In the 1990s, comic book fan Gail Simone created a list of female comics characters who “had met untimely and often icky ends” after it occurred to her that “being a girl superhero meant inevitably being killed, maimed or depowered, it seemed.”
Simone shared that list on her website Women in Refrigerators, named after a storyline in the Green Lantern comics in which supervillain Major Force murders Kyle Rayner’s girlfriend, Alexandra DeWitt, and stuffs her body into a refrigerator for Kyle to find.
Much has changed since the 1990s — Simone has become a prolific comic book writer, for one — but the trope of fridged female characters endures, especially on screen. TV Tropes defines the “Stuffed Into the Fridge” trope as “when a loved one is hurt, killed, maimed, assaulted, or otherwise traumatized in order to motivate another character or move their plot forward,” and it’s often the women who suffer.
On social media, TV fans are quick to point out fridging when they see it, and the following shows have all drawn their ire. (Warning: Spoilers ahead!)
Andor
Andor fans railed against the death of Cinta (Verada Sethu) by friendly fire in Season 2, especially because the character had just gotten back with girlfriend Vel (Faye Marsay).
The Star Wars show “literally just fridged her for Vel’s character development,” @Jbandos wrote on X.
“Us lesbians can be mad that our rep was fridged and then the brown woman gets killed to further the story of the white woman,” @Pandastarling39 added. “Yes, no one is invincible in this show, but they could have done that so much better.”
Arcane
On X, Arcane fans list both Felicia (Jeannie Tirado) — mother of Vi (Hailee Steinfeld) and Powder (Ella Purnell) and a casualty of the Zaunite revolution against Piltover — and Sky (Kimberly Brooks) — who is vaporized as she tries to pull Viktor (Harry Lloyd) from the Hexcore — as fridging victims.
“I know Felicia is a background character, but I still wish she had been more than just a ‘dead mom’ [plus] ‘fridged woman’ trope,” @G3rtvi_ wrote.
And @gcldquartz wrote that Arcane “fridged Sky twice to further the plot of a white man.”
The Boys
In The Boys, superhero Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott) appears to sacrifice herself in a fight with Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles). She survives the resulting explosion but then disappears to protect herself from the wrath of Homelander (Antony Starr).
“Pretty sure I’m going to lose her tomorrow so I want to say: I love you, #QueenMeave. I am so sorry, Dominique McElligott. Watching a character get fridged episodically was the literal worst,” X user @laurenlamango wrote ahead of that Season 3 episode.
Breaking Bad
In a Reddit thread about fridged TV characters, JoeBethersonton50504 wrote, “I forgot her name, but Jesse’s [Aaron Paul] girlfriend in Breaking Bad.”
That comment led a deactivated user to ask, “Jane or Andrea? They did ’em both dirty.”
Jane (Krysten Ritter) is the girlfriend who fatally overdoses at Jesse’s side, the same girlfriend Walt (Bryan Cranston) decides to let die. Andrea (Emily Rios), whom Jesse dates later, is killed by Todd (Jesse Plemons) after Jesse refuses to cook for him.
On Reddit, boringdystopianslave wrote, “Jane’s death sent both Walt and Jesse down a dark path. Andrea’s death straight up broke Jesse.”
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Tara (Amber Benson) meets her fate in Buffy’s sixth season, felled by a stray bullet fired by the villainous nerd Warren Mears (Adam Busch). Her death sends girlfriend Willow (Alyson Hannigan) into a mad rage, leading to the rise of the alter-ego Dark Willow.
@UlyssesVentura wrote on X that Tara was fridged in an example of Bury Your Gays, a trope in which queer characters are treated as expendable in narratives.
Dexter
The original Dexter series reached a controversial end in Season 8, but X user @harocats said the show “actually ended when they fridged Rita.”
Season 4 ended with Dexter (Michael C. Hall) killing the Trinity Killer (John Lithgow) only to return home and discover that the serial murderer had dispatched Rita (Julie Benz), Dexter’s wife.
The Last of Us
In The Last of Us Season 1, Tess (Anna Torv) is bitten by a clicker, and with the knowledge that she’s a dead woman, she lets Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) escape while she hangs back to face an undead horde. One of the undead “kisses” her, infecting her with cordyceps fungi.
“Tess’s death was done so ham-handedly (really, a neck bite and a mycelial kiss?) that it rather weakened her agency in her own death,” Reddit user Kaurifish declared. “I’d seriously advise any writer killing a female character for the sake of the plot to step back and rethink their strategy.”
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
As Christopher Meloni returned to Law & Order: Special Victims Unit in Season 22, his Stabler avoids a car bomb planted by his organized-crime foes. His wife, Kathy (Isabel Gillies) isn’t so lucky.
“Yo, they just straight up murdered Stabler’s wife in his comeback episode, probably just to set up a clear excuse for him to finally be with Liv [Mariska Hargitay],” FaronTheHero wrote on Reddit.
NCIS
In the same Reddit thread that accused Breaking Bad of fridging, user Violet351 mentioned Jackie (Paula Newsome), wife of Leon (Rocky Carroll) on NCIS, as another fridged character.
Jackie is fatally shot in NCIS’s tenth season, caught in the crossfire during the assassination of Eli (Michael Nouri), father of Ziva (Cote de Pablo).
Another commenter, who has since deactivated their account, added, “So many women around Gibbs [Mark Harmon],” likely referring to how Gibbs’ former wives Shannon (Darby Stanchfield) and Diane (Melinda McGraw) and ex-fiancée Ellen (Erin Cummings) have all died on the show.
Secret Invasion
In the Secret Invasion series premiere, Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) fatally shoots his deputy director, Maria (Cobie Smulders), in the abdomen.
Only, it’s not Fury — it’s the Skrull evildoer Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir) in disguise.
“I think the actress likely wanted out, hence the huge paycheck for only one episode. But there [are] ways to kill a female character without fridging them. Unbelievable that they just did the trope,” dogecoin_pleasures wrote on Reddit. “Even worse … technically they deviated from the trope by forgetting about it [in the] next episode, instead of using it to fuel Fury’s vengeance. So it was a fridge with no character payoff.”
Supernatural
In Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Ackles), Supernatural “has main characters who are primarily motivated by the death of fridged female characters (mother and girlfriend, who dies in the exact same way as their mother),” hedgehogwriting wrote on Reddit.
In the show’s first episode, Sam’s girlfriend Jessica (Adrianne Palicki) dies when a demon pins her to the ceiling, slices her across the abdomen, and sets her ablaze, echoing the slaying of the Winchester boy’s mother, Mary (Samantha Smith).
The Wheel of Time
X user @BadCodeShoot raged against The Wheel of Time for killing off Siuan (Sophie Okonedo), who is executed in a coup orchestrated by Red Ajah sorceress Elaida (Shohreh Aghdashloo) in the show’s Season 3 finale
“How [the f***] do [you] do this setup [and] take a character who canonically helps win the last battle [and] humiliate/torture/slaughter her before she’s won!” @BadCodeShoot wrote. “Book Siuan won. Instead [The Wheel of Time] reduced her to Moraine’s [love interest and] fridged her after everything she sacrificed.”