TV

The 35 Most Horrifying Lesbian/Bi Character Deaths on Television

Every season we celebrate the amount of lesbian and bi female characters television has gifted us because it’s grown exponentially in the past 10 to 20 years. We’ve seen ourselves on-screen in a number of ways-butch, femme, in-between; all shapes and sizes and colors and ages. And while networks are getting better at putting LGBT women in more recurring and major roles instead of bit parts or very special episodes, one trend remains going strong: They keep getting killed off.

In the last two years alone we can count on two hands the number of gay women featured on shows that did not live to see the end of a season, and in the past three months we have said goodbye to three major characters whose very existences were our entry points into their otherwise quite hetero-driven shows. (OK, maybe not as true of True Blood but certainly for Chicago Fire and Arrow.)

These deaths, whether they are violent murders or inconceivable cancer diagnoses, continue to pain us years after we’ve had to endure them on TV. It’s also strange to see lesbian and bi women are most often shot to death, though we are also not immune from more “creative” perils like parachute falls or getting our heads bashed in after an orgy in the town square. Perhaps the good (?) news is only one on the list was suicide, and it had nothing to do with her sexual orientation. Most of the reasons LGBT women are killed off shows, based on the below list, seems to be that writers/producers don’t know what to do with them anymore and they want to advance the plots of more central (aka straight) characters. That is not the case for every single show, but it certainly feels like it was for several, especially the more recent instances.

Of course, in some cases the actors want out or the death highlighted a new and important LGBT-themed story thereafter (ER), but the thing is, we’re getting really tired of this trend. While visibility has gotten better in recent years, we’re still craving more and better representations of our community. Sometimes it feels like we’re getting thrown a bone and being appeased until the powers that be are no longer interested in entertaining our very specific fanbase. (That’s their loss, quite honestly, because we are a passionate and strong crew.)

So because it’s that time of year, when things get morbid, and because TV is taking this trope and continuing to run with it, we’re paying tribute to our fallen Sapphic soldiers. R.I.P. these 35 lesbian and bi female characters that will remain forever in our hearts.

*Attention: Please be aware that these posts contain images of characters both alive and postmortem. We want to alert our readers who may be sensitive to these types of images.* Tara Maclay, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (2002)

The official word was that they were going to be killing the beloved Shay because her death would create the most drama for the rest of the cast. That may be true of you exempt from the runny both of the pretty by leads from consideration. Everyone at Firehouse 51 loved Shay and it was this (apparently) this fact that doomed her character. As sucky as it was to lose the only gay character on the show her death was even harder to take because after her death we got heartbreaking flashbacks to the first time Shay arrived at Firehouse 51. We saw her meet Dawson and Severide. We got back story that we never saw in the two previous seasons. It was like shooting Old Yeller while playing a home video montage of the little guy as a pup, running in slow motion and tripping over his adorable puppy paws. –Lucy Hallowell Sara Lance, Arrow (2014)

I started watching Arrow this summer, between Seasons 2 and 3. I had heard buzzing about queer ladies on the show, but honestly, but the time I was halfway through season one, I totally forgot that it was these rumors that got me to start watching in the first place. I was hooked; the show had everything I could want. It had vigilantes, it had heart, it had badass women, it had strong themes of friendship and familial love, and it had Felicity Smoak. All it needed was a little lady-loving to be practically perfect in every way. And in Season 2 Sara Lance, lady archer with a troubled past and a penchant for leather, came head to head with Nyssa al Ghul. It wasn’t until their lips locked that I finally remembered that I had heard whisperings of sweet lady kisses on this show, and it did not disappoint.

Nyssa, we came to learn, was an ex-girlfriend of Sara’s, a point she was not ashamed about in any way. Sara had been worried about her father’s opinions, but despite the fact that Detective Lance can be a hardass and a overprotective to the point of occasional male chauvinism, ultimately Sara’s father was just grateful that she had someone to care about her for the many years she was way from Starling City and presumed dead. In fact, the way it was all presented, it seemed that everyone was more concerned that Sara had been dating someone who is not only in the League of Assassins but the daughter of the leader of the League of Assassins. Eventually Nyssa went on her way and Sara struck up a lustful but brief fling with Oliver, but never was her relationship with Nyssa brushed off as a phase. It was only unimportant in the sense that it was in the past, a place that vigilante-types don’t tend to dwell. It was well done, in my opinion, and after Sara and Oliver severed their romantic ties, there was always that mustard seed of hope that Nyssa would come back or that Sara could find a new girlfriend.

Then they went and killed her. First episode of Season 3, Sara is welcomed back with arrows to the chest. Now, this is arguably one of the least offensive on this list in the sense that, in the comics, Laurel Lance is the Black Canary, so perhaps Sara had to die to light that fire in Laurel, to awaken her inner vigilante. Unlike some characters on this list, Sara seems to have been sacrificed for the larger plot, not just because the writers didn’t know what else to do with a “queer” character besides make her want a baby or changing her mind about liking women in the first place. But that only makes it marginally less frustrating. Fortunately, Arrow is bringing back Nyssa, at least for a bit. I’m hoping this will give us some insight into her and Sara’s relationship, past and present (well, past and recent past…) and perhaps Nyssa will exact the vengeance we all want for the Canary.

But once Nyssa goes back to the League of Assassins (or, HEAVENS FORBID, dies trying to avenge Sara’s death), will that be the end of queer characters for Arrow? Will Felicity, Laurel, and Thea keep on keeping on with their male love interests? Or will one of them end up being about as straight as Sara Lance? Speaking of which, don’t even get me started on the subtext shipping that fell off the roof right along with Sara. While mourning her death, I am also mourning the loss of Smoaking Canary. Never again will Felicity ogle Sara as she works out, and this hurts me. Long story short, losing Sara was a harsh blow, and the timing was bad, considering her death came in the wake of losing Leslie Shay (Chicago Fire) and Isabelle Hartley (Agents of S.H.I.E.LD.), making it three shows this season who killed off a queer character in their premiere episode. It’s starting to feel like a pattern, a pattern we don’t so much care for at all.

But here’s the thing: If you have enough well-rounded, diverse characters on your show, killing one character won’t amount to killing the entirety of a certain representation. I know not every show can afford to be like Pretty Little Liars, where when one lesbian dies, at least two more appear in her place, but if you’re in your third season of a show, you should theoretically be able to kill off whoever you want without having to worry about effectively erasing your LGBT representation. Just a thought. But that’s a different rant for a different day. -Valerie Anne

Reyna died for the cause, while Galan continued to live on in greed. He has many other enemies, so eventually justice will be served. Unfortunately Reyna will not be around to see it carried out. -Trish Bendix Tara, True Blood (2014)

In a world where humans vampires, werewolves, shifters and faerie/vampire hybrids battle each other money, power and basic survival there is bound to be a tragic death or two. Over the past seven seasons, many of our beloved True Blood characters have met an untimely death. So why are we so upset about Tara’s demise in the Season 7 premiere? We’re glad you asked.

Tara was arguably one of the best characters on the show. Sookie’s best friend wormed her way into our hearts in the very first episode with her foul-mouthed, tell—it-like-it-is attitude. She kept it real, and we appreciated that. Even before the vampires came out of the coffin, Tara had been through a lot. But she was survivor. Whether it was cage fighting in New Orleans under the name of Toni or working as a bartender/dancer at Fangtasia, Tara has always found a way to not only survive, but also thrive, and create a new life for herself. Underneath that tough exterior she had a soft spot for her friends and family. Tara was never charmed by vampires the way Sookie was, but although she resented all the trouble vampires caused for her friend, she always had her back-defending Sookie and rescuing her more than once. Not to mention that she had some really great lines such as: “It’s been a while since I been attacked by a vampire, and guess what? It still sucks!!”

We didn’t get to see her last moments. This sucks for two reasons: a) There is a lack of closure. We never saw it coming. We didn’t even get to say goodbye! B) The fact that we hadn’t actually seen her get killed, kept us holding on with the false hope that she wasn’t really dead. I mean, it wouldn’t be the first time someone we thought was a goner had actually managed to escape at the last moment. (I’m looking at you, Eric.) It made her loss linger with us longer.

She survived so much just to die right before the happy ending. An absent father. An alcoholic, drug addicted mother. The death of her first love, Eggs. Tara has lived through the most horrific circumstances you can imagine. There were so many times she almost died. And then there was that time she actually did. When she was shot in the head while saving Sookie’s life, we thought for sure that she was lost to us forever. But she came back to us as a vampire, and foolishly, we thought that meant that, with her super human strength and relative immortality, if she survived all that she had as a bartender, surely she could make it to the end of the series. Yet, just nine episodes before everyone else gets their happy ending, Tara met the true death.

Killing off the black best friend of the main character is so cliché. I guess in this case, we should have seen it coming. Too bad it doesn’t make it any better. –Eboni Rafus

Leslie Elizabeth Shay, Chicago Fire (2014)

Over two seasons on Chicago Fire, paramedic Leslie Shay (Lauren German) was hit by a truck, stuck with a needle, threatened with a gun, and impaled on some rebar. It became a running gag that she was going to suffer some kind of trauma every two to three episodes. Oh, Shay’s in trouble? Must be Tuesday. Until this season, like a cat with nine lives, she always pulled through.

From the first episode she established herself as the resident smart ass with a heart of gold and terrible taste in women. And oh lord did we ever love her for it. She and her roommate Severide were bros who occasionally shared lady dates. She and her fellow paramedic Gabriela Dawson had the kind of chemistry usually only ignored by shows like Rizzoli & Isles. So, when it became clear that the show was going to kill her off in this season’s premiere episode it was devastating.

