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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
00:04brains out on a rooftop in London to seal their final scheme, or riding headlong into
00:09traffic after accepting they have become the very thing they sought to destroy and have
00:13nowhere else to go.
00:15But some shows have barely got their story straight before they're knocking off cast
00:19members left, right and centre.
00:21In fact, certain series seem to make it their mission to ensure the maximum possible body
00:26count each episode before the credits roll, looking in your direction, Game of Thrones.
00:31While sometimes this is warranted to keep the action alive or provide a realistic suspension
00:35of our disbelief, especially when dealing with zombie hordes or murderous biker gangs, some
00:41pretty epic characters have been claimed before we've had a chance to really get to know
00:44them.
00:45So let's honour their memory, reminisce about the good times and detail what made these
00:50characters great before they were mercilessly slaughtered at the very beginning.
00:55So with that in mind then, I'm Ellie with WhatCulture, here with 8 great TV characters
00:59who die at the beginning.
01:018.
01:02Danton Black in The Flash
01:06Arrow's spin-off The Flash hit the starting line in 2014, with Grant Gustin as the titular
01:11Flash, or Barry Allen to his friends.
01:14Now deep into its 8th season, the show has travelled the multiverse, bringing in heroes and villains
01:19from across the DC canon, most of whom have more than got their dues.
01:23However, The Flash needed some initial villains to fight off on his way to becoming the fastest
01:28man alive, meaning certain characters saw considerably less time on the show than they deserved.
01:34And the first of these, and first real super-villain, was Danton Black, or Multiplex, a cloning
01:39researcher turned meta-human with the power to duplicate himself at will.
01:44Firestorm's nemesis, and a member of both the secret society of super-villains and the suicide
01:49squad in the comics, Multiplex had so much more to offer that would have carried well across the show.
01:54Unfortunately for him, for us, for everyone, he fell to his death during his final confrontation
02:00with The Flash in Season 1's second episode, Fastest Man Alive, when he refused to be saved by the Speedster.
02:08Yeah, we got some cool bullet-time shots between him and Barry, as the latter learned to control his powers,
02:13but this is hardly a substitute.
02:157. 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, alongside Loki, Spider-Man, and Doctor Strange.
02:31In the first episode, Captain Carter and the Hydra Stomper, skinny Steve Rogers in a tin suit,
02:36face off against the sinister Red Skull, voiced 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,
02:47perhaps 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, so 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, took centre stage as the series' overarching antagonist,
03:23when the Watcher assembled the Guardians of the Multiverse to defeat him.
03:27But 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, when showrunner Russell T Davies recognised both a need and opening
03:46for a more adult-themed sci-fi offering, which could make the most of flirty, feisty fan favourite Captain Jack Harkness.
03:54And so, a new team of Earth-based Alien Hunters adorned our screens, comprising the mysterious Cardiff-based Torchwood Institute.
04:02Amongst them was Susie Costello, played by Indira Varma, who 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, the writers blasted her off the face of the show in Season 1's very first episode, Everything Changes.
04:24Caught experimenting with a resurrection gauntlet and, um, killing people, Susie 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,
04:45the 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 fits seamlessly into the galaxy far, far away.
05:22While the latest series has been built on the back of established characters from the saga and
05:27expanded universe such as Ahsoka Tano and Boba Fett, the first brought us an array of original takes.
05:33And few are better than IG-11, the bounty hunter droid voiced by Taika Waititi,
05:38who also directed the final episode of the season, Chapter 8, Redemption.
05:43Similar 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. After a brief team-up with the show's namesake,
05:55a helmeted Pedro Pascal doing more character work with just his voice than 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, he also altered his personality and purpose,
06:12turning him into a nurse droid, ensuring the cold-shelled killer was never coming back.
06:18Number 4. Jesse McNally in Buffy the Vampire Slayer
06:22Following the hip young Slayer played by Sarah Michelle Gellert, Buffy the Vampire Slayer set
06:26a new standard for fantasy TV and redefined the horror landscape, turning age-old tropes on their
06:32heads and furnishing a whole generation with a brand new heroine with a gang of relatable misfit friends.
06:39One such friend was Jesse McNally, a Sunnydale High student who, alongside Xander Harris and Willow
06:44Rosenberg, rounded out the trio of Bud's Buffy first encounters. When Eric Balfour signed on to
06:50play the part back in 1996, he never imagined the dizzying heights the show would reach,
06:55its popularity extending worldwide and creating one of the definitive late 90s pop culture sensations,
07:01but neither perhaps had he imagined it would be without him.
