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Mary, Suzie, IG-11... They were taken from us far too soon.
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00:00It's not unusual for TV characters to go out in a blaze of glory, whether blowing their brains out on a rooftop in London to seal their final scheme,
00:08or riding headlong into traffic after accepting they have become the very thing they sought to destroy and have nowhere else to go.
00:14But some shows have barely got their story straight before they're knocking off cast members left, right and centre.
00:21In fact, certain series seem to make it their mission to ensure the maximum possible body count each episode before the credits roll.
00:28Looking in your direction, Game of Thrones.
00:31While sometimes this is warranted to keep the action alive or provide a realistic suspension of our disbelief,
00:37especially when dealing with zombie hordes or murderous biker gangs,
00:40some pretty epic characters have been claimed before we've had a chance to really get to know them.
00:45So let's honour their memory, reminisce about the good times and detail what made these characters great
00:51before they were mercilessly slaughtered at the very beginning.
00:54So with that in mind then, I'm Ellie with WhatCulture, here with eight great TV characters who die at the beginning.
01:01Number 8. Danton Black slash Multiplex in The Flash.
01:06Arrow's spin-off The Flash hit the starting line in 2014,
01:10with Grant Gustin as the titular Flash, or Barry Allen to his friends.
01:14Now deep into its eighth season, the show has travelled the multiverse,
01:18bringing in heroes and villains from across the DC canon,
01:21most of whom have more than got their dues.
01:24However, The Flash needed some initial villains to fight off on his way to becoming the fastest man alive,
01:29meaning certain characters saw considerably less time on the show than they deserved.
01:34And the first of these, and first real supervillain, was Danton Black, or Multiplex,
01:39a cloning researcher turned metahuman with the power to duplicate himself at will.
01:44Firestorm's nemesis, and a member of both the secret society of supervillains and the suicide squad in the comics,
01:50Multiplex had so much more to offer that would have carried well across the show.
01:55Unfortunately for him, for us, for everyone,
01:58he fell to his death during his final confrontation with The Flash
02:01in season one's second episode, Fastest Man Alive,
02:05when he refused to be saved by the speedster.
02:07Yeah, we got some cool bullet time shots between him and Barry,
02:11as the latter learned to control his powers, but this is hardly a substitute.
02:15Number 7. Red Skull in Marvel's What If?
02:19Marvel's What If? promised an alternate timeline for many of the heroes and villains we know and love,
02:24stepping boldly into the multiverse for Phase 4,
02:27alongside Loki, Spider-Man and Doctor Strange.
02:31In the first episode, Captain Carter and the Hydra Stomper,
02:34skinny Steve Rogers in a tin suit, face off against the sinister Red Skull,
02:38voiced by Ross Marquand, reprising the role from Infinity War and Endgame.
02:43But more fool those of us who thought the Skull might be in for a longer haul this time,
02:48perhaps using the Tesseract to travel across dimensions and wipe out parallel universes' heroes.
02:53He is instead unceremoniously crushed by the very interdimensional abomination he sought to unleash on the world.
03:00Granted, the episode supplied him with a definite ending,
03:03so no freezing his bones off on Vormir in this universe,
03:06but once again failed to capitalise on the character outside the fairly restrictive frame of Nazism,
03:12in which he essentially boils down to a surrogate for Hitler.
03:15Ultimately, Tony Stark's rogue AI Ultron, also voiced by Marquand,
03:20took centre stage as the series' overarching antagonist,
03:23when the Watcher assembled the Guardians of the Multiverse to defeat him.
03:26But even if Red Skull couldn't have been the biggest bad,
03:30who wouldn't have been interested in an antagonistic team-up from the Crimson Nazi and Ultron?
03:366. Susie Costello in Torchwood
03:39Torchwood spun off from Doctor Who in 2006,
03:42when showrunner Russell T Davies recognised both a need and opening for a more adult-themed sci-fi offering,
03:49which could make the most of flirty, feisty, fan-favourite Captain Jack Harkness.
03:53And so, a new team of Earth-based Alien Hunters adorned our screens,
03:59comprising the mysterious Cardiff-based Torchwood Institute.
