In the few years, there have been many deaths of LGBTQ characters in television series. In the case of an example like Supernatural woman Charlie Bradbury, you might brush it off, saying “well, all characters die eventually in that show”, or some other excuse. However, this isn’t a one off thing… in fact it, appears to be a pattern.
It started with Maya St. Germain from Pretty Little Liars. At the end of season 2 of the show, she died, and at the time, it did not seem to add to the plot at all. Since then, Dana and Jenny from the L Word (although some could say that doesn’t count as the show is about all lesbian main characters), Wendy from American Horror Story, Charlie from Supernatural, and most recently, Lexa from the 100, among possible others, have all passed. These shows mostly appear to be violently dramatic and have deaths around every corner, and while this is sometimes the case, sometimes not. Even when it is, these deaths rarely add to the course of the story. In fact, they seem random and not built up at all; quite sudden, actually.
In fact, half of the time, the majority of the other characters seem to move on as if the character never existed after their death.
The media response to Lexa of the 100’s death was massive. It actually trended on Twitter multiple times. People on Twitter made comments to the effect of this idea: ‘you cannot sacrifice a member of the LGBTQ community every time your show lacks gore or your plot line needs turbulence’. Many people feel as if the consistent deaths are not only unnecessary, but purposeful. Is the constant turmoil of the LGBTQ community in TV reflective of how some of society wants it to be?
Tumblr user ‘universequartz’ states:
“they make our sex and our marriage and our love illegal and they murder us and do nothing when we die in the tens of thousands of AIDs and when they can’t do that anymore they write out their fantasies of killing us on primetime television so that everyone can live vicariously through the world they’ve created where no gay person gets a happy ending.”
Some even think that there is a link to deaths and LGBTQ women, as LGBTQ men in TV shows such as Connor and Oliver in How to Get Away with Murder, and others, have remained unharmed.
Why is it always the LGBTQ women who die? Is it how the writers picture our world? A world in which no LGBTQ person can go through life and be happy?
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