Great death scenes make for great storytelling.
If you're feeling inclined to relive the sadness of losing all those beloved and iconic characters...
well, get a tissue box ready, because the waterworks are coming.
Here are some of the saddest passing scenes in film and TV.
In the original Star Wars trilogy, Han Solo undergoes a classic heroic transformation.
When you first meet him, he's a callous rogue who pushes others away, and only cares about
cash, but by the time Return of the Jedi rolls around, he's found redemption, purpose, and
the love of his life.
It's a nice, tidy ending, which is what made Han's actual fate in Star Wars: The Force
Awakens so grueling: apparently, even in a galaxy so far, far away, happy endings are
never quite so easy.
While fans spent 30 years imagining that Han and Leia lived happily ever after, it turns
out that their bouncing little boy became the next Darth Vader, their marriage hit the
rocks, and Han went back to smuggling.
By the time the older Han finally makes his appearance, his famous wisecracks are now
tinged with the sense of loss.
"This is the Millenium Falcon?
You're Han Solo?"
"I used to be."
What makes Han's passing the saddest scene in Star Wars history, though, is that he passes
simply for trying to do right by his son.
Even though the young Han would've hit the road, and the older Han knows Kylo Ren will
probably off him, the famously scruffy nerf herder can't help but make one final effort
to redeem the kid he raised.
From the first moment Han approaches Kylo, every fan in the universe knows he's about
to get his Obi-Wan moment, but that only makes the eventual lightsaber stab even harder to
watch.
Breaking Bad was packed full of dark, grisly, and uncomfortable moments, but the one that
everyone still winces over is the scene where Jesse's girlfriend, Jane, asleep after a last-hurrah
drug binge, chokes on her own vomit, and Walt does nothing.
It's an easy solution to prevent Jane from exposing him, which she'd earlier threatened
to do.
His conscious decision to allow Jane to pass might be the moment where Walt truly "broke
bad" in the most awful way.
From that point on, there was no going back.
Disturbing as this was, it's even worse when Jesse's later girlfriend Andrea is shot by
Todd in the show's penultimate episode.
While Jane and Jesse were largely terrible for each other, Andrea is just a single mother
trying to give her son, Brock, a better life, and she's only offed because Jesse refuses
to cook for Todd's sociopathic gang.
Todd casually shoots her in the back of the head while Jesse watches, leaving Brock an
orphan.
"Just so you know, this isn't personal."
"NO!
NOOOOOO!"
The sequence is brief, horrible, and impossible to forget, particularly for Ian Posada, the
young actor who played Brock, who, according to The Hollywood Reporter, teared up when
he was shown the scene.
The late Michael Clarke Duncan was always a phenomenal actor, but the one movie that
everyone will always remember him by is the screen adaptation of Stephen King's The Green
Mile, in which he plays John Coffey, a wrongfully accused inmate with supernatural abilities.
The film is filled with tons of tear-jerker moments, as Coffey's kindness, honesty, and
compassion for others is shown in sharp contrast to the horrible treatment he receives from
society.
"I'm tired of all the pain I feel and hear in the world everyday."
Nothing compares, though, to the intensely heart-wrenching scene at the end of the film
where Coffey is finally offed in the electric chair.
The characters are crying just as much as the audience, and the little touches, such
as Coffey asking not to have the black hood put over his face, since he's afraid of the
dark, or the close-up of Coffey and Tom Hanks' Paul Edgecomb squeezing hands, leave a lasting
impression.
What's amazing about Sam Raimi's 2002 Spider-Man is it that it somehow made the best superhero
origin story ever… even better.
In the original comics, Peter Parker is just an average, selfish teenage kid preoccupied
with girls and popularity, until his big ego results in his father figure getting offed.
"Hey, Michelangelo, don't forget we're painting the kitchen right after school, got it?"
"Sure thing, Uncle Ben.
Don't start without me."
Basically, while the genetically altered spider bite gives Peter strength and confidence,
it's the weight of his own mistakes that forces him to grow up and take responsibility.
All the key elements are the same between the Raimi's film adaptation and its source
material: Wise words are spoken…
"Remember: With great power comes great responsibility."
Peter lets a criminal get away, you know the drill.
But Raimi's film made one slight alteration that cranked up the tears.
Here, we see Uncle Ben die, right before Peter's eyes, surrounded by onlookers.
"Uncle Ben?"
"Peter."
"I'm here, Uncle Ben."
The entire movie relies on this scene working, and luckily, Cliff Robertson and Tobey Maguire
knock it out of the park.
If there's one big reason the Marvel Cinematic Universe hasn't shown Uncle Ben's passing,
perhaps it's because they knew they couldn't top this scene.
Or this one:
"No!"
At this point, it seems like more Game of Thrones characters are gone than alive, and
that's not even counting the whole army of white walkers marching down Westeros.
While there's still another season primed to shatter everybody's heart, the loss that
currently hurts the most is Hodor, the lovable strongman who protected Bran with his last
breath, even though his tragic situation in life was… well, Bran's fault.
