People die. Characters die. This is perhaps life’s most unfortunate fact: that people will die and leave the rest of us behind. It’s incredibly rare that any dramatic television series lasting over three seasons will never kill a main or recurring character, and all those deaths have driven a stake through the heart of fandom: Joyce on Buffy, Lady Sybil on Downton Abby, Charlie on Lost, Ned Stark on Game of Thrones, Jen on Dawson’s Creek, Nate on Six Feet Under — but when the person who dies is a lesbian or bisexual character, queer fandom takes it pretty hard.
The history of lesbian representation on television is rocky — in the beginning, we seemed exclusively relegated to roles that saw us getting killed/attacked or doing the killing/attacking. And until the last five or so years, lesbian and bisexual characters seemed entirely unable to date an actual woman or stay alive for more than three episodes, let alone an entire run, of a show. Gay and lesbian characters are so often murdered on television that we have our very own trope: Bury Your Gays. We comprise such a teeny-tiny fraction of characters on television to begin with that killing us off so haphazardly feels especially cruel.
Not every death listed below was wholly uncalled for. In many genres, like soap operas and shows about vampires, zombies, criminals, or games of thrones, characters are killed on the reg. That’s a different trope — Anyone Can Die. Furthermore, shows composed entirely of queer characters will inevitably kill one. But regardless, they still add to the body count weighing down our history of misrepresentation.
And, due to the recent untimely death of Lexa on The 100, this week seemed like a good one to count down everybody we have lost over the years.
This list contains every television death of an OPENLY lesbian or bisexual or queer female character on a television show. With a handful of exceptions, these are all characters who appeared for more than one episode. The exceptions were deemed exceptional because something about the characterization still fits in with the Bury Your Gays trope. Victims-of-the-week from crime procedurals (Law & Order, Cold Case, CSI, Criminal Minds or older shows) or patients-of-the-week from hospital dramas (Chicago Hope, E.R.), aren’t on this list, as that is an entirely different kind of list, but recurring characters from those shows are on this list. Nor is subtext on this list, because we’re not gonna give Xena showrunners Queer Character Credit for a character they refused to make openly queer when she was really so obviously queer. You know? [ETA: Okay, I’ve added Xena after doing further research and because if one more commenter takes up space on this thread — a thread I’m using to find more characters to add, and also to engage with thoughtful/funny readers who have opinions and feelings — to tell me that I “forgot” Xena without reading this introduction, I will become the 200th dead lesbian and the cause of death will be “Walked off a cliff with a commenter in her arms. Murder-suicide.” But Xena will be the one and only inclusion based on subtext.] Also, although I’ve done tons of research, I haven’t personally seen all of these shows, so mistakes may very well exist, and feel free to politely inform me of them in the comments, or tell me about characters I may have missed — it’s especially helpful if you can tell me the cause of death and the year.
Unsure if this needs to be said but… SPOILER ALERT.
Special thanks to the LezWatchTV Database for providing info on shows I haven’t seen or heard about directly!
Every Regular or Recurring Lesbian or Bisexual Female Character Killed On Television
Julie, Executive Suite (1976)
Cause of death: Hit by a car. Her love interest had just walked into traffic after realizing her lesbianism and Julie was chasing her.
Franky Doyle, Prisoner: Cell Block H (1980)
Cause of death: Shot by a police officer after escaping from prison
Sharon Gilmour, Prisoner: Cell Block H (1980)
Cause of death: Pushed down the stairs by a corrections officer
Karen O’Malley, Casualty (1987)
Cause of death: Head Injury
Cecília, Vale Tudo (1988)
Cause of death: Car Accident
Cicely, Northern Exposure (1992)
Cause of death: Shot by a gunman employed by the town’s evil overlord who doesn’t want to let the lesbians change his town. The shot was intended for her girlfriend Roslyn, but Cicely, who was already sick, blocked the bullet and died in Roslyn’s arms, thus magically healing the town’s long-simmering feuds and leading them to re-name the town “Cicely.”
Talia Winters, Babylon 5 (1995)
Cause of death: Activated a sleeper personality that wiped out her actual personality, effectively killing her
Beth Jordache, Brookside (1995)
Cause of death: Genetic heart condition, died in prison
Susan Ross, Seinfeld (1996)
Cause of death: Toxic envelope glue
Naomi “Tracy” Richards, Band of Gold (1996)
Cause of death: Stabbed herself
Lucy, The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders (1996)
Cause of death: Caught thieving and hanged
Kathy, NYPD Blue (1997)
Cause of death: Shot by a hit man hired by her girlfriend Abby’s ex, who wanted to get rid of Kathy so she could get back together with Abby. Abby was pregnant at the time.