The official word was that they were going to be killing the beloved Shay because her death would create the most drama for the rest of the cast. That may be true of you exempt from the runny both of the pretty by leads from consideration. Everyone at Firehouse 51 loved Shay and it was this (apparently) this fact that doomed her character. As sucky as it was to lose the only gay character on the show her death was even harder to take because after her death we got heartbreaking flashbacks to the first time Shay arrived at Firehouse 51. We saw her meet Dawson and Severide. We got back story that we never saw in the two previous seasons. It was like shooting Old Yeller while playing a home video montage of the little guy as a pup, running in slow motion and tripping over his adorable puppy paws. –Lucy Hallowell Sara Lance, Arrow (2014)

I started watching Arrow this summer, between Seasons 2 and 3. I had heard buzzing about queer ladies on the show, but honestly, but the time I was halfway through season one, I totally forgot that it was these rumors that got me to start watching in the first place. I was hooked; the show had everything I could want. It had vigilantes, it had heart, it had badass women, it had strong themes of friendship and familial love, and it had Felicity Smoak. All it needed was a little lady-loving to be practically perfect in every way. And in Season 2 Sara Lance, lady archer with a troubled past and a penchant for leather, came head to head with Nyssa al Ghul. It wasn’t until their lips locked that I finally remembered that I had heard whisperings of sweet lady kisses on this show, and it did not disappoint.

Nyssa, we came to learn, was an ex-girlfriend of Sara’s, a point she was not ashamed about in any way. Sara had been worried about her father’s opinions, but despite the fact that Detective Lance can be a hardass and a overprotective to the point of occasional male chauvinism, ultimately Sara’s father was just grateful that she had someone to care about her for the many years she was way from Starling City and presumed dead. In fact, the way it was all presented, it seemed that everyone was more concerned that Sara had been dating someone who is not only in the League of Assassins but the daughter of the leader of the League of Assassins. Eventually Nyssa went on her way and Sara struck up a lustful but brief fling with Oliver, but never was her relationship with Nyssa brushed off as a phase. It was only unimportant in the sense that it was in the past, a place that vigilante-types don’t tend to dwell. It was well done, in my opinion, and after Sara and Oliver severed their romantic ties, there was always that mustard seed of hope that Nyssa would come back or that Sara could find a new girlfriend.

Then they went and killed her. First episode of Season 3, Sara is welcomed back with arrows to the chest. Now, this is arguably one of the least offensive on this list in the sense that, in the comics, Laurel Lance is the Black Canary, so perhaps Sara had to die to light that fire in Laurel, to awaken her inner vigilante. Unlike some characters on this list, Sara seems to have been sacrificed for the larger plot, not just because the writers didn’t know what else to do with a “queer” character besides make her want a baby or changing her mind about liking women in the first place. But that only makes it marginally less frustrating. Fortunately, Arrow is bringing back Nyssa, at least for a bit. I’m hoping this will give us some insight into her and Sara’s relationship, past and present (well, past and recent past…) and perhaps Nyssa will exact the vengeance we all want for the Canary.

But once Nyssa goes back to the League of Assassins (or, HEAVENS FORBID, dies trying to avenge Sara’s death), will that be the end of queer characters for Arrow? Will Felicity, Laurel, and Thea keep on keeping on with their male love interests? Or will one of them end up being about as straight as Sara Lance? Speaking of which, don’t even get me started on the subtext shipping that fell off the roof right along with Sara. While mourning her death, I am also mourning the loss of Smoaking Canary. Never again will Felicity ogle Sara as she works out, and this hurts me. Long story short, losing Sara was a harsh blow, and the timing was bad, considering her death came in the wake of losing Leslie Shay (Chicago Fire) and Isabelle Hartley (Agents of S.H.I.E.LD.), making it three shows this season who killed off a queer character in their premiere episode. It’s starting to feel like a pattern, a pattern we don’t so much care for at all.

But here’s the thing: If you have enough well-rounded, diverse characters on your show, killing one character won’t amount to killing the entirety of a certain representation. I know not every show can afford to be like Pretty Little Liars, where when one lesbian dies, at least two more appear in her place, but if you’re in your third season of a show, you should theoretically be able to kill off whoever you want without having to worry about effectively erasing your LGBT representation. Just a thought. But that’s a different rant for a different day. -Valerie Anne

Her death was not in vain, but it was also not completely necessary. The plot could have advanced without it, but if TV has to hurt sometimes, this definitely poured on the pain. A visit to Bullet’s grave on the fourth and final season this year was a nice homage, but we would have preferred her in the flesh. –Trish Bendix Victoria Hand & Isabelle Hartley, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.(2014)

I’ll begin by being totally honest with you: the only comic books I have read in the past few years are some of the new Batwoman comics, Lumberjanes, and Gotham City Sirens. All I know about Victoria Hand and Isabelle Hartley in the Marvel Comics is what I gleaned from Wikipedia articles and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. recaps. That being said, it is my understanding that in the comics these two characters were, at one point, dating one another. I don’t know how they identified, but I know they fell under the LGBT umbrella somewhere.

But that’s part of the problem here: I have watched every single episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.LD., but if I hadn’t read recaps of the show on queer sites like AfterEllen, I never would have known that. I wouldn’t even have suspected the two characters knew each other, since they never appeared in the same season together, let alone episode or scene. Whether it’s because the show chose to erase their sexuality entirely, or because they brought them on and killed them off so quickly that their personal lives were irrelevant doesn’t seem to make much difference. It was either two comic-book-canon queer characters the show pretended were straight and then killed, or two canon queer characters that the show killed. And I say “pretended were straight” but I guess that’s a little harsh. It only works out that way because of heteronormativity (my favorite word and Cards Against Humanity card, because it provides me many humorous teaching moments).

Whatever the case, we net out at zero queer characters on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. And it’s one thing to not want to change the general trajectory of classic characters like Captain America or The Hulk (I’m still holding out hope for Black Widow), but it’s another thing entirely to have women already pre-written as loving the ladies and to avoid it entirely. Especially on a show with a good handful of original female characters, not one of which is queer as far as we know. And it’s a Joss Whedon show! He usually at least makes his lesbians deep and complex before killing them off! (Though, I’ll be honest: If he lets Skye or Simmons date a woman for any period of time and/or each other I will forgive him this wrong. JUST THIS ONE. I will never forgive him Tara.) And this is probably beside the point, but it’s still point-adjacent: Isabelle Hartley’s death cut deep because it was Xena. Haven’t we suffered enough at the hands of Lucy Lawless‘s ambiguously* gay characters?

In conclusion, the brief run and lack of depth of not one, but two queer female characters on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was just not OK, at least from where I’m standing.

*I wholeheartedly believe that Xena was in love with Gabrielle and would personally categorize her as an iconic bisexual character. -Valerie Anne

Reyna Flores, Matador (2014)

Reyna Flores (Eve Torres) was leading a double life. As a hard-nosed Latina journalist covering the inside world of professional soccer, she was frequently sexually harassed in locker rooms and put up with a bunch of bullshit to get her job done. She even had to keep her girlfriend at bay (although that’s probably stretching it and Reyna would likely call her a “friend’). It turns out, though that Reyna wasn’t just trying to be a good reporter-she was seeking revenge.

In the eleventh episode of Season 1 this past September, we see that Reyna has gotten here for another purpose entirely: She’s been tracking L.A. Riot owner Andrés Galan for murdering her father. We find this out after Reyna goes to shoot Galan during a game, and ends up getting shot several times herself. Galan survives, as does a tape Reyna has made, explaining why she’s done what she’s done.

“You know me as Reyna Flores, but that’s not my real name,” she says into the camera. “My name is Valeria Molinez. By now, you know what I’ve done.”

Reyna (aka Valeria) explains how Galan killed her father because he “championed a movement to unionize the Telecom Industry in Mexico.” Galan is power-hungry and, as Reyna says, “evil.”

“Today, I give you the truth about Andres Galan, my enemy who has now become my teacher,” she says. “He offered me a quote once for an interview, a quote that now guides me on my present course: ;Never pray for that which you have the power to execute yourself.’ Andres, it is my honor.”

Reyna died for the cause, while Galan continued to live on in greed. He has many other enemies, so eventually justice will be served. Unfortunately Reyna will not be around to see it carried out. -Trish Bendix Tara, True Blood (2014)

In a world where humans vampires, werewolves, shifters and faerie/vampire hybrids battle each other money, power and basic survival there is bound to be a tragic death or two. Over the past seven seasons, many of our beloved True Blood characters have met an untimely death. So why are we so upset about Tara’s demise in the Season 7 premiere? We’re glad you asked.

Tara was arguably one of the best characters on the show. Sookie’s best friend wormed her way into our hearts in the very first episode with her foul-mouthed, tell—it-like-it-is attitude. She kept it real, and we appreciated that. Even before the vampires came out of the coffin, Tara had been through a lot. But she was survivor. Whether it was cage fighting in New Orleans under the name of Toni or working as a bartender/dancer at Fangtasia, Tara has always found a way to not only survive, but also thrive, and create a new life for herself. Underneath that tough exterior she had a soft spot for her friends and family. Tara was never charmed by vampires the way Sookie was, but although she resented all the trouble vampires caused for her friend, she always had her back-defending Sookie and rescuing her more than once. Not to mention that she had some really great lines such as: “It’s been a while since I been attacked by a vampire, and guess what? It still sucks!!”

We didn’t get to see her last moments. This sucks for two reasons: a) There is a lack of closure. We never saw it coming. We didn’t even get to say goodbye! B) The fact that we hadn’t actually seen her get killed, kept us holding on with the false hope that she wasn’t really dead. I mean, it wouldn’t be the first time someone we thought was a goner had actually managed to escape at the last moment. (I’m looking at you, Eric.) It made her loss linger with us longer.

She survived so much just to die right before the happy ending. An absent father. An alcoholic, drug addicted mother. The death of her first love, Eggs. Tara has lived through the most horrific circumstances you can imagine. There were so many times she almost died. And then there was that time she actually did. When she was shot in the head while saving Sookie’s life, we thought for sure that she was lost to us forever. But she came back to us as a vampire, and foolishly, we thought that meant that, with her super human strength and relative immortality, if she survived all that she had as a bartender, surely she could make it to the end of the series. Yet, just nine episodes before everyone else gets their happy ending, Tara met the true death.

Killing off the black best friend of the main character is so cliché. I guess in this case, we should have seen it coming. Too bad it doesn’t make it any better. –Eboni Rafus

Leslie Elizabeth Shay, Chicago Fire (2014)

Over two seasons on Chicago Fire, paramedic Leslie Shay (Lauren German) was hit by a truck, stuck with a needle, threatened with a gun, and impaled on some rebar. It became a running gag that she was going to suffer some kind of trauma every two to three episodes. Oh, Shay’s in trouble? Must be Tuesday. Until this season, like a cat with nine lives, she always pulled through.

