Who are your favorite characters that got killed off, or simply disappeared from a TV show that you like?

Bradley Bates Motel
Robin from Once Upon A Time

I used to watch a couple of soaps, and that would bother me sometimes then.

I was glad when I saw the final Bones episode that nobody was killed off. It was sad to see Tempe’s dad die during the final season, but the character really had nowhere else to go.
I’m kind of wishing for a hybrid of Bones and Dead Like Me, where the forensic anthropologist, or someone on their team is a reeper, so there is sometimes a kind of double duty.

Susan Ross from Seinfeld. She was a great balance to the neuroticism of the main characters

Jadzia Dax Star Trek Deep Space Nine.

Prince Oberyn, from Game of Thrones – he had won that fight and just refused to STFU.
There are so few male characters in that show that are worth liking. I’m pretty much down to rooting for Tyrion (who isn’t who he used to be, either) and Bronn, and Tormund.

The Walking Dead has a huge beef with competent characters, apparently, so anyone who makes too many good choices in a row gets killed. I was upset when they killed Dale (the old guy with the RV from the first season). Daryl is so far changed from his original character he might as well have been killed off already. I stopped watching after the Glenn thing. Yes, I’ve read the comics, but in the comics Rick isn’t a simpering idiot and Carl isn’t a whining preteen ball of stupid, so it’s different. The TV show needed Glenn and Maggie to give a purpose to the story, and now it’s just badly written gore porn, minus the porn. And the gore. When was the last time anyone saw an actual zombie on there, anyway?

Coach, from Cheers. But he died in real life. :)

Cheers had a number of cast changes. When Shelly Long left and Kirstie Alley joined the cast, the show entered a decline.

Matthew Crawley from Downton Abbey. That was just horrible!

Mostly it’s when a reboot or film/special return to a show decides to sacrifice someone for dramatic effect, which usually feels forced, disappointing and/or lame, and/or like the new directors want their new characters to be the new stars and they’re insecure about the previous stars and so kill them off.

Examples:

Return to The Streets of San Francisco starts by killing off one of the main characters of the original series’ duo, in a too easy/lame/needless-seeming way.

Star Trek: Generations was a clear case of killing off the star of the previous show so newer Star Trek films could be about Picard rather than Kirk. And they did it in a pretty lame way.

Star Wars: The Farce Awakens sucking the will to live out of Solo (and the will to watch out of me) to make room for the generic Mickey Mouse Club new stars.

I forgot to mention Monarch of the Glen.

Kagura from Inuyasha.

Norma Bates in Bates Motel, I mean obviously she was going to be killed but Vera Farmiga rocks

Colonel Henry Blake.

In Bones, didn’t Sweets get killed @Patty_Melt?

Mike Erhmantraut (Breaking Bad)
Det. Steve Crosetti (Homicide) (Worse, the show’s writers didn’t even give him an on-screen death, but rather wrote his death as an off-screen suicide between seasons.)
Pablo Escobar (Narcos) (:-P)

Deffo Amy and Rory Pond from Doctor who…

Chuck from Happy Days. Not that he was a great character but his exit from the show was classic. One episode he was going out to shoot baskets and you never saw him again.

Lost was six seasons of one depressing death of main characters after another.

Hannah from North of 60. The actress died for real though, was hit by a car so it’s not like they had a choice to kill her off in the show, too.