Sondra Westwood, Pacific Drive (1997)
Cause of death: Murdered by a serial killer
Jadzia Dax, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1998)
Cause of death: Blasted by an alien-possessed alien
Sonia Besirky, Lindenstraße (1998)
Cause of death: Drug overdose from medication given to her by her ex-lover’s husband
Leila and Rafaela, Torre de Babel (1998)
Cause of death: Explosion in a shopping mall
Susanne Teubner, Hinter Gittern (1999)
Cause of death: Shot during a bank robbery (she was a customer)
Shaz Wiley, Bad Girls (2000)
Cause of death: Bomb, died in resulting fire
Laura Hall, Shortland Street (2000)
Cause of death: Heart attack
Diamond, Dark Angel (2001)
Cause of death: Used as a lab rat for research that killed her
Xena, Xena the Warrior Princess (2001)
Cause of death: Beheaded
Beate “Bea” Hansen, Hinter Gittern (2001)
Cause of death: Injuries from an explosion
Jule Neumann, Hinter Gittern (2001)
Cause of death: Suicide
Frankie Stone, All My Children (2001)
Cause of death: Murder Mystery!
Bridgit, 24 (2001)
Cause of death: Shot by a man in front of her girlfriend
Tara Maclay, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (2002)
Cause of death: Shot in the heart by a stray bullet
Kelly Hurst, Family Affairs (2002)
Cause of death: Pushed down the stairs by her lover’s husband
Megan Hartnoll, At Home With The Braithwaites (2003)
Cause of death: Electrocuted in the bathtub
Juliet Becker, The Bill (2003)
Cause of death: Stabbed
Tina Greer, Smallville (2003)
Cause of death: Impaled through the chest on a large piece of wood during a fight with a male character
Sandy Lopez, E.R. (2004)
Cause of death: Injuries sustained from fighting a fire in an abandoned warehouse
Al Mackenzie, Bad Girls (2004)
Cause of death: Poisoned
Hanna Novak, Verbotene Liebe (2004)
Cause of death: Stroke, died in her girlfriend’s arms
Ines Führbringer, Hinter Gittern (2004)
Cause of death: Throat slit, died in girlfriend’s arms
Thelma Bates, Hex (2004)
Cause of death: Murdered by a demon
Flora, Deadwood (2004)
Cause of death: Beaten by a man who then forced a woman to shoot her with his gun
Brenda Castillo, Charmed (2004)
Cause of death: Stabbed with a cursed blade by a man, causing her to rapidly age and then die
Tosha, The Wire (2004)
Cause of death: Shot during a heist gone wrong
Marissa Cooper, The O.C. (2005)
Cause of death: Car crash after being driven off the road by her drunk ex-boyfriend
Servilla, Rome (2005)
Cause of death: Stabs herself in front of her rival house, inhabited by the mother of her lover
Dusty, Queer As Folk (2005)
Cause of death: At a benefit at a gay club when a bomb went off
Dana Fairbanks, The L Word (2006)
Cause of death: Breast cancer
Helena Cain, Battlestar Galactica (2006)
Cause of death: Shot by her ex-lady-lover
Manuela Wellmann, Hinter Gittern (2006)
Cause of death: Stabbed, died in girlfriend’s arms
Maya Robertson, Hex (2006)
Cause of death: Hit by a car
Natalie, Bad Girls (2006)
Cause of death: Bludgeoned to death with a brick
Gina Inviere/#6, Battlestar Galactica (2006)
Cause of death: Set off a nuclear weapon
Eve Jacobson/Zoe McAllister, Home & Away (2006)
Cause of death: Inside a building when it was blown up
Van, Dante’s Cove (2006)
Cause of Death: Killed by the Shadows
Angie Morton, Stritctly Confidential (2006)
Cause of death: Suicide. Jumped off a building.
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When is someone going to get Ellen to comment on this?
I’ll ask her the next time we’re having mimosas together.
Are you counting lesbians and bisexual women who were only in one episode? If so, you might consider adding Lily Baker from Season 2 of Supernatural.
http://supernatural.wikia.com/wiki/Lily_Baker
Thank you for doing this. It’s difficult to read, but I’m glad someone is keeping track so we have something to counter with when they say “straight characters die all the time!”