From the first episode she established herself as the resident smart ass with a heart of gold and terrible taste in women. And oh lord did we ever love her for it. She and her roommate Severide were bros who occasionally shared lady dates. She and her fellow paramedic Gabriela Dawson had the kind of chemistry usually only ignored by shows like Rizzoli & Isles. So, when it became clear that the show was going to kill her off in this season’s premiere episode it was devastating.

The official word was that they were going to be killing the beloved Shay because her death would create the most drama for the rest of the cast. That may be true of you exempt from the runny both of the pretty by leads from consideration. Everyone at Firehouse 51 loved Shay and it was this (apparently) this fact that doomed her character. As sucky as it was to lose the only gay character on the show her death was even harder to take because after her death we got heartbreaking flashbacks to the first time Shay arrived at Firehouse 51. We saw her meet Dawson and Severide. We got back story that we never saw in the two previous seasons. It was like shooting Old Yeller while playing a home video montage of the little guy as a pup, running in slow motion and tripping over his adorable puppy paws. –Lucy Hallowell Sara Lance, Arrow (2014)

I started watching Arrow this summer, between Seasons 2 and 3. I had heard buzzing about queer ladies on the show, but honestly, but the time I was halfway through season one, I totally forgot that it was these rumors that got me to start watching in the first place. I was hooked; the show had everything I could want. It had vigilantes, it had heart, it had badass women, it had strong themes of friendship and familial love, and it had Felicity Smoak. All it needed was a little lady-loving to be practically perfect in every way. And in Season 2 Sara Lance, lady archer with a troubled past and a penchant for leather, came head to head with Nyssa al Ghul. It wasn’t until their lips locked that I finally remembered that I had heard whisperings of sweet lady kisses on this show, and it did not disappoint.

Nyssa, we came to learn, was an ex-girlfriend of Sara’s, a point she was not ashamed about in any way. Sara had been worried about her father’s opinions, but despite the fact that Detective Lance can be a hardass and a overprotective to the point of occasional male chauvinism, ultimately Sara’s father was just grateful that she had someone to care about her for the many years she was way from Starling City and presumed dead. In fact, the way it was all presented, it seemed that everyone was more concerned that Sara had been dating someone who is not only in the League of Assassins but the daughter of the leader of the League of Assassins. Eventually Nyssa went on her way and Sara struck up a lustful but brief fling with Oliver, but never was her relationship with Nyssa brushed off as a phase. It was only unimportant in the sense that it was in the past, a place that vigilante-types don’t tend to dwell. It was well done, in my opinion, and after Sara and Oliver severed their romantic ties, there was always that mustard seed of hope that Nyssa would come back or that Sara could find a new girlfriend.

Then they went and killed her. First episode of Season 3, Sara is welcomed back with arrows to the chest. Now, this is arguably one of the least offensive on this list in the sense that, in the comics, Laurel Lance is the Black Canary, so perhaps Sara had to die to light that fire in Laurel, to awaken her inner vigilante. Unlike some characters on this list, Sara seems to have been sacrificed for the larger plot, not just because the writers didn’t know what else to do with a “queer” character besides make her want a baby or changing her mind about liking women in the first place. But that only makes it marginally less frustrating. Fortunately, Arrow is bringing back Nyssa, at least for a bit. I’m hoping this will give us some insight into her and Sara’s relationship, past and present (well, past and recent past…) and perhaps Nyssa will exact the vengeance we all want for the Canary.

But once Nyssa goes back to the League of Assassins (or, HEAVENS FORBID, dies trying to avenge Sara’s death), will that be the end of queer characters for Arrow? Will Felicity, Laurel, and Thea keep on keeping on with their male love interests? Or will one of them end up being about as straight as Sara Lance? Speaking of which, don’t even get me started on the subtext shipping that fell off the roof right along with Sara. While mourning her death, I am also mourning the loss of Smoaking Canary. Never again will Felicity ogle Sara as she works out, and this hurts me. Long story short, losing Sara was a harsh blow, and the timing was bad, considering her death came in the wake of losing Leslie Shay (Chicago Fire) and Isabelle Hartley (Agents of S.H.I.E.LD.), making it three shows this season who killed off a queer character in their premiere episode. It’s starting to feel like a pattern, a pattern we don’t so much care for at all.

But here’s the thing: If you have enough well-rounded, diverse characters on your show, killing one character won’t amount to killing the entirety of a certain representation. I know not every show can afford to be like Pretty Little Liars, where when one lesbian dies, at least two more appear in her place, but if you’re in your third season of a show, you should theoretically be able to kill off whoever you want without having to worry about effectively erasing your LGBT representation. Just a thought. But that’s a different rant for a different day. -Valerie Anne

I understand that actors want off shows sometimes but there were so many other ways they could have handled that. Silvia could have gone on an undercover assignment for a year. Or gone into a coma. OR SHE JUST COULD HAVE STAYED ON THE GODDAMN SHOW. IT ONLY LASTED ONE MORE SEASON ANYWAY. Instead, the writers, who up until that point had been so kind and so generous with their lesbian fans, decided to kill a beloved character in the exact way calculated to cause the most trauma and pain. They betrayed us. And that was the most unkindest cut of all. –Elaine Atwell June Stahl, Sons of Anarchy (2010) June Stahl (Ally Walker) was an agent for the Bureau of Tobacco, Alcohol, Firearms, and Explosives who rode into town to investigate the Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club of Charming, California. Her character was portrayed as bisexual/lesbian, and yet her first scene in bed with another woman, in Season 1, was cut from the episode but can be seen on the DVD. Stahl was an evil, conniving agent who betrayed everyone who crossed her. In fact, Stahl was so evil that, in Season 2, she killed her own girlfriend to protect a set of lies she conjured up. If that isn’t insane, then I’m throwing in my writer’s card.

Stahl played an important role in Seasons 1-3 because she caused problems within SAMCRO. She crossed the line one too many times that it was surprise she even survived as long as she did. Stahl became obsessed with bringing SAMCRO down through her many lies, which in turn caused deaths and chaos within SAMCRO, that it caused her own demise.

Her death was payback for the death of Donna. Stahl painted Opie as a snitch and Donna died as a result of it. So, as karma would have it, Stahl was killed by Opie in the same manner as Donna. He held Stahl in her car at gunpoint as she begged and pleaded for her life. “This is what she felt,” Opie said just before shooting her in the head, brain guts everywhere.

Stahl’s death was important because her character progressed the storyline of each season. She was an ATF agent with a plan to take down SAMCRO. She just went about it in a dirty way that, eventually, ended her life. Stahl was an agent first and foremost. Yes, it did suck that another lesbian in a television series had to die. If she was a good agent, would her life have been spared? If she had been a straight female, would her life have been spared? Many lesbian characters are portrayed as evil or conniving and tend to have their lives cut short. What’s so hard about keeping around a lesbian character until the end? But, Stahl had it coming to her all along. In this situation, it wasn’t so much that she was a lesbian killed off, but more so an evil character whose time ran out. –Erica Feliciano

Queen Sophie Ann Leclerq, True Blood (2011)

I first came across True Blood while bored at my parents’ house in Michigan several years ago. I’d heard a lot about the new HBO series-blood! camp! romance!-so I found it on demand and devoured the entire first season in one long day, which turned into one long night. I fell in love with the people and beings of Bon Temps, despite an immediate distaste for Bill Compton. Sookie Stackhouse and her best friend Tara Thornton were enough to get me invested, not to mention the flashy flambuoyantness that was Lafayette.

So when Evan Rachel Wood was cast as a vampire queen in Season 2, I knew I was an official Truebie. A fan of Evan’s since watching Once & Again with my mom when I was in high school and graduating to Thirteen when I was more like 17 but loving the truth behind the heightened gritty teen experience film, I couldn’t wait to see what Evan would be doing back on the small screen for Alan Ball.

She did not disappoint. Sophie-Anne Leclerq was all glamour, like any good vampire queen should be. Hailing from Northern France and donning silky whites with her blood-orange hair, it was impossible to hate her despite the nasty things she had planned for Sookie and the other fae. (We didn’t so much mind the things she had planned for Cousin Hadley.) After appearing in Seasons 2 and 3, usually blinged out and in her gorgeous Louisiana mansion, Sophie-Anne met an untimely demise in the second episode of Season 4 when she was shot with silver bullets and instantly turned into a bloody explosion coopted by (of course) Bill Compton. (Before she died, she called him a “fucking traitor.” He is.)

While Sophie was on the show, the death count was a lot lower than it ended up being by the series end, so her demise was truly sad. But with Evan Rachel Wood only on the show as a recurring guest star, it was bound to happen. Still, it doesn’t mean we missed her special brand of sass any less. And somehow, I managed to stick with the show until the very end.-Trish Bendix Nan Flanagan, True Blood (2011)

Another reason to keep watching True Blood? Jessica Tuck played a perfect ice queen as the voice of the American Vampire League and the Authority. A true bitch we came to love (as was the case with most of the lesbian characters on True Blood), Nan had more time in her life for business than pleasure, but enjoyed feasting on a human woman every now and again. She lived for 817 years, which isn’t too shabby, but we only had her ruining the lives of Bon Temps’s undead for four seasons.

Nan’s end came when she confronted Bill Compton about his getting her fired from her highly-coveted position. Bill mercifully stakes her as Eric Northman kills her guards. Bill Compton is officially on our shit list for hate crimes against power lesbian vampires. Because the women were totally in charge on True Blood. Not only women, but queer women. Women who were unapologetic about their relationships and interests. Did they really have to die for their causes? –Trish Bendix Gaia, Spartacus: Gods of the Arena (2011)

It’s dangerous to live in the time of Spartacus, especially if you’re a woman. Gaia (played by the gorgeous and always lustable (Jaime Murray) was a longtime friend and lover to Lucretia (Lucy Lawless), but used her feminine wiles to distract men from their evil ways. That included Tullius, who decided to use Gaia to prove a point, and murdered her for sport, sending Lucretia to receive the “message.” This all happens after a huge orgy, which is very much the Spartacus way.