07:04Jesse was doing Joey to Xander's Chandler, but that didn't stop him getting turned into a vampire
07:10and promptly slayed during the two-part season 1 opener. Granted, it established from the outset
07:15that no character, no matter how integral to the group dynamic, was safe, but did they have to
07:20completely erase him from the show, never to be mentioned again? This was something Joss Whedon
07:25sought to repeat on the first season of Angel a few years later by killing off Glenn Quinn's Doyle in the
07:31first few episodes, but he never got his wish as Doyle held out until the mid-season finale.
07:36Number 3. Benjen Stark in Game of Thrones
07:40Epic fantasy series Game of Thrones swiftly came to define the nobody is safe ethos when it put pay to
07:45Ned Stark's reign as series protagonist at the conclusion of season 1. But given the footwork
07:51the show had done up until then, we really ought to have seen it coming. Enter or exit Benjen Stark,
07:58Ned's brother and First Ranger of the Night's Watch, a military order who guard the wall dividing the
08:03fictional land of Westeros' Seven Kingdoms from the icy wilds beyond. A Stark by birth, but a Crow by
08:10choice, Benjen is everything his nephew Jon Snow wishes to be. Tough, brave, steely, just and above all
08:18else, quietly heroic. In the third episode of season 1, Lord Snow, Benjen tells Jon,
08:24we will speak when I return, and rides north from Castle Black, only to be killed off-screen by a
08:29White Walker and leave Jon hanging forevermore. Until, that is, he reappears as a living corpse
08:35in the season 6 episode Blood of My Blood, raised from the dead by the White Walkers, but saved from
08:41their thrall by a piece of dragonglass inserted in his chest by the magical children of the forest.
08:47And given it's Game of Thrones, we don't need to tell you, he dies again, for good this time.
08:52Number 2. Philippa Georgiou in Star Trek Discovery
08:56When a show casts big talent like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon's Michelle Yeoh,
09:01we all quite rightly expect it to use them. So imagine our surprise when just two episodes in,
09:07she's taken out. That was the case in Star Trek Discovery, a grittier take on the Trek series,
09:12which began in 2017. Yeoh played Philippa Georgiou, the commanding officer of the USS
09:19Shenzhou, and an all-round badass, having seen years of frontline action with Starfleet,
09:24and fought her way to the top with grit, intelligence, and some nifty fighting skills.
09:29But she was struck down during the second episode Battle at the Binary Stars, when a plan
09:33to capture Klingon leader Tukovna, concocted by her protégé and series protagonist First Officer
09:39Michael Burnham goes awry. Engaging the Klingon in hand-to-hand combat, Georgiou's sizeable skills
09:45were unfortunately no match for the born-and-bred warriors, and she was killed when he put his mechla
09:50through her heart. But as the old adage goes, if you love someone, set them free. And lo and behold,
09:56an alternate evil version of Georgiou from the Mirror Universe cropped up in Season 1's 11th episode,
10:02the wolf inside. Not quite as good as the real thing, but it's better than nothing.
10:071. Mary Winchester in Supernatural
10:11The fantasy mystery series Supernatural came to a close in 2020, ending a mammoth 15-season run that
10:18saw demon-hunting brothers Sam and Dean Winchester find the closure and life, or death, they were
10:23looking for after a lifetime on the road. But none of this would have happened without the death of
10:28their mother, Mary. Played by Samantha Smith, she provided the impetus for the first extended
10:34several-season arc of the series, and for the shape of the boys' lives, including them becoming
10:38hunters in the first place. In the show's pilot episode, Mary was awakened by six-month-old Sam
10:44crying in his cot. Much to her horror, she discovered the yellow-eyed Prince of Hell,
10:49Azazel, looming over her baby. Thus, Azazel pinned Mary to the ceiling, cut her open, and engulfed her
10:55in fire. Her fate may have been sealed from the start, but we don't discover just how much of a
11:00badass she was until we are much further into the show. Mary was much more than a doting mother. She
11:06was a hunter who hung up her stake and shotgun in order to raise a family. In fact, she was the very
11:12reason her gruff, tragic husband John Winchester started fighting the supernatural in the first
11:17place. Though Mary is reformed in Season 11's Alpha and Omega, she dies once again in Season 14,
11:24going on to be reunited with John in Heaven. And that concludes our list. If you can think
11:29of any that we missed, then do let us know in the comments below, and while you're there,
11:33don't forget to like and subscribe and tap the notification bell. Also, head over to Twitter
11:38and follow us there, and I can be found across various social medias just by searching Ellie
11:42Littlechild. I've been Ellie with WhatCulture. I hope you have a magical day, and I'll see you real soon.
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