Just noticed the “regular or recurring” part, so feel free to disregard my Lily Baker addition. Thanks anyway.
according to an old AS post from last year, there are two more not yet mentionned here:
-a character named Nenna Ajanlekoko, from the show Crossbones (2014)
-a character named Lev, from the show Defiance
http://www.autostraddle.com/2015-queer-lady-tv-literally-everything-you-need-to-know-with-infographic-271508/
hm, has anybody seen Crossbones? I’m not familiar with the show and although it is on that infographic, all I can find about it is that she faked her death. Anybody know more?
All right, so maybe Nenna won’t be on the list.
see this:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2400631/board/thread/232983553
I haven’t seen Crossbones but it seems like nobody knows in fact what happened to her; she disappeared from the show towards the end (and it is here speculated that the network didn’t broadcast one of the last episodes, which could explain the weird way her storyline ended)
Oh but apparently it was Nenna’s love interest who was murdered (by Nenna herself). I can’t find how
http://community.ew.com/2014/07/25/crossbones-recap-beggarman/
http://www.afterellen.com/tv/222210-nbc-pirate-series-crossbones-has-a-lesbian-romance
Elise Beaupré from Unité 9. cause of death: cancer.
Added, thank you!
Has anyone else noticed that a significant number of these characters died shortly after giving birth? It’s kind of a triple insult – “Let’s kill off the queer character, but first let her fulfill her duty as a woman and produce a child that she then won’t be able to corrupt by raising it!” -ugh.
So many women I love on this list. :(
(Though… I need to question the inclusion of Natalie Buxton from Bad Girls. She was straight, only using queerness as a way to try and manipulate other women. Not to mention she was a nonce…)
Isabella Kortenaer from Goede Tijden, Slechte Tijden in 2010. Died from an infection as a result of slipping on the bathroom floor.
Wiki (Dutch): https://nl.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_Kortenaer
Kudos to Riese for keeping up with this (unfortunately) ever-growing list.
The woman from ‘les revenants’ is called Laure not Luce.
You forgot Marina Ranieri from”Terapia d’Urgenza”,the Italian format of”Hospital Central”.Shot by a bullet.She SHOULD have survived,but since the serie was stopped after she has been shot,technically she’s dead.
Loved Torchwood, but Tosh is on the list and not Ianto? Ianto’s shrine is still being visited!
It’s a list of lesbian and bisexual women (and, one assumes, female-identified people, though I don’t see any trans ladies on here and I’m SURE we could come up with some).
I mean, man, I’m as upset about Ianto as you are, but…he’s not a woman.
This is even more hilarious than “what about Lost and Delirious” / “this is a list of TV shows”
OF COURSE someone had to come with “BUT WHAT ABOUT THIS MAN”
PS “your comment is awaiting moderation” > BLESS YOU for black listing the name of the movie ahah
So the picture given for Adele from The Lizzie Borden Chronicles is actually of Aideen Trotwood who was played by Michelle Fairley. Adele was played by Kimberly-Sue Murray. I wish I could provide a picture, but I can’t at this current time.
Also she had her throat slit and was framed for murder by Lizzie. The being locked in a coffin bit was completely unrelated.
I feel like wlw are the Jean Greys of general fiction – writers don’t know what to do with us so we’re evil or dead. How many more little girls need to grow up believing all we can be is porn or a tragedy?
Victoria Hand and Isabelle Hartley don’t actually count. They were both lesbians in the comics, but they were never written as such on the TV show (partially because the writers didn’t want backlash over killing off two queer women). There wasn’t even subtext.
Yeah, the closest the show comes to making this canon is a single line in which Hartley refers to hand as “Vic,” implying that they know each other pretty well. There is zero TV canon evidence for any romantic relationship between them, nor any evidence that they had any other f/f relationships.
Oddly enough, despite being one of the few kids shows at the time where characters really could die, Superman the Animated Series actual did provide (subtle) evidence of Maggie Sawyer being gay in a episode that totally inverted this troop. She is seen being blown out a car, motionless, and with her eyes closed, with her Dan Turpin even screaming “Murderers” at her attackers…yet we see later she’s still alive in the hospital. An unidentified and unspeaking women is seen beside her recover, who is supposed to be her girlfriend…and of the course of the episode Turpin dies for real.
this was addressed already in a previous comment–
oliviactually: “Seeing Agents Hand and Hartley from SHIELD on this list is bitterly ironic, cause the showrunners specifically said that one of the reasons they erased both character’s queer sexualities from the show is because they didn’t want to become known as the show with two dead lesbians. Yeah, fuck that show.”
