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Why Some Main Characters Need To Die
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Mar 31, 2025
Stranger Things has been by far the biggest thing Netflix has ever produced. From the moment Season 1 premiered, it took the world by storm. The cast has grew way too big. If Stranger Things wanted to come in for a clean ending, it had to cut down on main characters.
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I say we fight. To the death. To the death. To the death. To the death! To the death! To the death
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As people, we genuinely love a good rallying cry, a motivational statement delivered with authority
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and gravitas. During the penultimate season of Stranger Things press tour, star and protagonist
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Millie Bobby Brown gave us one. You need to start killing people. This is ridiculous. And also the
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The Duffer Brothers are two sensitive sallies that don't want to kill anyone
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We need to be Game of Thrones. We need to have the mindset of Game of Thrones. We agreed and cheered
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It's not just Bloodlust, the 18-year-old actor championed. She knows what we all know, that some characters need to die
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Her statement could have almost been perceived as brutish and cold, but there's an absolute truth in what she's saying
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Stranger Things starts as a warm, nostalgic hug, a kind reminder of a fictional 1980s that only exists in our periphery
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bright neon, Dungeons and Dragons, and genuine friendship between endearing characters. But that
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obsession and love of its characters also stops the story from moving forward. Brown's statement
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about the Duffers being overly sensitive isn't exactly right. It's more how in love they are with
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the main cast. Season after season, they keep them safe and close to their chests. And that's a
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problem for a lot of stories. There's an overly present idea that the characters you love must
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make it to the end of the story. But when you're shuffling around a cast so large, the story
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gets lost. You do what this man tells you, you're all gonna die. I'm sorry, why is this four-year-old
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speaking to me? There's a stark difference between story and plot. You could almost think of the
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story like a car. The plot is the engine chugging the characters as passengers down the highway
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Many pieces of media are dead set on focusing solely on the car's passengers. The trouble with
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having so many passengers in the car is that they become the focal point. When you think about
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Guardians of the Galaxy, the thing most people talk about is its ensemble cast and leading man-making
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role for Chris Pratt. Most of that is due to James Gunn's story, which makes the growing ensemble
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strange when you look at his indie work with Troma and cold classics Slither and Super, all of which
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involve major character deaths that keep their stories laser But in the MCU death is something reserved for secondary characters like Yondu You look like Mary Poppins Is he cool Hell yeah he cool I Mary Poppins y
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While being given a bigger role in the second film amidst so many other characters
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there was little time to give Yondu's sacrifice the weight it deserved
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At least one thing Game of Thrones has gotten right are those personal consequences
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Danger only feels real if we see the consequences of its threat
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And those consequences only click if they are impactful to both the characters and the plot
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When we finally reached the Red Wedding in Game of Thrones, it was a momentous scene that would change the world of Westeros forever
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The Red Wedding was never a plot point to tick off. It was a moment of history in a world that we had begun to feel a part of
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The Lannisters send their regards. When the Duffer brothers defended themselves on a podcast
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they said we aren't Game of Thrones we don't you know this is Hawkins
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it's not Westeros they later added that the entire second season was about the
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emotional fallout of Barb's death they argued if they spent an entire season
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dealing with a secondary character's death how do you carry on after a death
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of someone like Mike that answer is arguably pretty easy you marry the aftermath
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with the plot a lot of pop culture compartmentalizes emotional weight and story
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there's this insistence on characters dealing with their feelings in one scene
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and then a spooky monster or action piece in the next. This is an idea a lot of filmmakers have kicked back against
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Character deaths are important because they represent a tangible and relatable change
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It's not just a way to shovel more sorrow onto survivors, it's a tool like any other
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That tool can be used to change course when the story feels repetitive, or it can be a solution to a common problem with large casts
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During the seventh season of The Walking Dead, the fan-favorite character of Glenn and Abraham were both killed off in the episode. The day will
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come when you won't be. These twin deaths function perfectly on multiple levels. They develop the
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newly introduced villain of the show, Negan, as an actual threat. Oh my goodness! Look at my dirty
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girl! They startle the audience because not one but two primary cast members are removed from the