Lucretia declared revenge as she kissed Gaia for the last time, and begins to wear Gaia’s red wig in her memory. Gaia might have left Lucretia and the show, but her presence remained a strong one for the rest of the season. The good news is that we have enjoyed Jaime Murray on several other shows since. She’s survived on most of them (so far).-Trish Bendix Angela Darmody & Louise Bryant, Boardwalk Empire (2011)

Having spent 10 years in Chicago and learning a lot about its historic speakeasies and highly illegal ways around Prohibition, I started watching Boardwalk Empire from its premiere. While the show focused largely on the goings on in Atlantic City, there were many ties to Chicago’s mobsters like Al Capone and the back and forth was compelling enough with skillful actors like Steve Buscemi and Michael Pitt.

But the real pull for me was Angela Darmody (Aleksa Palladino). Angela was living a relatively peaceful life after she assumed the father of her child, Jimmy, had died in the war. But when Jimmy came back alive, her life had to change, including her affair with her lover, Mary Dittrich. A painter who longs to flee with Mary, a photographer, for a new life in Greenwich Villiage or Paris, Angela has dreams of leaving Atlantic City. Her heart is broken when Mary leaves town with her husband and without saying goodbye.

In Season 2, Angela meets Louise Bryant at the beach. Louise is from San Francisco and dares to show some skin while sunbathing, causing a stir. Angela and Molly immediately like one another, much to their detriment, as their last night together ends in a bloodbath. One of Jimmy’s rivals, Manny Horvitz, shows up while Jimmy is out of town. Instead he finds Angela stepping out of the shower, shooting both of the women and leaving them lying next to one another on the floor.

Angela and Louise were in the wrong place at the wrong time, murdered to prove a point; to teach Jimmy Darmody a lesson. On a ruthless show about gangsters, these kinds of things are par for the course, but it was nonetheless a shock to see it all go down so quickly. It felt like a punishment for Angela’s being happy, almost; that she had found love after losing her first out of fear, and even with Jimmy having his own extra-marital flings, Angela was the one receiving the shot. She was missed forevermore on the series, at least by those who continued to watch. I didn’t last much longer.-Trish Bendix Nadia, Lost Girl (2012)

The first time we met Dr. Lauren Lewis’s (Zoie Palmer) secret comatose girlfriend Nadia (Athena Karkanis), is while she lies helplessly in a special vacu-seal medical pod. Lauren pledged allegiance to Light Fae in order to keep Nadia in stasis until she could find a cure. After five years, Lauren has found herself deeply attracted to Bo, and feeling terribly guilty about not only being unfaithful to Nadia, but of being unable to heal her as well. When it’s discovered that Nadia is not ill, but under a curse, it’s Bo that goes on a mission and removes the curse.

After a brief time together, Nadia becomes suspicious of the longing looks exchanged between Lauren and Bo. Nadia’s behavior becomes strange, and she becomes violent. Possessed by the Garuda, and losing herself more and more everyday, Nadia attacks and then begs Lauren to end her suffering. When Lauren refuses, Nadia attacks her once again, and this time Bo intervenes, stabbing Nadia and killing her. The death causes a massive rift between Bo and Lauren at first, but the women ultimately grow closer, and their relationship becomes much deeper. While it was sad to see Nadia so tortured by those demons, it’s a tricky role to be the person who comes between a show’s OTP. Why couldn’t they have sent her off on a helicopter like Riley? –Dana Piccoli Cat, Lip Service (2012)

It took me months to get over Cat’s death. Not only did it kill the relationship between Cat (Laura Fraser) and Frankie (Ruta Gedmintas) and any possibility of Cat (or Frankie, or any other character, really) from ever blooming into totally developed characters-her death simply killed Lip Service, a relatively fresh and intriguing Glasgow-based series about adult lesbians. Of course, this wasn’t really anyone’s fault. Laura Fraser was already signed on for Breaking Bad, which would overlap the second season of Lip Service. The same was the case for Gedmintas, who went on to do movies and the Renaissance drama series, The Borgias. Here’s what happened: Season 1 was shot in October 2010, and after the series renewal was announced, filming didn’t begin on Season 2 until May 2011. Finally, in April of 2012, Season 2 was all set to air-nearly a year and a half later. Maybe we expected the characters to have longer hair, deeper dialogue, more intricate crises-but we were treated instead to almost immediate death.

I still remember where I was when Cat died. I was sitting on a couch in Florida eating popcorn and writing a piece for Curve magazine on why everyone should tune in to watch Lip Service‘s anticipated new season. Episode Two aired on April 27, 2012, the sign of the Taurus, a day that will live in infamy. There it was: Cat’s birthday, Cat’s inability to come clean to her girlfriend, Detective Sam Murray about her affair with ex girlfriend Frankie, foreboding white lilies on the table, and the torn decision to stay or go, to give Frankie a second/third/fourth chance or stick with her loving, honest Sam. She meets Frankie for one last tryst-a little bedroom peep show in a red corset and the reminder that Frankie will wait for her, she loves her.

Cat barely makes it across the street-dead on the pavement (eyes wide open, just to really fuck our days up) with her cell phone shattered, her last text from Frankie telling her that Tess (Fiona Button) won’t tell anyone she saw them together. I have friends who only got into Lip Service after it was finally made available later that summer on Netflix. The texts I got-“Episode Two?!” I’d just respond quickly with a sad face (pre-emojis) because I knew where they were at in the mourning process (and also knew that if I didn’t text back right away they’d surely think I’d been hit by a car, too.) I mean, yeah, the other characters had flair (especially Heather Peace, duh) but Cat and Frankie were supposed to be the sexy question mark/exclamation point on the entire drama.

Sometimes I’m up late at night, and I wonder what Lip Service creator Harriet Braun is feeling. When she made the announcement that the series had been cancelled in 2013, I felt as defeated as she must. We interviewed Braun previous to the second season airing, and at the time, she spoiled that there would be a dramatic rollercoaster ahead. Looking back on that now, I can see why she put such emphasis on the other actors and their place in the new season-their comedy, as a beacon of hope that the remainder of the season would be fixable and revived. But we all knew what the writing on the wood said, the wood with Cat and Frankie’s carving on it: “Some things shouldn’t be destroyed.” And this was it, Lip Service was destroyed. This untimely end sucked for us queer folk because in 2010, Lip Service was perfectly wedged into lesbian television utopia. The L Word had just ended its long run, and the natural transition led many of us into the scissory (yeah, I said it) depths (that too) of a whole new set of identifiable, seemingly relatable girl lezzies, and some dudes. People who ogled over Frankie compared her to the likes of Shane. The web was spun, however over-the-top any of the sex scenes seemed or whether we knew enough Scottish slang. We wanted more. But, no one wants to watch Heather Peace discover that her dead girlfriend, who died on her own birthday, was having an affair with her ex. Nor did we want to see Frankie kneeling over Cat’s grave instead of her vagina. –Kim Hoffman Wendy, American Horror Story: Asylum (2012)

Truth be told, we didn’t know a heck of a lot about Wendy (Clea Duvall) but we sure would have liked to. She was a teacher, and the girlfriend of reported Lana Winters (Sarah Paulson) who was blackmailed by Sister Jude into dooming Lana to the asylum. Soon afterwards, the distraught Wendy was murdered by Bloody Face (aka Dr. Thredson), and her body was left for Lana to find on the floor of his workshop.

When Lana later writes a memoir of her trials at the Asylum, she refers to Wendy as her “roommate”. It was still very much the time of the “love that dared not speak its name” but what a sad legacy for poor Wendy. –Dana Piccoli Lucretia, Spartacus: Vengeance (2012) Lucy Lawless is one of our faves, which is why it’s so hard to see her in peril. But as Lucretia in Spartacus: Revenge, she’s making her own decisions on the violence she enacts on others and herself. In a very dramatic and surprising Season 2 finale episode, Lucretia steps backwards off a cliff with her baby still in her arms. It’s a suicide and murder that no one saw coming, especially Ilithyia, who is there to witness it all.

Lucretia was bisexual, as she was married to Batiatus and slept with several other men, but had a strong love affair with Gaia (Jaime Murray). She also came to enjoy Ilithyia, but used it more as a power play than an actual romance. Because while Lucretia enjoyed sex, it seems her primary motivation was always power, and that wasn’t necessarily a good look for bisexuals. But in the times she lived, it was par for the course.-Trish Bendix Maya St. Germain, Pretty Little Liars (2012)

Nobody forgets their first love-especially if their first love is a bisexual, ganja loving girl next door (just ask anyone who ever crushed on me…HEYO!). Maya St. Germain (Bianca Lawson) made her first appearance on Pretty Little Liars in the pilot episode, where she convinced sweet innocent Emily Fields (Shay Mitchell) to smoke a joint with her. She continued to challenge Emily to break out of her comfort zone and rebel against the girl she thought she was supposed to be. Emily Fields was a character in desperate need of a catalyst, and Maya was exactly that; she shook Emily to the core and made her realize the truth she had struggled so long to keep buried. In a world built on lies, Maya was a breath of fresh air. Sure, not all of her decisions were great (it’s Mrs. Fields, not Pam, dear) but her free spirit and open heartedness created a safe space for our girl Em to come out. Emaya gave us shared scarves, photo booth first kisses, overly emotional online journal entries, and the oceanic themed bedroom we all wish we had lost our virginities in. With this relationship, PLL really nailed the awkward, tentative nature of two girls falling in love.

Maya’s death sucked big time, and not just because we lost another queer person of color on TV (although that never doesn’t suck). Unlike most of the serpentine, melodramatic demises that Pretty Little Liars has given us, Maya’s death was stark and almost shocking in its motivation. She got involved with the wrong guy, and when she tried to end the relationship he ended her life. Countless numbers of women have lost their lives in the very same manner. Yes, PLL is a show about girls in constant peril, but that single violent act mirrors a very real and terrifying problem in our world. Maya’s death (as far as we know) was completely unrelated to “A” or the central mystery. And like Joyce Summers’ death on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it reminds us that terrible things aren’t always the result of a demon or a prophecy or an initial wrapped in a black hoodie. Sometimes those terrible things are buried right in your backyard. –Chelsea Steiner Shana Fring, Pretty Little Liars (2013)

Shana Fring’s (Aeriel Miranda) life reads like my fantasy bucket list. Manage costume shop? Check. Date Paige McCullers? Check. Be an undercover agent for Alison? Check. Fall in love with Jenna and rock some violin/flute duets? Fucking check and mate. She even took Emily’s spot on the swim team, y’all. But Shana wasn’t just one of the million teen lesbians in Rosewood. She was childhood BFFs with Alison, a pre-cursor to Emily. We never really got to see what Shana and Alison’s relationship was like. Was she in love with Ali? Did Ali have feelings for her? (JK, Ali has feelings for no one, she is basically a walking horcrux of a human being.) We may never know.