04:03Amongst them was Susie Costello, played by Indira Varma,
04:06who you might recognise as Game of Thrones' Ellaria Sand,
04:10a genius and dedicated extraterrestrial researcher who was willing to go to extreme lengths in the name of science.
04:17Initially billed as one of the main cast,
04:19the writers blasted her off the face of the show in Season 1's very first episode, Everything Changes.
04:25Caught experimenting with a resurrection gauntlet and, um, killing people,
04:29Susie blows herself away before the credits roll.
04:32Not without its uses, her death created an opening in the Torchwood team for series protagonist Gwen Cooper,
04:38kicking off the show in spectacular fashion.
04:41Returning briefly at the end of the season in the aptly named They Keep Killing Susie,
04:46the character is brought back using the gauntlet before it and her are destroyed for good.
04:505. IG-11 in The Mandalorian
04:54The Mandalorian could have been on shaky ground when it launched in 2019,
04:58but series creator Jon Favreau's steadfast dedication to Star Wars lore, characters and texture
05:04has ensured its longevity and endeared it to even the most hard-headed fans.
05:09Blending elements of all three Star Wars trilogies while remaining independent from them,
05:14this space western has been guided along by a cast of colourful and intriguing characters
05:19who fit seamlessly into the galaxy far, far away.
05:22While the latest series has been built on the back of established characters from the saga
05:27and expanded universe such as Ahsoka Tano and Boba Fett,
05:30the first brought us an array of original takes.
05:33And few are better than IG-11, the bounty hunter droid voiced by Taika Waititi,
05:39who also directed the final episode of the season, Chapter 8, Redemption.
05:44Similar to IG-88, one of the bounty hunter's Vader recruits in The Empire Strikes Back,
05:49IG-11 was an assassin droid working as a hired gun.
05:53After a brief team-up with the show's namesake,
05:55a helmeted Pedro Pascal doing more character work with just his voice
05:59than we've seen from entire cast,
06:01he was killed when attempting to assassinate the pair's bounty, Grogu.
06:05Though retired vapour farmer Quill later repaired IG-11,
06:09he also altered his personality and purpose,
06:12turning him into a nurse droid,
06:14ensuring the cold-shelled killer was never coming back.
06:184. Jesse McNally in Buffy the Vampire Slayer
06:21Following the hip young Slayer played by Sarah Michelle Gellert,
06:25Buffy the Vampire Slayer set a new standard for fantasy TV and redefined the horror landscape,
06:31turning age-old tropes on their heads and furnishing a whole generation
06:34with a brand-new heroine with a gang of relatable misfit friends.
06:39One such friend was Jesse McNally, a Sunnydale high student who,
06:42alongside Xander Harris and Willow Rosenberg,
06:45rounded out the trio of buds Buffy first encounters.
06:48When Eric Balfour signed on to play the part back in 1996,
06:52he never imagined the dizzying heights the show would reach,
06:55its popularity extending worldwide
06:57and creating one of the definitive late-90s pop culture sensations.
07:01But neither perhaps had he imagined it would be without him.
07:05Jesse was doing Joey to Xander's Chandler,
07:07but that didn't stop him getting turned into a vampire
07:10and promptly slayed during the two-part season one opener.
07:13Granted, it established from the outset that no character,
07:16no matter how integral to the group dynamic, was safe.
07:19But did they have to completely erase him from the show,
07:22never to be mentioned again?
07:24This was something Joss Whedon sought to repeat
07:26on the first season of Angel a few years later
07:29by killing off Glenn Quinn's Doyle in the first few episodes,
07:32but he never got his wish,
07:33as Doyle held out until the mid-season finale.
07:363. Benjen Stark in Game of Thrones
07:39Epic fantasy series Game of Thrones swiftly came to define
07:43the nobody-is-safe ethos
07:45when it put pay to Ned Stark's reign
07:46as series protagonist at the conclusion of season one.
07:50But given the footwork the show had done up until then,
07:53we really ought to have seen it coming.
07:55Enter, or exit, Benjen Stark,
07:58Ned's brother and first ranger of the Night's Watch,
08:01a military order who guard the wall
08:03dividing the fictional land of Westeros' seven kingdoms
08:06from the icy wilds beyond.
