# TV series where the majority of the protagonists die? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 17, 2006, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-series-where-the-majority-of-the-protagonists-die/373045 "2006-09-17T06:34:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2006, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-series-where-the-majority-of-the-protagonists-die/373045/1 "2006-09-17T06:34:29Z")
So, I was wondering, what are some examples of TV shows where the majority (if not all) of the protagonists end up dead by the end of the series? Needless to say, spoilers abound here. The thing that made me think of this is my recent rise of interest in Space: Above and Beyond. When the show begins, we see the forming of the 58th Reconnisance Squadron of the USMC Space Cavalry (slight tangent, is it ever called the “Space Cavalry” again after the first episode?), with, in addition to the central characters, various minor characters filling out the rest of the ranks of the squadron to serve as semi-developed cannon fodder. By the end of the last episode, most of the squadron has been killed off, with the only remaining members being West and Cooper, with everyone else dead, missing, or in serious condition. Neon Genesis Evangelion, of course, ends with just about everyone (as in main characters, minor characters, villians, extras, people not appearing in the movie, all of humanity) except for the main character dying by the end (or more specifically, at the End). So Doper connoisseurs of the televised arts, any other good examples here? ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2006, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-series-where-the-majority-of-the-protagonists-die/373045/2 "2006-09-17T06:45:35Z")
I’ve never seen it, but the British science fiction series [_Blake’s 7_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blake%27s_7) is pretty well-known for this. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2006, 6:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-series-where-the-majority-of-the-protagonists-die/373045/3 "2006-09-17T06:47:47Z")
**Angel** , of course. The last scene of the last episode finds the surviving cast members in a rainy alley facing a demon horde. Two of the main characters died earlier in the season; one more died a few minutes earlier in the episode. Of the four in the alleyway, one is mortally wounded; all of them know that they have no chance of surviving the coming fight. They step forward to face their enemy. The main hero - Angel himself - raises his sword, says, “Let’s go to work”… …and the series ends. Sure, there’s a lot of conjecture that some of the characters survived, that some deus would come out of some machina as soon as the credits finished rolling, but we can just write that off as wishful thinking. Besides, it would defeat the whole purpose of the ending. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2006, 12:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-series-where-the-majority-of-the-protagonists-die/373045/4 "2006-09-17T12:09:02Z")
In the anthology series, _The Twilight Zone_, a large percentage of the protagonists wind up dead or _worse_! :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2006, 12:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-series-where-the-majority-of-the-protagonists-die/373045/5 "2006-09-17T12:41:00Z")
[QUOTE=Alessan] **Angel** , of course. The last scene of the last episode finds the surviving cast members in a rainy alley facing a demon horde. Two of the main characters died earlier in the season; one more died a few minutes earlier in the episode. Of the four in the alleyway, one is mortally wounded; all of them know that they have no chance of surviving the coming fight. They step forward to face their enemy. The main hero - Angel himself - raises his sword, says, “Let’s go to work”… …and the series ends. Sure, there’s a lot of conjecture that some of the characters survived, that some deus would come out of some machina as soon as the credits finished rolling, but we can just write that off as wishful thinking. Besides, it would defeat the whole purpose of the ending. [/QUOTE] La la la la I can’t hear you I can’t hear you they weren’t shown dead on-screen they’re still alive la la la… There are the various Blackadder series, in which some or all of the main characters end up dead in the last episode. If the characters don’t have to _stay_ dead then you have something like Drawn Together, in which the main characters often die once or more in each episode. ---
**Author:** ![bubastis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d07c76/32.png) [@bubastis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bubastis)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2006, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-series-where-the-majority-of-the-protagonists-die/373045/6 "2006-09-17T12:43:50Z")
In Oz, if you showed up on any episode, you were fair game. The vast majority of the cast got shanked, to use the parlance of the show. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2006, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-series-where-the-majority-of-the-protagonists-die/373045/7 "2006-09-17T12:47:35Z")
Well, there’s _24_ where they dropped like flies last season. The guy who survived _Space Above and Beyond_ also survived _24_ BTW. Hmmm… ---