In a way, Shana’s evolving relationship with Ali foreshadows the Liars relationship with her. Both Shana and the Liars shift from being protective of their long lost friend to being afraid of her. Shana was originally sent to keep an eye on Jenna, but her sympathies turn when they fall in love. Shana eventually joined the A team to avenge Jenna’s eyeballs, and I would have loved to see her pull some crazy Mona-style shenanigans. Unfortunately, Aria had to hit her with a prop musket and she fell four feet to her death. Someone who donned the black hoodie deserves better. –Chelsea Steiner Tricia, Orange is the New Black (2013)

If you’re half as obsessed with Orange is the New Black as I am, you’re marking Xs on your calendar counting down to next summer when you can call in sick to work three days in a row and binge on season 3 of the Netflix favorite. In the meantime, I drive my wife nuts re-watching seasons 1 and 2. I actually enjoy going back and seeing the show in a new way and noticing things I missed the first (or second, or third) time around. In my recent reuniting with Season 1 of OITNB, I was reminded of the adorable and endearing Tricia — the pretty blonde lesbian with a sweet spirit and an urban edge. Unfortunately, Tricia (played by Madeline Brewer) was a relatively unnoticed character until just before her death. When Mendez found her body lifeless after an overdose, we all learned that you really don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.

So, a largely unknown character on a hit series is killed off. Why do we care? Because it felt too real. Those of us who have found ourselves a little higher on the totem pole of privilege (white, middle class, solid family, etc.) got a dose of reality that we weren’t quite prepared for with Tricia’s story. Isn’t the justice system supposed to be…um, well just? If so, what exactly did Tricia do to deserve prison time? We know she was raped by her stepfather and homeless. Shouldn’t someone have helped and made sure she had access to education and a place to stay instead of being forced into a life of crime in order to survive? The answer to all these questions is yes. The justice system should be just, but it’s not. Someone should be helping the Tricias of the world, but for the most part, they’re not.

I can’t bring myself to argue with Tricia’s fate in terms of its connection to real life. And I can’t bring myself to criticize OITNB writers on her death. I’ve read Piper Kerman’s (the real Piper) memoir and have done a fair amount of research on what led her to write about her experiences in a women’s prison. Her ultimate goal, as I perceive it, in writing Orange is the New Black was to bring awareness to the general public about the injustices happening every day to our women while in prison—our women in poverty, our women of color, our abused women, our forgotten women. As much as I’d like to believe that prison inmates are incarcerated because they chose a life of crime over the alternative opportunities life has to offer, I know that’s not accurate. Kerman and the writers of OITNB have shown their viewers that our justice system isn’t that simple. A large portion of incarcerated individuals are there because they were not afforded the same opportunities that I, and many of you, have been. Being born to middle class parents who encouraged my talents and placed value on education allowed me to thrive and find success. The women in Litchfield (both literally and metaphorically), as a rule, didn’t have the same privileges as me. Stealing, hustling, and abusing drugs were as normal to them as my mom’s home cooked meal every night was for me.

If Tricia’s death from overdose was one more example of art imitating life, why did it suck? It sucked because, for many of us, it represents a harsh reality — a reality that we’d rather not face, let alone witness in our leisure time. I stand by the fact that Tricia was a character I would’ve loved to have seen more of. I’d like to know if she and Mercy would’ve stayed together despite Mercy’s release. Or if Tricia’s loneliness would’ve gotten the best of her and caused her to seek comfort in the arms of another inmate in Mercy’s absence. It would’ve been nice to see Tricia reunite with Allie—her friend from the street. And to watch her recommit to sobriety and maybe even kick Mendez’s ass would’ve been fabulous. But, we didn’t get the joy of watching Tricia get back on the wagon and find happiness and success—because, in actuality, this is not how life works for most of the Tricias out there.-Emily McGaughy Naomi Campbell, Skins Fire (2013)

Once in a while, if we are lucky, we meet a truly remarkable character. Painfully flawed, clever, beautiful, and unforgettable. It’s even more amazing, when we meet a couple that touches us so deeply. When Naomi Campbell (Lily Loveless) first laid eyes on Emily Fitch (Kathyrn Prescott), it was a love that should have lasted until the end of time. From drunken ball castle kisses, to blowbacks by the lake. From heartwrenching breakup to glorious reunion, Naomily was something special that fans could carry in their heart. And that was exactly how it was, until Skins Fire.

Damnit, Skins Fire.

In the summer of 2013, the Skins franchise was resurrected and Skins Fire debuted. The mini season focused on Effy’s continuing saga (spoiler: sex, insider trading) and Naomi went along for the ride as Effy’s roommate and now best friend. Fans were so excited to find out that Naomi and Emily were still a pair, even if Emily spent most of the time interning in New York. Then the Skins writers decided to do something drastic to amp up the drama. They gave Naomi cancer. And not just, “Oh this sucks, but let’s fight this thing” cancer, but the super, fast aggressive kind. All of that would be tragic enough on its own, but then they had Naomi be so stoic that she refused to tell Emily she was sick, until she was literally on her deathbed. Emily only found out that her love was dying, when they had only days or maybe even hours left together. Fans raged. What a terrible and tragic way to end the legacy of one of the greatest lesbian couples in television history. –Dana Piccoli Cristina, Tierra de Lobos (2013)

Isabel and Cristina, from the Spanish western Tierra De Lobos, have always had the cards stacked against them. First there was that whole issue with Cristina being Senor Lobo’s favorite prostitute in the town brothel. Then, Isabel discovered that Cristina had teamed up with Sebastian, the Lobo family nemesis, to use her as a pawn to get revenge for Mr. Lobo tossing her aside. But that was all before Cristina realized she was in love with Isabel.

Because their connection was so strong, Isabel and Cristina were able to move past their rocky beginning and embark on a clandestine love affair. Their pairing was so romantic, so true, that the couple gained international popularity and scenes between the two actors were subtitled in English, Italian and Russian. Adriana Torrebejano and Berta Hernandez won the Visibility Award at the 2013 LGBTQ Film Festival of Andalucia. It didn’t hurt that Crisabel, as the couple came to be called, had the hottest sex scenes!

Like all star-crossed lovers, Crisabel faced many obstacles. Their affair was discovered when Senor Lobo came across them making love in the woods and Isabel was sent off to a nunnery. (For real. A nunnery.) Cristina rescues her love from the abusive nuns, but the only way Isabel’s father will let her stay is if she agrees to marry the man he has picked out for her. It’s hard out here for a 19th Century lesbian couple. Crisabelians understood, even if we didn’t like it, that the roadblocks the writers were throwing in front of our beloved couple were historically appropriate and we hoped that their trials and tribulations would only serve to cement their bond. Yes, even when Cristina gets pregnant by Isabel’s husband.

Just when you thought this pregnancy would be the final blow that finally ends Crisabel for good, the two lovers find a way to once again persevere. Cristina becomes very ill and almost dies and the idea of losing Cristina forever is horrific to Isabel that she makes a plan for the two to run away and raise the child together. So after everything these two star-crossed lovers have gone through over the course of two seasons, it is perplexing and infuriating to watch it all end with a little shove and knock on the head just hours before the two were to leave town. There are so many things wrong with this ending. Isabel’s husband, Lt. Jorge Ruiz is drunk at the brothel and enters Cristina’s room in an attempt to sleep with her. She refuses him, which makes him very angry, but luckily the owner of the brothel shows up and saves the day. So basically what this means is that if a woman isn’t available for male consumption (male gaze, male fantasies, male satisfaction) she might as well be dead.

Later, Cristina and Isabel meet to go over their plan to leave town and as they kiss goodbye, Ruiz rides up on his horse and sees everything. Really? After being careful for so long would they really kiss on a main road? Also, How did they not see him? He’s pretty close to them and on a horse! I know it’s a fictional show, but they could have at least hid him behind some bushes to make it a little more plausible.

After Ruiz discovers the relationship he waits for Cristina in her room at the brothel. When Cristina opens the door and sees him there, sitting on her bed with a gun in his hand, she comes in and allows him to close the door. Let me repeat that. Instead of running out into the hallway and getting help, she steps inside the room with the spurned man holding a gun. Because that would happen.

Ruiz confronts her about her relationship with Isabel and tells her to stay away from his wife. He holsters his gun and is about to leave when Cristina decides that now is the perfect time to tell him that she and Isabel are in love. She gets in his face yelling and insulting him. I get it. Having to deny your love for so long must’ve been tough, but do you really think it’s a good idea to insult a man with a gun?

But don’t worry: Ruiz wouldn’t shoot her. He’s merely going to shove her away from him. After all, she’s being hysterical. It’s a complete accident that she hits her head on the dresser, which kills her instantly. Isabel arrives that night to find the love of her life dead on the floor of her bedroom. It’s ridiculous. Preposterous. Completely unnecessary. Go ahead and cry, Isabel. We feel your pain.-Eboni Rafus Alisha, The Walking Dead (2013)

She found love in a hopeless place, and fewer places on television are more hopeless that The Walking Dead. Alisha (Juliana Harkavy), a former Army Reservist, was the girlfriend to Tara (Alanna Masterson) who is blessedly still alive. You think dating is tough now, try eliminating 95% of the population, and see how few swipes you get on Tinder.

Somehow Tara and Alisha found each other, but unfortunately, they also found The Governor. Thinking he was a right and just fellow, they blindly followed him into a slaughter at the prison. When The Governor beheaded Hershel in front of everyone, Tara knew she’d been answering to a mad man. Alisha however, kept fighting. She was eventually shot in head by young Lizzie. –Dana Piccoli Alice Calvert, Under the Dome (2013)

Alice, we barely knew ye. When we found out CBS had inserted a lesbian pairing into their adaptation of Stephen King‘s novel, we were thrilled. Alice and Carolyn were moms to a teenage daughter, while also being professionals (Alice, a psychiatrist and Carolyn, a lawyer). Their road trip stop in Chester’s Mill had grave consequences, though, as the dome trapped them inside and the diabetic Alice was unable to survive without insulin.