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narrative equation and they develop the rest of the cast specifically Maggie who is carrying Glenn child What could be seen as a cheap narrative ploy is expertly constructed to gain the maximum amount
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of narrative impact. It ostensibly pours jet fuel on the trajectory and expectations for the rest of
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the show. And on a more base marketing level, deaths can make the audience talk more. When
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anything can happen and nobody is safe, it leads to speculation. We talk with one another, we comb
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for hints or clues like children on a scavenger hunt. As Yellow Jackets aired in 2022
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people were abuzz with ideas. Who lives? Who dies? Who is the antler queen
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What does the person who sent these postcards want? To scare us
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The fact was, we didn't know. And there was a comfort in that uncertainty
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because we developed a level of trust with the characters. But too often, we rely on the known and familiar
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In the case of The Rise of Skywalker, Emperor Palpatine was brought back to serve as a familiar villain
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after the death of Snoke in The Last Jedi. While Snoke's death was as shocking as the defeat of Darth Maul
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another character to be brought back, we never feel the weight of it. First order was just the beginning
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I will give you so much more. Palpatine is later revealed as the true puppet master
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It didn't feel like a mystery solved as much as another resurrection to rest on its laurels
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The choice created a detrimental fault line through the extended universe. CGI models popped up in its Disney Plus shows
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every desperate plot line threaded back to one core family, a galaxy far, far away involving one family who
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thanks to computers, I mean the Force, can live forever. Look at the never-ending story
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A young Atreyu goes through several levels of grief as he pleads with his horse, Artax
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to make it out of the sinking mud. Artax! You gotta move or you'll die
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There's a brief moment afterwards as he sits on the bank with Artax's bridle just before he stands
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more determined than ever to finish his quest. There is no argument that Artax is a main character
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and central piece to the story's puzzle. More importantly, that moment formed an entire generation
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because, as children, we can't imagine a young child warrior losing his best friend
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But it was that moment, those unexpected stakes, that again twisted our idea of finality
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So often we have ended the world stakes thrust upon us This idea if the hero doesn accomplish their goal everyone in the world will die And often those just aren believable moments
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The end of the world becomes an implausible number, an abstract idea
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But when you lose a main character, someone with a name you know, a background that you have been a part of
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the stakes feel real. There is some danger in killing off your main characters
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Who or why they die must be earned and not just a motivation for our hero
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There is a term in comics called fridging a character, based on a scene from a 1994 issue
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of Green Lantern where the corpse of Alexandra DeWitt had been stuffed into a fridge
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The trope involves the death of, almost always, a woman to motivate and drive a male character forward
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It is the reduction of a character to a plot point. It's just a matter of putting the work in, not pulling the kill the girlfriend card out
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of a plot hat. When we love characters, it breaks our heart to see them fail or die
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We theorize returns or ways they possibly could have survived. Online petitions are created and receive hundreds of thousands of signatures
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all in the demand of not bruising our comfortable nostalgia. People latch onto their childhood heroes so much they are outraged by every change
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But without change, we're left with stagnant stories and characters. There's an idea that's been best paraphrased as
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you can never step in the same river twice. And that's an idea that can best be applied to countless stories
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and particularly Stranger Things. The story has draped itself in nostalgia and remains dead set on keeping our main characters alive
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without acknowledging the water's current pushing against its feet. So much so that any hint a main character may have died
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is quickly brushed away. From the stinger at the end of season three
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to Elle all of a sudden being able to bring people back to life, it is the Duffer saying with absolute authority
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that they will bend the river to their whims. There is a dichotomy in us as people
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both bloodthirsty and precious about life. We were enamored by the literal bloodshed
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of ancient gladiatorial combat, but still insist on constantly resurrecting fan-favorite characters
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Are you not entertained? Are you not entertained? The disunion of our wants has to meet at the story
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And story is more than just its characters or plots. It's an ebb and flow filled with change and intent
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Without those moments, we'll just be left a stagnant pond
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