08:08A Stark by birth, but a crow by choice,
08:11Benjen is everything his nephew Jon Snow wishes to be.
08:15Tough, brave, steely, just, and above all else,
08:18quietly heroic.
08:20In the third episode of season one, Lord Snow,
08:23Benjen tells Jon,
08:24we will speak when I return,
08:26and rides north from Castle Black,
08:27only to be killed off-screen by a white walker
08:30and leave Jon hanging forevermore.
08:32Until, that is, he reappears as a living corpse
08:35in the season six episode Blood of My Blood,
08:38raised from the dead by the white walkers,
08:40but saved from their thrall
08:41by a piece of dragonglass inserted in his chest
08:44by the magical children of the forest.
08:47And given it's Game of Thrones,
08:48we don't need to tell you,
08:49he dies again, for good this time.
08:52Number two, Philippa Georgiou in Star Trek Discovery.
08:55When a show casts big talent
08:58like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon's Michelle Yeoh,
09:01we all quite rightly expect it to use them.
09:04So imagine our surprise when just two episodes in,
09:07she's taken out.
09:08That was the case in Star Trek Discovery,
09:10a grittier take on the Trek series,
09:12which began in 2017.
09:15Yeoh played Philippa Georgiou,
09:17the commanding officer of the USS Shenzhou,
09:19and an all-round badass,
09:21having seen years of frontline action with Starfleet,
09:24and fought her way to the top with grit,
09:26intelligence, and some nifty fighting skills.
09:29But she was struck down during the second episode,
09:32Battle at the Binary Stars,
09:33when a plan to capture Klingon leader Tukovna,
09:36concocted by her protégé and series protagonist,
09:38first officer Michael Burnham, goes awry.
09:41Engaging the Klingon in hand-to-hand combat,
09:43Georgiou's sizable skills were unfortunately
09:46no match for the born and bred warriors,
09:48and she was killed when he put his mechla through her heart.
09:51But as the old adage goes,
09:54if you love someone, set them free.
09:55And lo and behold,
09:56an alternate evil version of Georgiou
09:59from the Mirror Universe
10:00cropped up in Season 1's 11th episode,
10:02The Wolf Inside.
10:04Not quite as good as the real thing,
10:05but it's better than nothing.
10:07Number 1.
10:08Mary Winchester in Supernatural
10:10The fantasy mystery series Supernatural
10:13came to a close in 2020,
10:15ending a mammoth 15-season run
10:17that saw demon-hunting brothers Sam and Dean Winchester
10:20find the closure and life or death
10:23they were looking for after a lifetime on the road.
10:26But none of this would have happened
10:27without the death of their mother, Mary.
10:30Played by Samantha Smith,
10:31she provided the impetus
10:32for the first extended several-season arc of the series
10:35and for the shape of the boys' lives,
10:38including them becoming hunters in the first place.
10:40In the show's pilot episode,
10:42Mary was awakened by six-month-old Sam
10:44crying in his cot.
10:46Much to her horror,
10:47she discovered the yellow-eyed prince of hell,
10:49Azazel, looming over her baby.
10:52Thus, Azazel pinned Mary to the ceiling,
10:54cut her open, and engulfed her in fire.
10:56Her fate may have been sealed from the start,
10:58but we don't discover just how much of a badass she was
11:01until we are much further into the show.
11:04Mary was much more than a doting mother.
11:06She was a hunter who hung up her stake and shotgun
11:09in order to raise a family.
11:10In fact, she was the very reason
11:12her gruff, tragic husband John Winchester
11:15started fighting the supernatural in the first place.
11:18Though Mary is reformed in season 11's Alpha and Omega,
11:21she dies once again in season 14,
11:24going on to be reunited with John in heaven.
11:27And that concludes our list.
11:29If you can think of any that we missed,
11:31then do let us know in the comments below.
11:32And while you're there,
11:33don't forget to like and subscribe
11:34and tap the notification bell.
11:36Also, head over to Twitter and follow us there,
11:38and I can be found across various social medias
11:41just by searching Ellie Littlechild.
11:43I've been Ellie with WhatCulture.
11:45I hope you have a magical day
11:46and I'll see you real soon.
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