40 TV Characters Who Died in 2018

It happens year after year — the writers of our favorite TV shows decide to reward our loyal viewership by brutally killing off the characters we love. And yet we keep coming back for more!

2018 was chock full of on-screen deaths that made our blood boil and our tears flow, though this year, there were also a handful that occurred thanks to behind-the-scenes issues with actors that had us saying, “Honestly, good riddance.”

In no particular order, here are 40 TV characters who died (for better or for worse) in 2018. Spoilers ahead!

1. Roseanne Conner, Roseanne/The Conners

Fans of the hit ’80s and ’90s sitcom Roseanne were thrilled when the series was revived last year. The tenth season — which premiered as a mid-season replacement in 2018, over 20 years after the original run ended — was a hit, so much so that ABC quickly renewed it for an eleventh season.

That all came screeching to a halt when Roseanne Barr, who played the title character Roseanne Conner, went on a racist Twitter rant in May. ABC’s network president reacted swiftly, declaring that Roseanne’s tweets were “abhorrent, repugnant, and inconsistent with [ABC’s] values.”

Roseanne was cancelled, and ABC later re-tooled the show as a continuing Roseanne-less spin-off called The Conners, focusing on the remaining family members. The former central character’s absence was explained with an off-screen death by opioid overdose.

2. Thelonius Jaha, The 100

One of The 100‘s most controversial characters finally met his end this year. After four full seasons of dodging death both in space and on the ground, Thelonious Jaha was killed off in a flashback sequence during The 100 Season 5 Episode 2, “The Red Queen.”

While helping Wonkru regain control of the farm during an uprising, Jaha is stabbed and dies of blood loss. Regardless of how you felt about Jaha, it was impossible not to get a tad teary-eyed when the former Chancellor invoked the name of his long-dead son, Wells, in the moments before his death.

3 & 4. Monty Green and Harper McIntyre, The 100

We’ll never stop crying over this one!

Monty and Harper were two of the purest and most fundamentally good characters on The 100. While nearly every other character was some shade of morally grey during at least some point on the series, these two only ever wanted what was best for their friends and for humanity as a whole.

The final moments of The 100 Season 5 finale revealed that Monty and Harper opted to stay awake while all of their friends remained in cryosleep. They chose to make this sacrifice willingly, in order to help find a habitable planet for humanity to colonize once they realized Earth will never become habitable again.

The two eventually died of old age, but the fact that they managed to raise a son and live a long life together make their deaths one of the “best” (and all around least tragic) in a series full of devastating ones. So that’s some small comfort, at least.

5. Quentin Lance, Arrow

Quentin Lance survived so much during the six seasons he appeared as a major character on Arrow. On the Arrow Season 6 finale, he took a bullet for his late daughter Laurel’s Earth Two doppelgänger and later died due to complications from the wound.

His death devastated all of Team Arrow, but the most heartbreaking moment by far was seeing Sara’s crushed reaction as she stood over her father’s dead body. Poor Sara has already suffered so much loss — including being formerly dead herself!

6. Hayley Marshall-Kenner, The Originals

The final season of The Originals was particularly brutal when it came to killing off our faves. Fans were stunned when Hayley died midway through the season, sacrificing herself to take out Greta and save her daughter, Hope Mikaelson.

It was a pretty badass way to go out, but viewers were crushed to see Klaus’ gutted reaction to Hayley’s burning corpse — not to mention by the fact that Elijah played a direct role in her death. That was a real gut-punch to all the die-hard Haylijah shippers out there.

7 & 8. Elijah and Klaus Mikaelson, The Originals

For longtime fans of Klaus Mikaelson, his death evoked only anger. There was no sadness; just a feeling of immense disappointment. Visually, the death itself looked like a bad Infinity War rip-off — we’ve seen Original vampires die before, and it never looked like that!

While Elijah’s death was heavily foreshadowed and telegraphed during the final season, Klaus’ seemingly came out of nowhere. The problem wasn’t that he died, but rather that it went against the season’s narrative.

The season hit us over the head with the fact that Klaus and Elijah needed to stop being co-dependent; that Klaus still had a lot to live for and didn’t want to die. Yet instead of Elijah sacrificing himself or the family finding an alternative, double suicide was somehow the answer.

The writers repeated the same plot line — Klaus sacrificing himself for his family — for the finales of Seasons 3, 4 and 5. It was a cheap way to create drama for a spin-off, Legacies. Both Elijah and Klaus deserved more than that.

9. Leopold Fitz, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Death may not necessarily be permanent on Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., but that didn’t make Fitz’s absolutely brutal death scene any less horrifying to watch.

On the show’s fifth season finale, Fitz was crushed by a collapsed pile of rubble and died horribly as May and Mac looked on and attempted to comfort him. He was so out of it, he didn’t even realize he was dying.

It was absolutely heartbreaking, but there’s at least one bright side: the alternate version of Fitz who put himself in a coma and launched his body into space to meet up with the group in the future is still out there somewhere! Fingers crossed he makes his way back to them at some point during Season 6.

10. Midge Klump, Riverdale

Midge may not have been a major character on Riverdale, but she was still an innocent teen. She was brutally killed off at the end of the show’s Carrie musical episode — the first major victim of the town serial killer, the Black Hood (a.k.a. Betty’s dad, Hal). And the reveal of her dead body was peak Riverdale soapy melodrama.

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