Death on TV shouldn't be negotiable: Dead characters should stay dead

GQ

TV shows that avoid making death permanent are doing more harm than good, says Drew Magary, in specifically complaining about the end of Stranger Things 3. They give the wrong lesson that bad things are temporary and that everything will be okay in the end -- like a children's show. "On TV, it happens every other week," says Magary. "Even Christ himself thinks they’ve gone overboard on the resurrection plot lines. I’ve invested my time and emotion into watching these characters. I deserve better than a cheap-a** fakeout that has to be dutifully explained with a cursory quip or two the following season." Magary, who had his own brush with death last December, adds: "Because every movie and TV must now have a Marvel-esque teaser button, there’s a 'surprise' scene in the middle of the finale's end credits, where we find out those naughty Russians are still keeping a Demigorgon as a pet back in the Motherland, and they are also keeping 'the American' imprisoned there as a possible snack for it. Those Russians referred to Hopper as 'the American' previously, and so now we know: They have Hopper in there. Hopper is alive. Hooray! Except no. Not hooray. Motherf*cker should have stayed dead. When they hint that Hopper miraculously comes back to life at the very very end, it undercuts the entire narrative arc that led to his supposed death to begin with. This happens all the time in movies and on TV, especially on TV because characters on these shows have to stick around, both to keep an actor employed and to keep the audience interested. Stranger Things itself already pulled this bait-and-switch with Eleven after Season 1, but at least they saved the ZOMG reveal for after the hiatus. I understand why showrunners continue to do this, but they’ve run the trope into the f*cking ground, miles beneath the secret Russian mall ops base. Even Game of Thrones, an otherwise notable exception to the rule, dragged a key character back into the fold after seemingly killing him off for good earlier. I watched the season finale of House in 2012 and House faked his own death in that episode, too. It’s to the point where I never believe a dead TV character is dead anymore. It’s like watching NFL football now. I’m always waiting for the replay official to tell me that what I saw wasn’t what I saw."