10 TV Deaths We All Saw Coming (That Still Left Us Stunned)

Death is the biggest plot device that television shows have got in their arsenal. They are the moments of finality that we talk about for months, years after and are statistically the most watched clips on YouTube because audiences continue to try to relive the adrenaline and astonishment they felt the first time a certain character was written out of the show.

Yet, television's biggest weapon also suffers from the amount of time it takes for it to happen. People talk, they generate theories and formulate predictions in their heads about what will happen in the next episode. Or the episode after. And how the season is going to end.

That isn't to say that many character's deaths aren't shocking, but when we watch television these days, sit-coms and children's shows aside, it's always in the back of our mind that at some point, someone is going to be killed off. It's just a matter of who.

These moments weren't disappointing in the slightest, and some of them were utterly devastating, but in hindsight they were also unavoidable and audiences should have seen them coming from a mile away. And many did.

There are some major spoilers up ahead for those who don't want to see these deaths coming.

Maybe no-one truly saw Chuck's death coming. After all, Vince Gilligan has a knack for subverting our expectations. But the context of it as a prequel opens doors for speculation about why certain Albuquerque characters weren't seen in Breaking Bad. Not only did Chuck McGill not feature in Breaking Bad, but Saul barely even mentions having a brother for the entire five season run. That forced us early on to question why that was.

But by season three we'd become so engrossed in the Better Call Saul world that it was easy to forget that it was a prequel. So when it finally came, a capitulation of his paranoid and jealous spiral at the end of season three, it was still a bombshell.

The most chilling aspect was how devoid it was of purpose or emotion. A man who isolated himself for years commits suicide quietly in isolation in a horrible way. He'd lost everyone in his life and the silence in his final scene emphasizes a sad end to a lonely character. For the first time in Better Call Saul's three season run, the credits rolled silently.