Only five months into 2025, and there’s already a winner for the most shocking TV character death of the year. The No. 1 spot is revealed in the gallery below, and we can’t imagine that many could disagree with our selection. All in all, it’s been a television season full of deaths we didn’t see coming, plus one we did, but that doesn’t make the impact less powerful. What sets this year’s TV deaths apart is the sheer needlessness of some of them.

Entire seasons — and in one case, an entire series and its grand finale — have left sour tastes in viewers mouths because of the decisions to kill off certain characters with storylines that arguably don’t make sense as results of the buildup predating them. But for better or for worse, these characters are gone. Some of the shows in the gallery below will have some serious explaining to do in upcoming episodes/seasons to make these deaths make sense in hindsight.

The 2025 TV deaths aren’t all bad. Some make perfect sense and in fact were always expected if you knew the source material on which a certain hit series is based. One of the character losses is made all the more sad by the real-life passing of the actor who played them.

Here, we break down the 11 saddest TV deaths of 2025 so far (across broadcast, cable, and streaming), ranked by the shock they delivered for viewers. All of the episodes depicting these deaths came out between January 2025 to the time of publication, so don’t expect to see any TV deaths that came out in 2024, even if that show’s corresponding season started in 2024 and continued into the new year. Clearly, copious spoilers ahead.