10 Movie Characters They Couldn't Stop Killing Off

Patrick Stewart's performance as Professor Charles Xavier in the X-Men movies is one of the greatest in the history of superhero cinema, and so it's surprising that filmmakers have opted to kill him off so damn often.

Xavier's first on-screen death came in X-Men: The Last Stand, where he was disintegrated by the Phoenix-powered Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), only further frustrating fans already colossally disappointed by basically everything the movie had to offer.

It's implied that Xavier comes back from the dead by transferring his consciousness into the mind of his comatose twin brother, but in X-Men: Days of Future Past he expires once again, being annihilated by a sentinel in the film's climax.

Mercifully, though, the plot's timey-wimey shenanigans allow Xavier's death to be undone and for him to return in Logan, where he's suffering from the world's worst case of dementia, which causes telepathic seizures that have killed hundreds.

Just as Xavier seems to find some peace, though, he's stabbed to death in his bed by X-24, a clone of Logan (Hugh Jackman), but at least lives long enough to learn that it wasn't Logan himself who administered the fatal blow.

And finally, Xavier of course had a brief cameo appearance in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, showing up as the leader of the Illuminati on the 838 version of Earth.

Xavier telepathically enters Wanda's (Elizabeth Olsen) mind in an attempt to free her imprisoned 838 variant, only for Wanda to snap Xavier's neck, killing him in the "real world."

Considering that will almost certainly be the last time Patrick Stewart plays the part, it's unlikely we'll see Xavier die on-screen again any time soon, and thank God.