10 Most Shocking TV Episode Endings

Although The Wire's second season has never been quite as beloved by fans as the seasons surrounding it, it was still miles above everything else on TV at the time. Few other shows could do what The Wire did in this episode, unceremoniously killing off a main character six episodes into the season.

Of course, to call D'Angelo a main character is a bit of an understatement: throughout the entire first season, he was the main character, at least among the criminal side of the show.

He was the person the audience identified with, one of the few characters who sought for a better way than how things were. At this point, there was still hope that D'Angelo might turn his life around, get himself out of prison, and find real happiness. Instead, he's strangled by a fellow prisoner hired by his cousin, who successfully frames his death as a suicide.

The episode ends with the realization that the people behind his death were going to get away with it. There would be no justice for poor D'Angelo Barksdale, which in the world of The Wire, was nothing out of the ordinary.