10 Movie Characters Who Were Seconds Away From Surviving
9. Hoban "Wash" Washburne - Serenity (2005)
Firefly was a show populated by fantastic characters, including Nathan Fillion as hardened ship captain Malcolm Reynolds, Gina Torres as his loyal right-hand Zoe Washburne, and Adam Baldwin as big-hearted mercenary Jayne Cobb.
But the most popular player had to be Alan Tudyk's lovable master pilot Hoban Washburne, the husband of Zoe and the perfect character to get the gang out of a jam when they needed him.
In the sequel movie Serenity (released when Firefly was unjustly cancelled after just one season), Wash is on typically heroic form in the film's final act, when he's forced to pilot the titular ship through a deadly battlefield. He succeeds, of course, but just as he starts to celebrate his victory he's impaled by a massive spear and dies instantly.
To say it's a shocking death would be an understatement, especially when you consider the character's popularity, but the toughest part of it all is that if he didn't celebrate his work and left the crashed ship as soon as it landed, the spear never would have blindsided him. Damn.