7 Most Devastating TV Deaths

When done right, a TV show not only earns your loyalty but your emotional investment; making the character's triumphs, your triumphs, their failures, your failures and their pain, your pain. Nowhere is that more evident than in the tears that rain down when a character falls.


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And while death is as commonplace on television as opening credits, every now and then, the way a character is dispatched brings you past the point of a single shed tear and into full on ugly crying. Typically this tragedy is the result of two important factors: it's a character you care deeply for and their death brings out the rawest in their on-screen survivors.



So while some TV deaths are cool (ie, Gus Fring), others are downright cruel, and these are the seven most painful in recent memory.

Sons of Anarchy has seen its share of death; virtually no episode goes by without someone getting offed. But this death felt different, as while Tara wasn't perfect, she was by far one of the most blameless of the blood-soaked cast of characters. And watching one of our favorite characters be drowned in a sink, then stabbed repeatedly in the back of the head with a meat fork by her own mother-in-law? Well, we are scarred permanently.

After years of being caught in between two women, it seemed like Dylan McKay had finally found everlasting love with Antonia 'Toni' Marchette. But their relationship was doomed from the start as the two only met because he was tracking her father, Anthony, who Dylan believed murdered his father.


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Dylan and Toni married against her father's wishes with plans to leave Beverly Hills forever. But before they could escape, Toni's cat -- the aptly named Trouble -- disappeared so she took Dylan's car out in a rainstorm to look for her pet. Mistaking her for Dylan, an assassin hired by Anthony to kill Dylan accidentally murdered Toni instead, leaving a distraught Dylan cradling his bloody bride. Watch!

While "the island" changed everyone, no one was more improved by that time than Jin Kwon. When Lost began, he was a distant and domineering brute, whose wife was dying to ditch him at every turn. But over the course of six seasons, their love was reborn and there was not a dry eye in the house during their long-delayed reunion -- ain't time travel a bitch?


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So when Sun found herself trapped in a sinking sub, we were powerfully reminded of how far Jin had come as he not only refused to let the love of his life die alone, but made their shared passing a peaceful one. Watch!

Buffy Summers faced a lot of death during her tenure as Sunnydale's supernatural slayer, but nothing could have prepared her for the very human loss of her mother, Joyce.


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Underscoring one of Buffy The Vampire Slayer's most important tenets (that for all her power and strength and responsibility, Buffy is, to quote Glory, "just a girl"), The Slayer realized how powerless she can be at times as The Summers girls and The Scooby Gang struggled to come to terms with this senseless act of ... life. Watch!

By nature of the job, a president is asked to confront conundrums few people are capable of successfully navigating. But for all his moral, ethical, political and emotional pontificating, President Josiah 'Jed' Bartlet was at a loss over the loss of his longtime confidant and secretary, Mrs. Landingham.


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The sudden and off-screen nature of her death (car accident) allowed the audience to tap directly into the confused mind and heart of President Bartlet, in one of The West Wing's most sublime episodes ever, Two Cathedrals. That hour is forever associated with Martin Sheen's haunting delivery of this post-funeral shouting match with God. Watch!

The audience never met Miranda's mother, but the effect her passing had on all four Sex and the City characters was significant enough to earn her the final spot on this list.


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Not only did Mama Hobbes' death force the normally repressed Miranda to confront her feelings, but it forced the always uninhibited Samantha to confront feelings that didn't originate between her legs. Both women reached their emotional breaking point at funeral's end requiring the support of Carrie and Charlotte. That moment gave the audience an important early understanding of the bond these four women share. Watch!

Since the beginning of Downton Abbey, Lady Sybil has been the most beloved Crawley daughter -- by the fans, by the staff, by her family -- thanks to her sweet disposition, sunny outlook and refreshing discarding of that century's conventions.


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And while her return to Downton was initially rocky as Lord Grantham was not inclined to accept her husband, the family's former chauffeur Tom Branson, the fact she was with child helped ease their re-entry.



So when Sybil succumbed to preeclampsia after giving birth to a baby girl, the entire household (not to mention the audience) was beside themselves with grief. Even the normally-steely Thomas couldn't help but bawl over her devastating passing.



Perhaps most heart-breaking of all was watching Branson cling to his dying wife's hand and beg her to stay, for his life -- much like the show -- is incomplete without her. Watch!