The 10 Most Memorable TV Deaths

There have been some pretty outrageous claims about last night’s Game of Thrones because recency bias is a hell of a drug. There wasn’t as many high-profile deaths as most forecast, and none of them were truly transformative. Without spoilers, let’s just say that the most important one was not this where-were-you-when moment. These, however, were the kind that rocked the viewing public to the core.

Here, without any interest in your own input thank you very much, are the 10 most memorable deaths in scripted television history.

There are obviously spoilers here. Obviously.

J.R. Ewing from Dallas: He was far from the most beloved figure. There was no shortage of people who wanted to actively murder the scheming, loathsome rich boy, which made the mystery surrounding his death one of the biggest television events in history. For eight months everyone tried to solve the mystery. Eventually the culprit was revealed in an episode that garnered an absurd 83 million viewers.

Hank Schrader from Breaking Bad: One always got the sense that working as a DEA agent on the case of a notorious drug dealer who just happened to be his brother-in-law was always going to end poorly, but that didn’t blunt the soul-crushing moment the trigger was finally pulled in the desert. Ozymandias is perhaps the best episode of the series and if you didn’t cry out or tear up when Hank died, you are dead inside.

Mark Greene from ER: He wasn’t the most affable guy. He had his share of screw-ups. But that all changed when he got sick. Seeing him get his affairs in order and mend things with his daughter in Hawaii was special. Whereas other medical procedurals have relied on actual emergency room drama when one of their own is to pass away, ER did it differently — deliberately and effectively.

Jack Pearson from This Is Us: While we all knew this Superdad met an unfortunate end, the sequence of events was still heartbreaking. The damn slow-cooker. Actual human people got real upset and cried about it and then have continued to cry at every This Is Us episode since. If you think this one doesn’t belong on the list, know that the main characters literally justify all their decisions on this decades-old death.

Rita Bennett from Dexter: The damn Trinity Killer was no joke and even though Dexter took him out, the serial murderer struck home and got his love interest. Did this monster nut understand how hard it was for Dexter to be vulnerable?

Dan Conner from Roseanne: Big head-fake here. Viewers were led to believe he survived his heart attack. They did 24 episodes as if he’d survived his heart attack. Then in the closing minutes of the 1997 finale, it was revealed that, nope, he didn’t. Pretty big shocker there. He was then very much alive when the series returned some 20 years later.

Lt. Col. Henry Blake from M*A*S*H: A real doozy. He got an honorable discharge and flew off. Unfortunately his plane went down and and Radar had to deliver the news to the medical team mid-operation. And, oh man, people were pissed. This was the type of stuff just wasn’t done on network television in 1975.

The Red Wedding: While the Thrones people are way out of their element today, there’s no disputing the brutal murders of Robb Stark, Queen Talisa, and Lady Catelyn was perhaps the most shocking thing I’ve ever seen on television.

Adriana La Cerva from The Sopranos: She went against the family at the behest and pressure of the FBI and her beloved Chrissie sold her out. She realized just a bit too late that this road trip with Silvio wasn’t a fun little jaunt. RIP.

Omar Little from The Wire: He was the baddest man on the planet and ironically didn’t see it coming courtesy of a youngster looking to make his name, a nobody. The last guy who came for the king didn’t miss and it was a hell of a thing.