10 Beloved TV Characters Who Deserved Better
2. Poussey Washington - Orange Is The New Black
Calling Poussey a fan-favourite seems like an understatement; she was a shining light in the show, a complex and beautiful character played by an incredibly talented actress. Her death in season four was not only enormously poignant but also genuinely soul-crushing.
Poussey was killed by a prison guard who knelt on her neck, suffocating her to death. Her body was then left on the floor for a whole day before the coroner came. In the wake of her death it’s revealed that she was in prison for a non-violent drug offence, one of America’s most popular incarceration techniques.
Not only did Poussey not deserve the prison time, the undeserved death she got was easily the saddest on the show. We were all rooting for her in every possible way, and her relationship with Brook was really starting to blossom.
She had all that dashed away from her in a way that felt way too close to home for audiences all over the world, and the only reason she’s not at number one is because one positive thing came out of Poussey’s plotline: Samira Wiley’s incredible performance of this role and this tragic end sparked some very important conversations about police brutality and racial violence in audience members that otherwise would have ignored the issue.