Her impending death was hinted at several times, with her delirium almost getting her hit by a truck and, eventually, Alice became bedridden. She gets up to help deliver a baby, but becomes too weak and has a heart attack. Unfortunately her passing was the most camera time the couple has gotten on this show, as Carolyn continues to be MIA for most of Season 2. At least she’s still alive. –Trish Bendix Bullet, The Killing (2013)

As a fan of The Killing, I couldn’t believe my luck when I heard they were bringing on a character like Bullet. Firstly, homelessness is a huge issue for youth, especially among the LGBT population. Secondly, the actor they chose for the role (Bex Taylor-Klaus) had a look we rarely (if ever) see on television. Preferring masculine wear with a tough demeanor but kind heart, Bullet is an anomaly, which I suppose made her too good to be true.

Rachel “Bullet” Olmstead was a homeless queer teen on the streets of Seattle, just trying to keep herself and her friends alive. Based on the life of a real lesbian who was murdered in the ’90s, her story informed by stories of street kids who faced eternal danger in their struggle for survival. A beautiful androgynous, pale-faced skateboarder, Bullet still seemed to believe there was good in the world, despite the kinds of terrible people she would encounter in the dreary, rainy Pacific Northwest. When Callie goes missing and other young women are feared missing or murdered, Bullet reluctantly partners with the cops to find them and keep it from happening to anyone else.

Unfortunately, Bullet was unable to keep herself out of harm’s way, and her honesty and eagerness to help Detective Holder eventually make her a target. Bullet is unceremoniously slain and discovered in the trunk of a car, giving Holder his emotional moment and even more drive to close the case. Fans paid tribute to the final image of Bullet with their own ink on their inside wrists with the pen tattoo “Faith” like Bullet wore, and how she was identified after her passing.

Her death was not in vain, but it was also not completely necessary. The plot could have advanced without it, but if TV has to hurt sometimes, this definitely poured on the pain. A visit to Bullet’s grave on the fourth and final season this year was a nice homage, but we would have preferred her in the flesh. –Trish Bendix Victoria Hand & Isabelle Hartley, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.(2014)

I’ll begin by being totally honest with you: the only comic books I have read in the past few years are some of the new Batwoman comics, Lumberjanes, and Gotham City Sirens. All I know about Victoria Hand and Isabelle Hartley in the Marvel Comics is what I gleaned from Wikipedia articles and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. recaps. That being said, it is my understanding that in the comics these two characters were, at one point, dating one another. I don’t know how they identified, but I know they fell under the LGBT umbrella somewhere.

But that’s part of the problem here: I have watched every single episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.LD., but if I hadn’t read recaps of the show on queer sites like AfterEllen, I never would have known that. I wouldn’t even have suspected the two characters knew each other, since they never appeared in the same season together, let alone episode or scene. Whether it’s because the show chose to erase their sexuality entirely, or because they brought them on and killed them off so quickly that their personal lives were irrelevant doesn’t seem to make much difference. It was either two comic-book-canon queer characters the show pretended were straight and then killed, or two canon queer characters that the show killed. And I say “pretended were straight” but I guess that’s a little harsh. It only works out that way because of heteronormativity (my favorite word and Cards Against Humanity card, because it provides me many humorous teaching moments).

Whatever the case, we net out at zero queer characters on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. And it’s one thing to not want to change the general trajectory of classic characters like Captain America or The Hulk (I’m still holding out hope for Black Widow), but it’s another thing entirely to have women already pre-written as loving the ladies and to avoid it entirely. Especially on a show with a good handful of original female characters, not one of which is queer as far as we know. And it’s a Joss Whedon show! He usually at least makes his lesbians deep and complex before killing them off! (Though, I’ll be honest: If he lets Skye or Simmons date a woman for any period of time and/or each other I will forgive him this wrong. JUST THIS ONE. I will never forgive him Tara.) And this is probably beside the point, but it’s still point-adjacent: Isabelle Hartley’s death cut deep because it was Xena. Haven’t we suffered enough at the hands of Lucy Lawless‘s ambiguously* gay characters?

In conclusion, the brief run and lack of depth of not one, but two queer female characters on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was just not OK, at least from where I’m standing.

*I wholeheartedly believe that Xena was in love with Gabrielle and would personally categorize her as an iconic bisexual character. -Valerie Anne

Reyna Flores, Matador (2014)

Reyna Flores (Eve Torres) was leading a double life. As a hard-nosed Latina journalist covering the inside world of professional soccer, she was frequently sexually harassed in locker rooms and put up with a bunch of bullshit to get her job done. She even had to keep her girlfriend at bay (although that’s probably stretching it and Reyna would likely call her a “friend’). It turns out, though that Reyna wasn’t just trying to be a good reporter-she was seeking revenge.

In the eleventh episode of Season 1 this past September, we see that Reyna has gotten here for another purpose entirely: She’s been tracking L.A. Riot owner Andrés Galan for murdering her father. We find this out after Reyna goes to shoot Galan during a game, and ends up getting shot several times herself. Galan survives, as does a tape Reyna has made, explaining why she’s done what she’s done.

“You know me as Reyna Flores, but that’s not my real name,” she says into the camera. “My name is Valeria Molinez. By now, you know what I’ve done.”

Reyna (aka Valeria) explains how Galan killed her father because he “championed a movement to unionize the Telecom Industry in Mexico.” Galan is power-hungry and, as Reyna says, “evil.”

“Today, I give you the truth about Andres Galan, my enemy who has now become my teacher,” she says. “He offered me a quote once for an interview, a quote that now guides me on my present course: ;Never pray for that which you have the power to execute yourself.’ Andres, it is my honor.”

Reyna died for the cause, while Galan continued to live on in greed. He has many other enemies, so eventually justice will be served. Unfortunately Reyna will not be around to see it carried out. -Trish Bendix Tara, True Blood (2014)

In a world where humans vampires, werewolves, shifters and faerie/vampire hybrids battle each other money, power and basic survival there is bound to be a tragic death or two. Over the past seven seasons, many of our beloved True Blood characters have met an untimely death. So why are we so upset about Tara’s demise in the Season 7 premiere? We’re glad you asked.

Tara was arguably one of the best characters on the show. Sookie’s best friend wormed her way into our hearts in the very first episode with her foul-mouthed, tell—it-like-it-is attitude. She kept it real, and we appreciated that. Even before the vampires came out of the coffin, Tara had been through a lot. But she was survivor. Whether it was cage fighting in New Orleans under the name of Toni or working as a bartender/dancer at Fangtasia, Tara has always found a way to not only survive, but also thrive, and create a new life for herself. Underneath that tough exterior she had a soft spot for her friends and family. Tara was never charmed by vampires the way Sookie was, but although she resented all the trouble vampires caused for her friend, she always had her back-defending Sookie and rescuing her more than once. Not to mention that she had some really great lines such as: “It’s been a while since I been attacked by a vampire, and guess what? It still sucks!!”

We didn’t get to see her last moments. This sucks for two reasons: a) There is a lack of closure. We never saw it coming. We didn’t even get to say goodbye! B) The fact that we hadn’t actually seen her get killed, kept us holding on with the false hope that she wasn’t really dead. I mean, it wouldn’t be the first time someone we thought was a goner had actually managed to escape at the last moment. (I’m looking at you, Eric.) It made her loss linger with us longer.

She survived so much just to die right before the happy ending. An absent father. An alcoholic, drug addicted mother. The death of her first love, Eggs. Tara has lived through the most horrific circumstances you can imagine. There were so many times she almost died. And then there was that time she actually did. When she was shot in the head while saving Sookie’s life, we thought for sure that she was lost to us forever. But she came back to us as a vampire, and foolishly, we thought that meant that, with her super human strength and relative immortality, if she survived all that she had as a bartender, surely she could make it to the end of the series. Yet, just nine episodes before everyone else gets their happy ending, Tara met the true death.

Killing off the black best friend of the main character is so cliché. I guess in this case, we should have seen it coming. Too bad it doesn’t make it any better. –Eboni Rafus

Leslie Elizabeth Shay, Chicago Fire (2014)

Over two seasons on Chicago Fire, paramedic Leslie Shay (Lauren German) was hit by a truck, stuck with a needle, threatened with a gun, and impaled on some rebar. It became a running gag that she was going to suffer some kind of trauma every two to three episodes. Oh, Shay’s in trouble? Must be Tuesday. Until this season, like a cat with nine lives, she always pulled through.

From the first episode she established herself as the resident smart ass with a heart of gold and terrible taste in women. And oh lord did we ever love her for it. She and her roommate Severide were bros who occasionally shared lady dates. She and her fellow paramedic Gabriela Dawson had the kind of chemistry usually only ignored by shows like Rizzoli & Isles. So, when it became clear that the show was going to kill her off in this season’s premiere episode it was devastating.

The official word was that they were going to be killing the beloved Shay because her death would create the most drama for the rest of the cast. That may be true of you exempt from the runny both of the pretty by leads from consideration. Everyone at Firehouse 51 loved Shay and it was this (apparently) this fact that doomed her character. As sucky as it was to lose the only gay character on the show her death was even harder to take because after her death we got heartbreaking flashbacks to the first time Shay arrived at Firehouse 51. We saw her meet Dawson and Severide. We got back story that we never saw in the two previous seasons. It was like shooting Old Yeller while playing a home video montage of the little guy as a pup, running in slow motion and tripping over his adorable puppy paws. –Lucy Hallowell Sara Lance, Arrow (2014)

I started watching Arrow this summer, between Seasons 2 and 3. I had heard buzzing about queer ladies on the show, but honestly, but the time I was halfway through season one, I totally forgot that it was these rumors that got me to start watching in the first place. I was hooked; the show had everything I could want. It had vigilantes, it had heart, it had badass women, it had strong themes of friendship and familial love, and it had Felicity Smoak. All it needed was a little lady-loving to be practically perfect in every way. And in Season 2 Sara Lance, lady archer with a troubled past and a penchant for leather, came head to head with Nyssa al Ghul. It wasn’t until their lips locked that I finally remembered that I had heard whisperings of sweet lady kisses on this show, and it did not disappoint.

