It's been a great year for television, but unfortunately we can't say the same for many
of our favorite, dearly departed characters.
That's why we're paying tribute to all the TV characters who unexpectedly left us this
year.
Be careful if you're not caught up on all your favorite shows - from This is Us and
Walking Dead to Jessica Jones and even New Girl.
There are some major, major spoilers ahead.
Millions of eager fans of NBC's smash hit This Is Us knew that Pearson patriarch Jack
was going to die, but they weren't quite sure how.
On February 4, the show finally revealed exactly how Jack passed away.
In a flashback sequence set in 1998, we see the family's slow cooker short out, sparking
a fire that quickly engulfs the Pearson home.
Jack wakes up in the middle of the night, smells smoke, and turns into Hero Dad, getting
his family out of the house with a bedsheet rope.
Then he goes back into the burning house to save Louie, the family dog.
He's taken to the hospital to attend to minor burns, and all seems well.
Until:
"Your husband went into cardiac arrest.
It was catastrophic and I'm afraid we've lost him."
Carl Grimes grew up on TV.
The son of Walking Dead protagonist Rick Grimes, Carl had been with the series since episode
one back in 2010.
Along the way, he endures tragedies and setbacks, including the death of his mother during childbirth,
the loss of an eye, and various acts of evil by the show's villains.
Keeping Carl alive and safe is the reason Rick never completely crumbles, and Carl keeps
human decency alive.
Unfortunately, his luck comes to an end when a zombie finally takes a bite out of Carl.
It's a death sentence, but not an immediate one, giving Carl time to say goodbye.
He hangs out with his little sister Judith, writes farewell letters, and then shoots himself
before he can go full walker.
Carl wasn't the only Walking Dead character whose death caught us by surprise - Simon
was Negan's loyal, selfless, and nasty second-in-command.
What did he get for his constant devotion to the evil leader of the Saviors?
Violently choked to death by his former boss.
His death isn't completely out of the blue, though...
Simon had been pretty brashly making some overtures to take over the Sanctuary.
Negan knows about it for a while, but rather than kill Simon right away, he gives Simon
a few chances to prove himself or make it right.
Ultimately though, Simon's luck runs out when Negan challenges him to a fight - with fatal
consequences for the loser.
"You got saviors killed and then you ran away like a coward.
You got shown up one too many times."
NCIS wound down its 15th season with a heavily promoted plot: The departure of original character
Abby.
NCIS viewers worried that this news spelled doom for the fan-favorite character.
It definitely didn't look good for Abby when an episode ended with Abby and co-worker Clayton
Reeves seemingly shot by a mugger.
Resolving that cliffhanger ending, next week's episode found Ducky sympathizing with another
coroner about the agony of performing an autopsy on a former colleague.
Had Abby died from a gunshot?
[Sad music]
Surprise!
She hadn't.
Instead it was Reeves who had died, having selflessly stepped in front of Abby to take
the bullet.
Despite surviving an attack by a serial killer called the Black Hood earlier in the season,
Midge doesn't quite manage to make it through the rest of Riverdale's second season alive.
Her fate is sealed when she's cast in Riverdale High's production of the musical version of
Stephen King's Carrie.
When the curtain on the show rises, audiences - and half the town of Riverdale - see a gruesome
sight.
Midge, brutally stabbed, with creepy messages written in blood on the wall around her.
Midge may be gone, but she's definitely not forgotten.
"The vixens and I vow that we will not rest until those responsible for the murder of
our sister is rightly punished.”
Modern Family isn't the ratings juggernaut it once was, and its tenth season may be one
of its last.
To bring back some of the viewers that have tuned out over the years, the show pulled
a little publicity stunt before the season began, promising that a "significant character"
would die an episode to come.
Fans and reporters speculated about who would be the one to kick the bucket - but no one
expected it to be DeDe, Jay's first wife and Mitchell and Claire's mother.
Deaths on Gotham are frequent, but the victims are usually just underlings, stooges, or random
bystanders.
Shockingly, two major characters meet their end in the show's fourth season finale.
Butch managed to cheat death once when he was brought back to life in a toxic swamp,
but he's ultimately killed by the Penguin as revenge for Butch's earlier murder of Penguin's
mother.
Classic Batman villain Ra's al Ghul also bites the big one in the season finale.
After Barbara turns down the baddie's offer to leave Gotham, she stabs him in the chest
with the assistance of Bruce Wayne.
Will Simpson was a vital character in the first season of Jessica Jones; first a cop
controlled by Kilgrave, then a love interest for Trish Walker, and then, finally, an unstable
killer addicted to super-steroid-esque pills.