**Author:** ![Monkey\_Chews](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/65b543/32.png) [@Monkey\_Chews](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monkey_Chews)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2006, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-series-where-the-majority-of-the-protagonists-die/373045/8 "2006-09-17T12:50:31Z")
**Mork and Mindy** The final episode has them falling through time to escape another alien trying to kill them, and the last we see of them is a prehistoric cave drawing. Cool. ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2006, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-series-where-the-majority-of-the-protagonists-die/373045/9 "2006-09-17T13:03:24Z")
[QUOTE=Alessan] **Angel** , of course. The last scene of the last episode finds the surviving cast members in a rainy alley facing a demon horde. Two of the main characters died earlier in the season; one more died a few minutes earlier in the episode. Of the four in the alleyway, one is mortally wounded; all of them know that they have no chance of surviving the coming fight. They step forward to face their enemy. The main hero - Angel himself - raises his sword, says, “Let’s go to work”… …and the series ends. Sure, there’s a lot of conjecture that some of the characters survived, that some deus would come out of some machina as soon as the credits finished rolling, but we can just write that off as wishful thinking. Besides, it would defeat the whole purpose of the ending. [/QUOTE] This is much the same as the ending to _Blackadder Goes Forth_, in the last episode of which the main characters all climb out of the trenches and lead an infantry charge against the Germans under heavy machine-gun fire. Of course, the fate of the characters is left open-ended, as they may actually have survived “The Big Push”, especially given Blackadder’s talent for extricating himself (and, by extension, Baldrick, and George) from dire situations… The final episode of _Red Dwarf_ was also somewhat unusual, in that Everyone else abandons ship, leaving Rimmer alone on the doomed _Red Dwarf_. In the final episode of _The Young Ones_, The main characters drive off a cliff in a double-decker bus, which bursts into flames at the bottom, and finally, in _Mostly Harmless_ (The Fifth _Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy_ book) The Vogons manage to destroy Earth- again- this time killing all the major characters (except Zaphod) and completely eliminating every single “alternate” Earth in the process. Marvin died some time earlier, of extreme old age- he was several times older than the universe itself, because of all the time travel he had done. Interestingly, in the radio adaption, There’s an epilogue to the ending of _Mostly Harmless_ in which, at the last minute, the Babel Fish (fishes?) in Arthur and Ford’s ears activate a unique self-preservation ability and transport the main characters to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, where they are re-united with many other characters (including Arthur’s girlfriend, Fenchurch), and there are also other endings in which everyone generally lives happily ever after, having escaped the destruction of the Earth by the Vogons yet again. The Brits seem to have a thing for killing off the protaganists at the end of a series, don’t they? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2006, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-series-where-the-majority-of-the-protagonists-die/373045/10 "2006-09-17T13:46:03Z")
> [@](#): > > If the characters don’t have to stay dead then you have something like Drawn Together, in which the main characters often die once or more in each episode. In the same vein, Aqua Teen Hungerforce often kills off one or more major characters in each episode, and several episodes of Sealab 2021 ended with the death of the entire cast. ---
**Author:** ![chrisk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@chrisk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chrisk)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2006, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-series-where-the-majority-of-the-protagonists-die/373045/11 "2006-09-17T13:56:18Z")
[QUOTE=Alessan] Of the four in the alleyway, one is mortally wounded… [/QUOTE] I’m curious as to exactly why you said this. It’s pretty clear that Gunn is hurt seriously… it isn’t just a scratch. But do we really have evidence that it was _mortal_?? I suppose a lot depends on the likelihood of him getting to medical help in the next hour, and how competent the medical help is. Looking at the situation, I have to say that his chances of that don’t look too good… but unlikelier rescues have happened in epic fantasy I think. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2006, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-series-where-the-majority-of-the-protagonists-die/373045/12 "2006-09-17T14:14:47Z")
[QUOTE=chrisk] I’m curious as to exactly why you said this. It’s pretty clear that Gunn is hurt seriously… it isn’t just a scratch. But do we really have evidence that it was _mortal_?? [/QUOTE] From the episode in question: > [@](#): > > Illyria - You’re fading. You’ll last ten minutes at best. > > Gunn - Then let’s make 'em memorable. ---
**Author:** ![chrisk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@chrisk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chrisk)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2006, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-series-where-the-majority-of-the-protagonists-die/373045/13 "2006-09-17T14:21:35Z")
[QUOTE=Alessan] From the episode in question: Illyria - You’re fading. You’ll last ten minutes at best. Gunn - Then let’s make 'em memorable. [/QUOTE] That could be taken a number of ways, even if Illyria is correct. Maybe she meant he’d be able to actively fight and defend himself ten minutes before being helpless and needing to rest. That’s bad in the situation, but still not what I’d define as a ‘mortal’ wound. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2006, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-series-where-the-majority-of-the-protagonists-die/373045/14 "2006-09-17T14:38:26Z")
