind. Cruel, and pretty cheap really.
The end of Six Feet Under (how about all the deaths at once?).
Spock’s death in The Wrath of Khan (definitely not a spoiler anymore) haunts us all, especially the newer iterations of Trek that can’t move past recapitulating those big moments again and again instead of doing something new. The nadir was probably the hokey reversal of the scene in Into Darkness. But the *best* was in the genuinely fantastic musical Khan!!! which of course made it into a moving musical number. You could hear the anticipatory gasp/groan from the audience when the plexiglass screen was carried out on stage. We knew what was coming!
Also, it seems my commenting account changed again…would you mind applying my supporter status to this one? Thanks!
You seem to have two different commenting accounts here, under two different email addresses. The other one had the “patron” tag on it (and I’ve added it to this one, now, too).
Thanks!
Ever since I saw Saving Priavte Ryan I have been ever haunted by the scene where the german hushes the (american?) soldier while he slowly slides the knife into him. Its creepy as hell.
My god, I just came here immediately I saw the email and thought I had to post this very scene! Did NOT expect anybody to beat me to it. You said it exactly. I don’t know what triggers the memory but I wish I could put it behind me. I’ll never watch that movie again.
Yes, that’s a horrifying scene.
Three of them, two from THE MAGICIANS and one from STRANGE NEW WORLDS
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Death #1 (Magicians): Eliot’s boyfriend, Mike. Not because I was all that invested in Mike (a decent guy but a minor character without a lot of screen time), but because Eliot was the one who had to do the killing, and it kind of broke him.
Death #2 (Magicians): Quentin, the goddamn fucking main character, who died because he needed to bravely sacrifice himself to save the world, and also really because the actor playing him didn’t want to be on the show anymore, and killing him off was the only realistic way to remove him. It was a gut punch, even if he wasn’t my favorite character (that’d be Eliot). I was legit not okay for the next couple of days.
Death #3 (SNW): Hemmer. Just. Whyyyyyy. Hemmer was great. They should’ve kept Hemmer. I don’t care if they’re ultimately making way for Scotty, who I quite liked as played by Martin Quinn, actual Scottish person. I want Hemmer back.
BTW, you mentioned the nailbiting cliffhanger in STRANGE NEW WORLDS in your newsletter? That was written by Henry Alonso Myers, who was also a writer and executive producer on THE MAGICIANS. That man knows how to hurt people. If he’s also writing part 2, I see a fridge in the future of the character in most danger of biting it.
I really need to review Strange New Worlds…
TV series – Spooks, Series 1 episode 2.
If you know, you know… It was proper ‘did you see that last night?!’ at the coffee machines in the office – and on the old forums I was on.
They’d very much pushed the character killed as one of the ‘mains’ in the promo material, so it was completely unexpected (but did set the scene for Spooks not shying away from killing off leads during the rest of the run…)
Film deaths?
Neverending Story, the Swamp of Sadness. 30 odd years and I’m still not over that…
BORDER INCIDENT: George Murphy’s torture-like murder by farm machinery.
Reposting from patron…
This is going to be obscure…but, one evening many years ago, the movie Play Dirty with Michael Caine was on and I thought it would be a against-all-odds/good-guys-win sorta thing. (I was really young…that’s my excuse…might have been 14? 15?)
That end really bothered me for a long time. Spoilers down at the bottom of this.
It was a mess…it wasn’t a good movie…I don’t recommend it. According to Wikipedia, “Caine later said he had a clause in his contracts that any film on which he worked could not be made in Almería [which is where this movie was shot].”
Ending:
…
…
…
…
…
…both Captain Douglas (Caine) and Captain Leech (Davenport) are in Nazi uniform in disguise and are trying to “surrender” to a British patrol and get shot. Last line is “sorry sir, I didn’t see the white flag”.