10 Characters Who Survived The Movie (Only To Suddenly Die In The Sequel)
Because surviving a film doesn't always mean you're safe.
For movies with a death count, it's a cathartic moment when the ending is reached and the best character is still alive. They struggled all throughout the film to make it out of there, and with the villain defeated and everything resolved, that means they're safe, right? Not always, and in a lot of cases, characters who were the leads of the first movie and who survived against all odds are just abruptly killed off in the sequel.
Why does this happen so often? A lot of times it's because the actor from the original movie doesn't want to return for the next one, but the writers need to explain the character's absence. So the actor agrees to appear briefly just so they can be killed and pass the torch to a new protagonist. Other times, it's just a cheap way to establish the stakes, with the idea being that if this person can die, anyone can.
That can be really annoying, though, when the audience was so invested in this person's survival the first time around, but within minutes of the next movie that entire struggle is wiped away. Here are 10 famous characters who got that poor treatment in their film's sequel.
10. Nancy Thompson - A Nightmare On Elm Street
Nancy Thompson is a great protagonist in the original Nightmare on Elm Street. She goes through a lot in the movie and ends up being a pretty strong young girl, crafting a plan to bring Freddy Krueger into the real world and kill him. She’s finally (mostly) successful in the last act, able to outsmart Freddy, strip him of his powers and move on with her life.
Though there's the ominous sequel hook that Freddy might still be alive, the ending of the film still spares Nancy and allows her to survive. She’s not in A Nightmare on Elm Street 2, so at first it seemed like the franchise would just let her ride off into the sunset.
But then she does return in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3, and after everything she went through in the original movie, this time Freddy just kills her, disguising himself as her father and stabbing her to death. That’s it. It’s a dramatic and shocking moment to be sure, but it’s disappointing to revisit the original Nightmare and see Nancy emerge victorious, only to remember that Freddy is just going to kill her in the sequel anyway.