Nyssa, we came to learn, was an ex-girlfriend of Sara’s, a point she was not ashamed about in any way. Sara had been worried about her father’s opinions, but despite the fact that Detective Lance can be a hardass and a overprotective to the point of occasional male chauvinism, ultimately Sara’s father was just grateful that she had someone to care about her for the many years she was way from Starling City and presumed dead. In fact, the way it was all presented, it seemed that everyone was more concerned that Sara had been dating someone who is not only in the League of Assassins but the daughter of the leader of the League of Assassins. Eventually Nyssa went on her way and Sara struck up a lustful but brief fling with Oliver, but never was her relationship with Nyssa brushed off as a phase. It was only unimportant in the sense that it was in the past, a place that vigilante-types don’t tend to dwell. It was well done, in my opinion, and after Sara and Oliver severed their romantic ties, there was always that mustard seed of hope that Nyssa would come back or that Sara could find a new girlfriend.

Then they went and killed her. First episode of Season 3, Sara is welcomed back with arrows to the chest. Now, this is arguably one of the least offensive on this list in the sense that, in the comics, Laurel Lance is the Black Canary, so perhaps Sara had to die to light that fire in Laurel, to awaken her inner vigilante. Unlike some characters on this list, Sara seems to have been sacrificed for the larger plot, not just because the writers didn’t know what else to do with a “queer” character besides make her want a baby or changing her mind about liking women in the first place. But that only makes it marginally less frustrating. Fortunately, Arrow is bringing back Nyssa, at least for a bit. I’m hoping this will give us some insight into her and Sara’s relationship, past and present (well, past and recent past…) and perhaps Nyssa will exact the vengeance we all want for the Canary.

But once Nyssa goes back to the League of Assassins (or, HEAVENS FORBID, dies trying to avenge Sara’s death), will that be the end of queer characters for Arrow? Will Felicity, Laurel, and Thea keep on keeping on with their male love interests? Or will one of them end up being about as straight as Sara Lance? Speaking of which, don’t even get me started on the subtext shipping that fell off the roof right along with Sara. While mourning her death, I am also mourning the loss of Smoaking Canary. Never again will Felicity ogle Sara as she works out, and this hurts me. Long story short, losing Sara was a harsh blow, and the timing was bad, considering her death came in the wake of losing Leslie Shay (Chicago Fire) and Isabelle Hartley (Agents of S.H.I.E.LD.), making it three shows this season who killed off a queer character in their premiere episode. It’s starting to feel like a pattern, a pattern we don’t so much care for at all.

But here’s the thing: If you have enough well-rounded, diverse characters on your show, killing one character won’t amount to killing the entirety of a certain representation. I know not every show can afford to be like Pretty Little Liars, where when one lesbian dies, at least two more appear in her place, but if you’re in your third season of a show, you should theoretically be able to kill off whoever you want without having to worry about effectively erasing your LGBT representation. Just a thought. But that’s a different rant for a different day. -Valerie Anne

At 19, I fell for Willow (Alyson Hannigan) and Tara (Amber Benson) the way I’d fallen for my own girlfriend-with an abandon born of inexperience; of trust. Their relationship seemed to reflect ours-not because I was a nerd-transformed by hippie skirts (though perhaps I was), not because my girlfriend stuttered or identified as a Wiccan but because, like theirs, our love felt pure in a way only first love can ever be. Unalloyed by the sort of life experiences that make you say things like, “I tend to attract passive underachievers,” and “I’ll never make that mistake again.” (Though you will, you will.) I look back on cards my girlfriend and I exchanged and I want to gather my previous self up and shield her. She’s just too innocent. She’ll never make it through this world.

Of course, Tara didn’t make it either. When Joss Whedon reunited her with Willow after they’d somehow weathered apocalypse, addiction, and-oh, right-a blonde God’s wrath, only to let a cold bullet steal her breath, I’m pretty sure I moaned aloud.

“Your shirt,” Tara told Willow, meaning something had stained it. That thing was a splotch of Tara’s blood. Shot from behind with a bullet meant for Buffy, Tara died looking into Willow’s eyes.

“No,” I said, watching. “No!” But what I really meant was, “Yes.” As a fan, I was devastated; but as a budding writer, I was thrilled.

It’s true that in western fiction’s long, male-dominated history bad women are penalized: Adulterers, whores, sexual deviants of all stripes. Traditionally their punishments come after a transgression. For example, in Into the Woods (which is likely itself a commentary), the Baker’s Wife cheats on her husband. Next thing you know, a giant has stomped her to death. A lesbian is transgression embodied, the personification of our deviant shadow-self. In conventional fiction, her very existence dictates her inevitable death.

But Joss Whedon isn’t conventional-or rather, his Buffyverse represents convention with a twist. Whedon wasn’t out to punish Tara for her lesbianism any more than the (sometimes literal) hell he put Buffy through was designed as comeuppance for her gender-norm-upending moves. Sure, maybe Joss Whedon-outspoken feminist, creator of a boundary-breaking female hero-was unconsciously influenced by literary convention (Who isn’t? Culture seeps into our sleeping bones.), but on a conscious level, he served only story. Not simply story, but realism. Joss Whedon, for all his vampires and cranky miniature fear demons, strove, always to create a world that feels like ours.

In Sunnydale, as in life, no one lives happily after. Xander was stalked by giant bugs and fucked demons and lost Cordelia then Anya (once to his fears, then finally to death). Buffy, for all her bluster and heroism couldn’t save her mother from cancer. If that weren’t enough, her romantic life was just like yours or mine: unworkable passion, tough choices, love-interests who used her for sex or access to eternal life, grey-area-coitus that obfuscated as much as it clarified and left her emotionally scarred and maybe even raped. (And this was long before the “On all Fours” episode of Girls.) And Giles? One word: Jenny.

Joss Whedon killed everyone I cared about and still I trust him, because he did it in a way not soap operatic, but swift and brutal. His characters’ deaths were meant to be unfair and illogical, just as in life. That’s why not despite how much it hurt, but because of it, I applaud Tara’s death. I love it because I hate it. My utter devotion to Willow and Tara as a couple may be a byproduct of my own youth and, let’s face it, college student-specific swath of free time; however, as a writer, I believe Tara’s death was not only necessary but profound. Though my romantic life may never again afford me the guileless ease of inexperience, I’ll always trust Joss Whedon’s intentions, his dedication to narrative arc. But making Kennedy Willow’s next love interest? I’ll never forgive him for that. –Sarah Terez Rosenblum

Sandy Lopez, ER (2002)

In my house growing up, there were three pieces of parentally approved television: World News Tonight, UNC basketball games and ER. My parents (a physician and a therapist) worked more or less constantly so Thursday nights at County General were some of my only guaranteed times with them, and I looked forward every week to watching and discussing the show (Abby and Carter forever, sorry Luka). ER was also the place where I met my first lesbian, Dr. Kerry Weaver (Laura Innes). One of the very first episodes of ER I watched took place in the aftermath of her hookup with Dr. Legaspi (Elizabeth Mitchell, who has come through for us so many times) and I remember timidly asking my parents, “Is that woman gay?” They told me she was confused, which was really great foreshadowing of what my own coming out experience would be like.

Dr. Legaspi was eventually sent to the parking lot of eternal torment to wander for a thousand years, but the next season she was replaced by Sandy Lopez (Lisa Vidal), a hot firefighter who commanded the attention and respect of everyone who met her. And that woman brought Kerry Weaver to life. Dr. Weaver was always brusque and driven and forced to take on the moral decisions she didn’t want other people to have to deal with, and for that she was never a particularly easy character to like. (If she had been a character on The L Word, she would have walked into The Planet and just started hitting random lesbians with her crutch until they became more productive members of society.)

And you know what? I liked that about her. But the picture of her wasn’t complete until Sandy showed up and you saw them laughing in bed, or fighting about the same stuff every other couple on that show fought about, or hardcore making out in front of the entire hospital with a degree of chemistry that some other lesbian couples on medical shows might take a lesson from. They dealt with the mechanics of conceiving a child before it became a tiresome trope. They were groundbreaking. I mean, before them we had Willow and Tara but not much else. And Buffy was this weird, cult teen show that no one paid much attention to. ER was the show par excellence for drama in the late ’90s and early 2000s. It was serious television and it asked its viewers to take this lesbian relationship seriously too.

We always knew that Sandy had a dangerous job. In fact, watching Kerry’s eyes shine with worry about it was one of the most relatable parts of their relationship. But fighting fires was what Sandy Lopez loved to do, and eventually it was what she died doing. And it was ER, so they didn’t spare you one second of the agony of hope and then watching that hope fade. Hardest of all, you watched Kerry watch it: taking the tubes out of Sandy’s mouth, sitting in the waiting room, clutching her helmet. (I personally just rewatched those scenes and was specifically told to “Stop crying so loud.”)

I like to believe that ER killed Sandy not because of lazy writing but because they had a bigger point to make (though whether there is any point bigger than love is debatable). After her death, Kerry had to battle for custody of their son with Sandy’s intolerant parents, which opened a lot of eyes to the struggle of gay couples in the legal system. At least, I hope it opened a lot of eyes. That’s the only thing that could justify breaking so many hearts. -Elaine Atwell Maya Robertson, Hex (2005)

It’s tough out there for a lesbian ghost. Poor Maya (Laura Donnelly) has the dubious honor of being killed, even after she was already dead. Hex was a British show about the supernatural goings on at a university, including a witch named Cassie who falls for an evil angel Azazeal (played by Michael Fassender) and her lesbian best friend/roommate Thelma (Jemima Rooper), who is subsequently murdered by said angel. Thelma continues on as a ghost, who, of course, like many young lesbians, has a crush on her best friend. All hell breaks loose when Cassie is impregnated by Azazeal, unleashing pure evil into the world.

Cassie is eventually killed, breaking Thelma’s heart. Thelma finds solace and a chance at love with the darling Maya who, incidentally, was killed to create a distraction and hold power over Thelma, by Cassie’s now teenage son Malachi. (It’s a long story, but mystical kids grow really fast.) Maya and Thelma have an adorably undead romance, including snogging in the cafeteria right beside unsuspecting students.

