5 TV Characters Who Were Meant To Die But Were Too Popular To Kill

When it comes to television, we all have that favorite character who we desperately don't want to die. It's not uncommon for fan-favorites to be taken out by the latest big bad or written off entirely for behind-the-scenes reasons audiences aren't privy to. What's less common, of course, is for those same sorts of characters to be ultimately spared due to their popularity — either with audiences or the creators themselves. But it does happen.

While there certainly have been plenty of unnecessary character deaths over the years, some of which even ruined once-beloved TV shows, it's always good news for fans when a beloved hero (or even a villain) is spared. Sometimes when shows begin, the trajectory for a select few is almost certainly death, but creators don't always anticipate how an actor's on-set presence, chemistry with the cast, or popularity with the fans can change the course of their on-screen fate.

With that said, we're looking at five television characters who ultimately proved too popular to kill. Some of these revelations came before the show even aired, while others were due to the protest of long-devoted fans. From neo-Western crime dramas and cable staples to streaming giants and teen vampire classics, here are five television characters who narrowly escaped their predestined demise.

When James Marsters first showed up as Spike on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," he wasn't meant to be anything more than a foil to Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Angel (David Boreanaz). In fact, when Angel turned evil during the second season, Spike wasn't supposed to last very long. "He was gonna kill me off and take up with Drusilla so that Buffy could get shattered," Marsters told TMZ years later. Spike was only there to make Angelus look more menacing and enticing when he killed him — only that never happened.

"I was only signed to one year," Marsters revealed to Michael Rosenbaum on the "Inside of You" podcast. "Then, at the end of Season 2 of 'Buffy' the job was [supposed to be] over." In fact, Joss Whedon was so emphatic that Spike wasn't to survive that Marsters recalled being backed into a literal wall by the series creator, who told him that his popular character was as good as dead — and not the undead kind. Of course, the audience's love for Spike as a villain (and even more so as an antihero) ultimately spared him a premature fate.

As Spike became a quick fan-favorite, it grew impossible for "Buffy" to kill him off. Instead, he was elevated beyond his villainous roots into an antihero and eventually an ensouled vampire like Angel. Even when Whedon did finally succeed in killing off the character in the series finale, he was promptly resurrected on the spin-off "Angel," gaining notoriety there as well.

It's hard to imagine "Justified" without Walton Goggins. While Boyd Crowder was a major character in the Elmore Leonard short story, "Fire in the Hole," that served as the basis for the series, the original plan was to honor the author's ending by having Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) gun down the Kentucky outlaw in the pilot. That was how the first episode of "Justified" was filmed before test audiences changed the course of the program.

"When we shot the pilot, Boyd was dead at the end of [it]," creator Graham Yost told NPR years later. "And then we tested the show and we had all just fallen in love with Walton and the chemistry between Walton and Tim [Olyphant], so we decided to keep him alive." While Goggins had famously turned down the role several times — only agreeing to the part after one major change that made "Justified" better — his performance as Boyd Crowder stole the heart of everyone involved.

According to Yost, this feeling was unanimous. In fact, when speaking with the Television Academy, he recalled a phone call with FX president John Landgraf, who told him: "'Research and screenings and everything says Walton's fantastic. We feel — and I think you feel it, too — that the story is not done with [Boyd].'" Eventually, Boyd became popular not just with casual "Justified" viewers, but even the Kentucky coal miners down in the real-life Harlan County. We only wish he had a bigger part in "Justified: City Primeval."

When the Duffer Brothers made the first season of "Stranger Things," it was never meant to go five seasons, let alone keep certain characters around that long. Originally, Joe Keery's Steve "The Hair" Harrington was supposed to be killed off by the Demogorgon at the end of Season 1, with Lonnie Byers (Ross Partridge) being the one who returned to help Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) and Nancy (Natalia Dyer) against the creature. But all that changed during the filming process.

"The characters and the actors and everyone who works on the show informs what we're doing," Matt Duffer told Felicia Day during Geeked Week in 2022 (via YouTube). It was because Keery won the Duffers over that Steve avoided his fate, quickly becoming a fan-favorite character over the next several seasons of the Netflix hit. It's due to that increasing popularity (and his killer redemption arc) that Steve stuck with the series through its entirety.

"Honestly, the day Steve Harrington dies is the day I walk off this show," executive producer Shawn Levy once told TVLine (via Yahoo). "I just can't live in a world without Steve Harrington. And I think a lot of us feel that way." Of course, Steve wasn't the only character the Duffers put on the chopping block. There was a moment there where even Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) was almost killed off in the first season, but fortunately the creators walked back on that idea too.

Those watching "Breaking Bad" after the fact may not have realized that Aaron Paul's Jesse Pinkman — the character who coined the titular phrase — was originally destined to die after only a few episodes. The idea was that after Jessie was killed by a rival gang, Walter White (Bryan Cranston) was going to take his revenge on Jesse's killers heading into the second season. But the course was altered when creator Vince Gilligan had a change of heart.

"My intention was that at the end of Season 1, Jesse would die horribly, which would make Walt feel really guilty and force him to question his criminality," Gilligan told New York Magazine in 2010. "But it became clear to me that Aaron Paul was an absolute asset to the show." Part of the reason Gilligan took pause was due to the 2007-08 writers' strike, which cut the initially nine-episode season short by two episodes. Though, according to the series creator, he knew even earlier that Paul was something special.

By the time "Breaking Bad" ended, many wondered if Gilligan would kill Jesse in the final hour. But by then, the character had become quite popular with fans — and had suffered far too much. "We really felt pretty early on that we wanted Jesse to live," writer Peter Gould told The Hollywood Reporter. "That was one of the things that liberated us in terms of having his suffering." No wonder he gets that happy ending in "El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie."

Okay, this one is a bit of a cheat, but to be fair, it's almost impossible to find a character on "Supernatural" who wasn't killed off at some point in time. However, when then-showrunner Sera Gamble killed Castiel (Misha Collins) off at the very beginning of the seventh season, it seemed to be permanent. The series had gone through some big changes since creator Eric Kripke stepped down from overseeing the program, and Castiel's death took fans by surprise.

When speaking to ScreenerTV in 2011, Gamble revealed that the decision was meant to be character-driven. "On our show, a lot of times, the only way to take a character to the next level is to kill him, frankly," she noted, adding that the plan was to eventually use Collins again (likely in another capacity) down the line. However, Collins told a different version of events when appearing on the "Supernatural Then and Now" podcast in 2025. "By the time we filmed [the premiere], I had already been sat down and told, 'You're done, you're not coming back,'" the star explained.

Fans notoriously hated Season 7, and the show's ratings didn't improve much after the attempt at returning the show to its initial "Sam and Dean against the world" concept. A few months later, then-CW president Mark Pedowitz spoke with the producers about bringing Castiel back. According to Collins, Pedowitz convinced the "Supernatural" creatives to find a way to resurrect him — no doubt due to fan outcry — and eventually they did. Castiel returned later that season, and by Season 9 Collins was once again a series regular.