Catherine: “That is why I don’t understand how they made the list but some other characters didn’t”
oliviactually: “Well, I’d support them being on this list if only because it’s a big f-you to the showrunners who explicitly wanted to avoid this outcome, which is bullshit homophobic erasure.”
Riese: “precisely”
I’m glad to see people fail not just to read the ACTUAL post (missing the FIFTH PARAGRAPH but also the actual list) but ALSO previous comments addressing the exact same thing as they are. I kinda wish someone in neuro behavioural sciences would do research on this now
Sorry Jadzia Dax was not a lesbian. Don’t I wish! Yes her character did kiss a woman but it was because a previous host (male) had been with her and Jadzia was remember his feelings for her.
Wouldn’t that make her pansexual thought? She was willing to be with and was attracted to her wife from a previous host and her gender didn’t come into it. It was more about the taboo around having anything to do with a previous host’s life.
Shayla Nico (Mr Robot). His ex-boyfriend (who had raped her and kidnapped her) slit her throat.
[source: http://www.vulture.com/2015/07/mr-robot-recap-season-1-episode-6.htm%5D
I read through all the comments to see if anyone had posted this yet. Shayla deserved better…
Oh, I’d forgotten her. Her bisexuality was kind of vague, but is the best explanation for her kissing Angela…
What about Mary Louise and Nora on the Vampire Diaries, do they count? They are Vampires so technically they are dead. Not sure if they were a couple before they were vampired and dies together or not.
Also what about the girls that Bo succu-faced on Lost Girl. I just remember one girl in particular played by Miriam McDonald (Emma from Degrassi). She was found dead and Bo thought she was responsible from her succu-kiss but it turns out that the girl died in other para-normal ways (though I can’t remember other specifics).
the girls Bo succu-faced were one-episode victims. mary louise and nora were not killed off by the show, they’ve been undead the whole time
there’s a character in smallville who appears in 2 episodes, tina greer, who is a lesbian and dies, i think
Ilithyia from Spartacus should definitely be on here. She was married to a man, though she pursued comforts with Lucretia, kissing her multiple times and therefore enforcing that she’s bisexual. She was killed by Lucretia during childbirth, her stomach slit open and before succumbing to the wounds she witnessed Lucretia commit the murder-suicide with Ilithyia’s child.
I dunno, I always felt like Ilithyia and Lucy Lawless’s interactions were purely power plays, and every time one gave the other a peck, it was merely a victory flourish after having just fucked them over in some way.
Not to undermine the hypothetical sexuality of a fictional character from a couple of millennia before the word homosexuality existed or anything, but I feel like she could have at least gone for an underwater diddling from a bathing wench if she was really after female-induced pleasure.
“Not to undermine the hypothetical sexuality of a fictional character from a couple of millennia before the word homosexuality existed or anything, but…”
bless this sentence opener
I really wouldn’t have included Flora from Deadwood to the list. There was no indication she was LB, she was only using her sexuality to try and con the actual lesbian character (who didn’t die).
well then you should murder me and take over b/c i have never seen deadwood so i am just trusting these commenters who tell me things (i attempt to verify everything i’m told and usually do or else learn something different and say that instead. but it’s not always possible, it depends on how updated the wikia is and how much I already know about the show and whether or not the episode was recapped somewhere and if it’s in English and all these other factors!)
saxa from spartacus is missing (http://spartacus.wikia.com/wiki/Saxa)
already there
“Saxa, Spartacus (2013)
Cause of Death: Sword attack during battle”
kayla bless you on this thread
i can only imagine how mind numbing it is for you to comment on all these and still retain your sanity, riese, so i figured i’d help a little. <3
Janet King is a tv series in Australia, about a wonderfully complex intelligent woman who is a senior crown prosecutor. She also happens to be in a happy relationship with a woman for the past 10 odd years, and have two children. The character was spin off from another series a few years ago. The 2ne season begins in Australia next week so imagine my non surprise when I learnt that Janet’s Partner is being killed off by a stray bullet and for good measure they are throwing in a legal battle for her partners eggs.
Oh !@#$ !@#$ !@# !!! I knew they should have stopped at one season and would screw it up otherwise! This one is going to hit me harder than most of these.
I’m right there with you. I’m so gut wrenchingly disappointed. I don’t want to watch it now but Janet is such an amazing character that I want to watch for her. Not sure I have the strength though. Sigh.