Time travel is crazy, eh?
"Hold the door!
Hold the door!
Hold the door!"
Though Hodor spent much of the show's run as a humorous oaf who just said the same "gibberish"
word over and over, his death scene completely redefined the character forever, revealing
that "Hodor" actually meant "hold the door," and that he'd known this whole time that he'd
someday have to sacrifice his life doing just that.
Twitter, and presumably the actual world, erupted in sadness following Hodor's passing.
The whole thing only gets more depressing when you rewatch the first season and realize
that he's been lending a massive hand to Bran this whole time: The first words ever spoken
to Hodor are "help Bran down the hall."
Black Panther was perhaps the cinematic event of 2018, and a huge part of that success was
due to the film's antagonist, Erik Killmonger, as played by Michael B. Jordan.
Whether Killmonger is unforgivably torching Wakandan traditions, sending out mass shipments
of weaponry, or simply crying at the loss of his father, he's always riveting, impossible
to look away from, and deeply sympathetic.
"I found my daddy with panther claws in his chest.
You ain't the son of a king!
You're the son of a criminal!"
Killmonger is more than just a great character, though, because as The Atlantic points out,
his story also symbolizes "the void" permanently imposed on African culture by the Trans-Atlantic
slave trade.
"These items aren't for sale."
"How do you think your ancestors got these?
You think they paid a fair price?
Or did they take it, like they took everything else?"
These deeper themes are exactly what makes his passing scene so powerful.
After being mortally wounded by the film's hero, T'Challa, Killmonger mentions that his
Wakandan father always praised the natural beauty of his homeland.
Out of compassion, T'Challa then brings his wounded opponent back up the mountain, so
they can watch the sunset together, and offers to use Wakanda's advanced medical technology
to heal him.
Killmonger refuses to be saved.
Instead, he asks to be buried at sea.
"Just bury me in the ocean with my ancestors that jumped from the ships.
'Cause they knew death was better than bondage."
While Black Panther had a lot of moments that will go down in pop culture history, this
was one of the biggest.
"We just… made out a couple times."
Oh, Barb, the world hardly knew ye.
Despite the fact that Barb only made it through a few episodes of Stranger Things before being
shredded to pieces by the Demogorgon, this minor character spawned a huge collection
of fans called the "cult of Barb" by Salon.
What it comes down to, really, is that Shannon Purser's character is just so intensely relatable.
While most people haven't hung out at the pool while an otherworldly monster storms
out of the woods and drags them into a dark dimension, many people can empathize with
the feeling of being left out, or trying to do the right thing while their flaky friend
just gets some action in the other room.
Barb's passing scene is perhaps the ultimate example of what it feels like being the so-called
"third wheel," and that's probably why so many Stranger Things fans still miss her to
this day.
At the beginning of the 2004 relaunch of Battlestar Galactica, Anastasia "Dee" Dualla was one
of the show's beacons of hope.
Youthful, optimistic, and full of life, Dee weathers the many challenges the fleet experiences,
eventually finding love with Lee "Apollo" Adama.
Even when Dee and Apollo's marriage doesn't work out, she continues being one of the show's
brightest characters, as the fleet searches through the universe for their mythical homeworld,
"Earth."
"You have no idea what's happened, do you, huh?
Today is just another day."
Things quickly collapse when everyone finds out that Earth is actually a post-apocalyptic
wasteland.
As the crew tries to recover from this horrible reality, Dee and Apollo go out on a date and
reconnect.
It's a sweet, simple moment, leading audiences to believe that maybe now, even after the
crew has seemingly lost everything, there's still hope for the future.
Then Dee goes back to her locker, smiles in the mirror, savors the moment she shared with
Lee… and ends her life.
The scene is so shockingly tragic that actress Kandyse McClure told SyFy that merely reading
the script left her floored.
It's safe to say that her fans had similar reactions.
If there's one thing that Marvel's Avengers: Infinity War will go down in history for,
other than being the most ambitious cinematic crossover ever, it's the fact that at least
half of everybody's favorite superheroes get offed by a bad guy snapping his fingers.
Some Infinity War passings may be more permanent than others, like Loki and Heimdall's, but
every single one of them hurts like crazy.
The biggest shock, though, might be that moment on Titan where a certain wall-crawling, web-spinning
underdog turns to dust.
While everybody else, from Star-Lord to Black Panther, can barely blink before they're wiped
out of existence, Spider-Man knows something is coming.
He feels his spidey sense tingling, but there's nothing he can do to stop his inevitable erasure.
And then came that heartbreaking line:
"I don't feel so good."
And, finally, as audiences everywhere let out a collective ugly sob:
"I don't wanna go.
I don't wanna go, sir, please.
Please, I don't want to go."
According to Screen Rant, both of these soul-crushing lines were improvised by actor Tom Holland.
Sure, we all know Peter is coming back, what with Far From Home taking place after Avengers:
Endgame...
But still, that didn't make watching him go any less heartbreaking.
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