Yeah, and if he rested he’d get back 1+ (CON bonus) hit points every day until he was all better. Sorry. Wishful thinking. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_Wright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/848f3c/32.png) [@Steve\_Wright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_Wright)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2006, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-series-where-the-majority-of-the-protagonists-die/373045/15 "2006-09-17T15:52:53Z")
_Blake’s Seven_, already mentioned, is a classic example of this - the final episode (which aired in 1981 and has been much discussed, so I’m damned if I’m going to bother with spoiler boxes) ended with all the main characters being shot dead, one by one. A previous series by _Blake’s Seven_ creator Terry Nation was _Survivors_, and a main character in that is dying painfully by inches on my DVD player even as I type … Set after a mutant virus has wiped out most of the human race, _Survivors_ is a memorably bleak show, and a number of regular and semi-regular characters don’t make it all the way through its thirty-eight episodes. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2006, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-series-where-the-majority-of-the-protagonists-die/373045/16 "2006-09-17T16:04:37Z")
[QUOTE=chrisk] I’m curious as to exactly why you said this. It’s pretty clear that Gunn is hurt seriously… it isn’t just a scratch. But do we really have evidence that it was _mortal_?? I suppose a lot depends on the likelihood of him getting to medical help in the next hour, and how competent the medical help is. Looking at the situation, I have to say that his chances of that don’t look too good… but unlikelier rescues have happened in epic fantasy I think. 😃 [/QUOTE] Unless the _Enterprise_ beams them up, or the _Justice League_ arrives, Charles is toast, I’m afraid. he was bleeding pretty badly, and the remaining Fang Gangers could not possibly have gotten him to help in time given that they also had to fight the Senior Partners’ forces. I can envision Angel & Co. escaping, yes, if Willow, Faith, and a hundred Slayerettes showed up to reinforce them, but I can’t see Gunn making it out. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2006, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-series-where-the-majority-of-the-protagonists-die/373045/17 "2006-09-17T16:08:24Z")
[QUOTE=chrisk] That could be taken a number of ways, even if Illyria is correct. Maybe she meant he’d be able to actively fight and defend himself ten minutes before being helpless and needing to rest. That’s bad in the situation, but still not what I’d define as a ‘mortal’ wound. [/QUOTE] Wishful thinking. Joss himself has said that Gunn’s wound was mortal. ---
**Author:** ![Hey\_It\_s\_That\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Hey\_It\_s\_That\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hey_It_s_That_Guy)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2006, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-series-where-the-majority-of-the-protagonists-die/373045/18 "2006-09-17T16:29:16Z")
Gunn showed up alive in a comic book series entitled Angel: _Old Friends_ which is set after the series finale, although he lost an eye in the final battle. Angel, Spike, and Illyria survived as well. It’s debatable whether the comics and novels are canon, but I tend to think that even though they’re licensed products, if Joss Whedon or the other show writers didn’t write 'em, they’re just fanfics. ---
**Author:** ![Laughing\_Lagomorph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/6bbea6/32.png) [@Laughing\_Lagomorph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Laughing_Lagomorph)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2006, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-series-where-the-majority-of-the-protagonists-die/373045/19 "2006-09-17T16:29:43Z")
The 1980s series “Crime Story” with Dennis Farina ended in a cliffhanger with all the major characters, good and bad, on a plane that was plunging towards the ground with the pilots either dead or incapacitated. The series was not picked up for the subsequent season so they could very well have all died. ---
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2006, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-series-where-the-majority-of-the-protagonists-die/373045/20 "2006-09-17T16:38:44Z")
[QUOTE=Laughing Lagomorph] The 1980s series “Crime Story” with Dennis Farina ended in a cliffhanger with all the major characters, good and bad, on a plane that was plunging towards the ground with the pilots either dead or incapacitated. The series was not picked up for the subsequent season so they could very well have all died. [/QUOTE] Similarly, the first season of _Sledge Hammer!_ ended with a nuclear bomb going off. They weren’t expecting it would be picked up for another season. Then they were but everyone was dead, so they did the next season as a prequel. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-series-where-the-majority-of-the-protagonists-die/373045.md?page=2)