Urgh! I’ve been so worried about Ashleigh since I realised that Aimee Pederson wasn’t in the cast list for this season. Like you, I’m now distraught and caught between whether to watch or not…
…and I just discovered that two years ago Elaine Atwell from AE prophetically worried that Ash was perhaps the Tara MacLay of “Janet King.”
http://www.afterellen.com/tv/210747-janet-king-is-a-new-aussie-drama-with-a-lesbian-lead
Autostraddle, once the show comes out in Aus I will beg you to support us and write about how shitty this is. We don’t have anyone in Australia to really do it for us. :( Dammit JK was the first lesbian main character on Australian TV.
When I read that about Ashleigh I was gutted. Now I don’t want to watch the new season because really why did they have to do this?
Sky Silvestry from the Doctor Who episode Midnight.
Ah, should have read the intro before commenting. Sky was sucked out of a vehicle and onto the surface of an airless planet while possessed by an alien. 2008.
Not sure but I feel like Helena G Wells from Warehouse 13 should also make the list. They did kill her off (the warehouse exploded and she sacrificed herself to save the others) even though they resurrected her in the next season. And then the writers found a convenient way to get rid of her without killing her again. (They also killed their other gay protagonist, even though he was brought back too…)
D.S Angie Morton – Strictly Confidential (2006)
Suicide
I think we all can agree that whenever someone is writing some piece about “bury your gays” it could be difficult to get all the names right, but one thing I know for sure is that there’s not doubt about the person that will illustrate your article:
this woman! AND she was the lead detective on the case of Ilene Chaiken killing Jenny Schecter! Where this woman goes, lesbian and/or bisexual female death follows.
We need to contact Guinness World Records, because, come on…
This list is growing faster than the number of dislikes on a Justin Bieber video.
and both of those counts have deep ties to the abuse of lesbian pop culture
i’m still pissed off about Tituba, especially after the writers had promised to develop her beyonf her relationship with Mary. All they ended up doing is having a white character repeating the same stuff she said herself the previous season and then kill her off… i hope they find a way to bring her back.
Julie Mao deserved better, like i get her death is necessary thematically and narratively, but ugh, that was nasty and gruesome.
Man, a lot of queer women getting shot.
While it was more often than not brought up as a joke, Clara Oswald has had relationships with women and men, she was killed off, though i don’t know if it counts because she’s pretty much immortal for the time being.
In a recent adaptation of Agatha Christie’s “A Murder Is Announced” the director takes incredibly subtle subtext from the book and makes the homosexual relationship between two key female characters more visible (and also makes them much younger than in the book). Of course, as it was originally written in the book, one of the women is killed by the murderer for knowing too much. She was strangled. *sigh* even the queen of murder mysteries buried her gays albeit it was much more common in older works due to the social stigmas of the time
I thought of that couple too, tho wiki says that any subtext on Christie’s part may well have been accidental because she based them on a real-life couple, the full extent of whose relationship she was probably unaware of.
That aside, I think the death falls too much under the victim-of-the-week umbrella to qualify for this list. It did make me really sad though!
Wow, Lucy Lawless has played a lot of dead lady-lovers
If there are people willing to help with data entry, I can try to make some data analysis about the likelihood of queer women being murdered off in television.
Some variables:
– Production country (though that’d be interesting to map out, maybe US as the base case and other countries/regions as variables?)
– # of Main and Recurring cast (separated? Together?)
— # of said cast members that are women
— # of said cast members that are queer
— # of cast members that are queer women
– Whether the character is a Main character or Recurring character
– Whether the series has ended or is ongoing
– Whether the character is Dead, Alive, or Resurrected/Undead
– Whether the show is specifically marketed as “queer”/”queer-friendly” (e.g. The L-Word) or not
– Year of production
— Year of death
— Year of first appearance?
– Method of death (Murder, Gunshot, Suicide, Car, Supernatural, whatever’s out there)
– Method of ‘happy ending’ (Married, With Child, some other thing)
Do a regression analysis and then you can control for different variables.
I think this is a GREAT idea!
It’s my personal pet theory that the odds of a lesbian or bi character dying are tied to how many other problematic homophobic and biphobic tropes show up on the show (see my comment below for a list), but I don’t have any proof of that…just several decades of watching bi and lesbian women die on television. But I think that could be difficult to map.
I think your points about main and recurring cast members, and how many of them are queer women, would yield some interesting results. I’d love to see what you come up with.
You could probably have each trope as its own qualitative variable – we’d need to get a shortlist of tropes from say TVTropes, and then indicate whether or not that series uses that trope or not.
Lemme see if I can get something started.
It’s happened – the list is now double what it was when it was posted.