8 Great TV Characters Who Die At The Beginning

Following the hip, young Slayer played by Sarah Michelle Gellar, Buffy The Vampire Slayer set a new standard for fantasy TV and redefined the horror landscape, turning age-old tropes on their heads and furnishing a whole generation with a brand new heroine with a gang of relatable misfit friends.

One such friend was Jesse McNally, a Sunnydale High student who, alongside Xander Harris (Nicholas Brendon) and Willow Rosenburg (Alyson Hannigan) rounded out the trio of buds Buffy first encounters. When Eric Balfour signed on to play the part back in 1996, he never imagined the dizzying heights the show would reach, its popularity extending worldwide and creating one of the definitive late-'90s pop culture sensations. But neither, perhaps, had he imagined it would be without him.

Jesse was Joey to Xander's Chandler, but that didn't stop him getting turned into a vampire and promptly slayed during the two-part season one opener. Granted, it established from the outset that no character – no matter how integral to the group dynamic – was safe, but did they have to completely erase him from the show, never to be mentioned again?

This was something Joss Whedon sought to repeat on the first season of Angel a few years later by killing off Glenn Quinn's Doyle in the first few episodes, but he never got his wish, as Doyle held out until the mid-season finale.