When season 2 starts up, Simpson is stalking Trish.
He corners her and gets shot in the leg - at which point he warns Trish that she's in danger.
A useful warning, but delivered a bit late, since he's mysteriously killed minutes after
he delivers his warning."
Kimmy's tough-as-nails landlord Lillian found love in the third season of Unbreakable Kimmy
Schmidt with Artie Goodman, the owner of a Whole Foods-like grocery chain called Big
Naturals.
Nothing lasts forever, though.
At the beginning of Season 4, viewers learn that Artie died on their vacation, and Lillian
was entrusted to spread his ashes at the site of his summer camp in Manhattan, which had
turned into an exclusive club.
Barred from entering the club, Lillian is able to give Artie the final resting place
he asked for, along with some closure for herself: She sells two plastic baggies full
of Artie's cremated remains to a bunch of finance-bros who clearly think those ashes
are something a little more party-friendly.
"This is the most fun I've had disposing of a body since…
Well, just don't make me choose!"
If Scandal had to end, so would one of its main characters.
Somebody had to pay for seven seasons' worth of political machinations, backstabbing, extramarital
affairs, politicking, terrorism, and murder.
That person wound up being Attorney General David Rosen.
In the penultimate episode, Washington, D.C. fixer Olivia Pope tells the public about the
existence of the secretive B613 operation, hoping that the revelation would somehow stop
sneaky, power-crazed Vice President Cyrus.
Unfortunately, that leads the increasingly unhinged Cyrus to respond by poisoning Rosen
with a deadly cocktail.
"David Rosen, you… are in my way.
No hard feelings."
The second season finale of the rebooted X-Files killed off a lot of longtime characters.
One of the season's main arcs concerns Cigarette Smoking Man's plans to unleash a deadly virus.
To pull it off, he manipulated Scully's shape-shifting son William - along with FBI Assistant Director
Walter Skinner and Agent Monica Reyes - into helping him execute it.
Smoking Man also happened to be William's biological father - he was the one who'd drugged
and medically impregnated Scully nearly two decades ago.
William, wishing to be free of all this evil, finally confronts his dad on a dock while
using his powers to disguise himself as Mulder.
Smoking Man shoots William-as-Mulder in the head, right before the real Mulder arrives
to shoot Smoking Man and kick him into the water.
The deaths don't stop there; Skinner shoots Agent Reyes, before getting run over by a
car himself.
Luckily, it isn't all doom and gloom - William seems to have survived.
Fox's New Girl isn't so new anymore, and it came to the end of its seven-season run with
a handful of episodes to wrap up all of its loose ends and give each of its characters
a proper send-off.
Alas, a finale usually means somebody has to die.
And in this show's case, that somebody would be Ferguson, the beloved smush-faced cat belonging
to Winston.
While viewers were saved the not-very-sitcom-friendly images and emotional turmoil of watching a
pet die, New Girl devoted an episode to Winston's over-the-top grieving process, which involves
a motorcade to an elaborate memorial service conducted in the Jewish tradition.
We'll mourn you until we join you, Ferguson.
When the Tim Allen sitcom Last Man Standing returned to Fox more than a year after ABC
canceled it, producers made a few changes.
One of the biggest changes was that Bud Baxter, portrayed by veteran character actor and Oscar
nominee Robert Forster, wouldn't be back at all… because in the new season, Bud is dead.
Forster shows up here and there on the ABC version of the show, but producers used the
network switch to send his character to the great beyond.
Luckily, Bud still got the opportunity to appear one last time as a ghostly vision for
closure on some unresolved issues.
"I tell my kids I love them all the time.
I don't think I ever remember you saying that."
In May 2018, Clayne Crawford was shockingly fired from Fox's TV version of Lethal Weapon.
Apparently, in his two seasons of work on the show as loose-cannon cop Martin Riggs,
Crawford made life difficult on the set for many people, notably co-star Damon Wayans.
Prior to the third-season renewal, fans learned that Crawford would be replaced by Seann William
Scott, who would play a new partner to Wayans' Roger Murtaugh.
That ramped up speculation as to how Lethal Weapon would explain Crawford's sudden absence.
The show addressed the issue with its third-season premiere, which found Riggs dying from a gunshot
wound he sustained in the second season cliffhanger.
Of course, the body count of TV characters doesn't end there...and, shocker, a few more
come from that zombie show where lots of people die all the time.
Here are some more familiar faces who went off to that DVR in the sky...
Nick Clark - Fear the Walking Dead
Tobin - The Walking Dead
Spencer - American Housewife
Madison - Fear the Walking Dead
Gregory - The Walking Dead