Unfortunately, Maya is killed once again by a witch set out to destroy Azazeal and Malachi, and her body is beheaded so she can no longer hold any sway over Thelma. Poor Thelma and the world’s fate is left hanging when the series ended after its second season. -Dana Piccoli Dana Fairbanks, The L Word (2006) March 12, 2006. You might not remember the date, but you certainly remember what happened that date. March 12, 2006. When that fun TV show about lesbians became not so fun. March 12, 2006. When Dana Fairbanks died. On some shows it’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment when things go from good to bad. On The L Word we can tell you the exact second. The second Dana’s monitor flatlined and she was gone.

In that moment The L Word ceased to just be just a show about a group of women who forged their own families through the communal bonds of friendship and of loving other women. Before, we cared about all their talking, laughing, loving, breathing, fighting, fucking, crying, drinking, riding, winning, losing, cheating, kissing, thinking and dreaming. After, we knew that this wasn’t really a story for and about us, but a story dictated and forced upon us. A story where its characters didn’t get to breathe, but instead existed to fulfill outside agendas.

Dana Fairbanks (played by Erin Daniels) was more than just a character on The L Word. For so many she represented their own stories, their own lives. On this, the first American TV series centered solely around a group of lesbian and bisexual women, Dana was the closeted one. The one who knew she was gay, but didn’t know how to tell the rest of the world—yet. But then she did. And we loved her all the more for it. And we rooted for her the whole way. And they took her away from us. –Dorothy Snarker Helena Cain, Battlestar Galactica (2006)

Who among us hasn’t bristled at the choice between compassion and retribution, or rocked a razor sharp bang, or looked at our peers and thought “most of this lot could be left for dead”? Helena Cain (Michelle Forbes) embodied these cherished traits of brutal pragmatism and cold calculation during her sexy stint as the hard-faced bad bitch of Battlestar Galactica. One of my favorite aspects of this twisted science fiction show is it’s fearless-and sometimes uncomfortable-examination of human endurance. The number one theme of Battlestar Galactica is: “How can the human race survive?” The number 2 theme is: “Does the human race deserve to survive?” I, unlike Helena Cain, always found the latter question much more interesting.

Helena Cain is the ruthless Commanding Officer of Battlestar Pegasus, and the highest ranking military officer left after the Cylon Attack. Before, during and after Cylon annihilation of the 12 Colonies, Helena Cain is romantically involved with Gina Inviere aka Cylon sleeper agent Caprica Six. Gina is a long, lean and staggeringly beautiful blonde bombshell with the soulful eyes of an angel; not a murderous robot. Then, during a surprise raider attack, the flaxen-hair harpy causes death and destruction by letting Cylons on board and sabotaging Cain’s defense. Always a hard one, Cain’s compassion is forever snapped by Gina’s betrayal. The line between love and hate is terribly thin, and Cain gives Gina to her henchman for a violent interrogation that capitulates in gang rape. Don’t fuck with Helena Cain.

Battleship Pegasus pursues a Cylon ship and stumbles upon Battlestar Galactica, led by Commander Adama and President Laura Roslin, the reluctant heroes of BSG. Since Cain outranks Adama, she assumes command and makes no effort to disguise her intention of not only ruling with an iron fist, but fighting the Cylons with single minded determination. Basically she’s out for blood and doesn’t hold civilian life, or soldier life, in particularly high regard. After one of Cain’s favorites is killed, Cain arrests two of Adama’s favorites, brings them on her ship, and sentences them to death. Adama retaliates, and the tense standoff is only defused when Starbuck returns with news of the Cylon Resurrection Ship aka Cain, Target #1. Cain, like most lesbians, adores Starbuck. They would have made an amazing couple but, alas, twas not to be.

Lead by Starbuck and fueled by mutual enmity, Adama and Cain join forces to attack the Cylon resurrection ship. Both Adama and Cain go into battle with plans to assassinate the other after the bloodshed; both eventually change their minds. It all looks briefly good in the Battlestar hood, but of course that can’t last for long. Hell hath no fury like a lesbian scorned, and Gina escapes her cell with the help of Baltar, the double crossing git locked in a long psycho-sexual relationship with another copy of Caprica 6. When Cain returns to her quarters after a jolly good attack on the Resurrection ship, her old girlfriend is waiting. Helena Cain, the baddest bitch in the galaxy, the unbeatable leader of humanity’s last quivering scraps, stands bravely in front of the woman who broke her heart and betrayed her race. Helena Cain is fearless to the end, when Gina puts a bullet through that brilliant brain. –Chloe Marissa Cooper, The O.C. (2006)

When I started watching The O.C., I was a freshman in college who drank raspberry flavored vodka fit for a drinking game to coincide: “Every time Marissa Cooper cries boozy tears on her favorite lifeguard stand, drink.” Marissa Cooper was played by rising starlet Mischa Barton. The year was 2003, and though the show would go on for four seasons, the sun-kissed, skirt-wearing rich teen who wanted to rebel against her clueless mother and vied for the attention of her absent father, would only make it to the end of the third season, just in time for graduation. From the start, Marissa is presented as “girl next door” meets “girl you don’t bring home to Mom.” She meets Ryan, the Cohen’s new adoptee from Chino who walks into a world of California beaches, expensive cars, and the kind of parties that look like a glossed out skin care ads. The hope is that he’ll teach bored, sad, pretty little Marissa Cooper a thing or two, and that she’ll give him a reason to stay, and never leave his pool house door unlocked again.

By the second season, Marissa is day drinking and throwing her chaise lounge into the pool-because life is not as grand as the new terra cotta colored mansion she and her mom have moved into. She’s hit rock bottom after ODing in Tijuana on a secret party trip, found out her mom was sleeping with her Puka shell-wearing ex-boyfriend, loses her new boyfriend due to the fact that his previous girlfriend is pregnant with his baby, and is conned by a bubbly psycho named Oliver. It was a love/hate relationship with Marissa Cooper-I loved her outfits, her instability, her wild side, her confrontational attitude. But I hated her self-destructive sob fest, her permanent rut and her unwillingness to commit to anyone or anything. But I completely changed my mind when Marissa meets Alex (Olivia Wilde), and I saw something more.

The tension between Marissa and Alex is palpable, and not just because it was something I could connect with. I hadn’t yet come out-and while it absolutely ignited a spark of excitement in me, I mostly just recognized that it was the relationship with the most passion and movement at that time in the series. Then again, maybe I’m honed in on Mischa Barton’s previous lez roles in Once & Again opposite Evan Rachel Wood and in Lost & Delirious. When Marissa moves in with Alex to further defy her broken home life, it’s very Brenda Walsh circa Beverly Hills, 90210-when Brenda leaves Casa Walsh for Dylan McKay’s bungalow. ‘Course that all goes up in smoke, because Marissa comes down from her pillowy cloud of playing house and decides if she keeps this up, and continues to ditch on school, friends and even her shit storm at home, she’ll end up with no real future. She dons her best collegiate apparel for a bon fire on the beach and we think for a split second that she’ll live to see those college glory days. If only she could know that she has a year to live and should just continue showering at Alex’s place.

By Season 3, Marissa’s life has changed in drastic ways. She’s living in a trailer with her mom and sister, is kicked out of private school for shooting Ryan’s brother, and meets a whole new host of friends at public school. One of those is a guy named Johnny who ends up falling in love with her and dying after he drunkenly falls off a sand dune.

She starts hanging out with this other guy Volchok (most cliché villain name, ever)-he’s a bad boy type who lives in this “space” that looks like its from a ’90s movie about living alone in the big city-it has a giant industrial door, moving on. Unfortunately, the Volchok situation is a dangerous one because he’s always coked out and becomes obsessive. Even though Marissa gets back into private school and graduates with Ryan, Seth and Summer, she is chased off the road by Volchok on her way out of town, and lay dying in Ryan’s arms in the finale. The O.C. is never the same thereafter. Maybe that’s because, regardless of your love/hate spectrum with the character, Marissa Cooper IS The O.C. And when we think of images from the show, we imagine her meeting Ryan at the end of their driveways, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, saying: “Whoever you want me to be.” Or we think of Ryan carrying Marissa in one of her many moments that needed saving, some rendition of “Hallelujah” or “Into Dust” by Mazzy Star echoing in the recognizable background.

The aftermath of Marissa’s death was a mixture of backlash against Mischa Barton for snippets of things she was saying to the media, and also for the obvious, a main character had been killed. As much as I read hostile Livejournal posts scolding the actress, I also simply felt a lesser desire to tune in for Season Four. When Barton was interviewed by Newsweek, they asked her if it was her decision to leave the show, and she responded: “No. It was the producers.’ But I really think it’s best to do movies now. I was also thinking of spending a month in London, living there and taking a course in acting.” She also included that she was “really excited” she got to die. I’ve never looked at Marissa Cooper as a victim, just a crazy teenage character who lives on in the halls of show characters who led the show into popularity and brought it to its end. Call it what you want, but had Marissa lived, the series probably would have lasted for a few more seasons-and that’s what truly sucks. –Kim Hoffman Toshiko Sato, Torchwood (2008) For a show spun-off from Doctor Who, Torchwood is one of the most aggressively dark pieces of television in the history of the medium. It has an exceedingly dim view of human nature, an even dimmer view of alien nature, and a conviction that there was no afterlife so we all just had to make the best of this, admittedly disappointing existence. This darkness is (usually) balanced out by the things Torchwood gets right: razor sharp wit, the ball of raw Welsh sex appeal that is Gwen Cooper, and an unflinching look into the darkness in which it revels.

Dr. Tashiko Sato was, unfortunately, not one of the things Torchwood got right. For most of her two-season run, she was an irritatingly wispy woman who never smiled and pined pointlessly after Owen, a man who was nearly as unlikeable as her. Her brief moment of redemption came when we entered into a passionate love affair with Mary. Suddenly she was smiling! Suddenly she had desires that were not so patently hopeless and self-destructive! Sadly, Mary turned out to be nothing more than the body of an ancient prostitute which was possessed by an alien that was trying to trick her. (Seriously, Torchwood’s tagline could be “Happiness: It’s Usually An Alien Trying To Trick You.) “Mary” died, and Tash went back to crushing on Owen, right up until they both died senseless, violent deaths.

There was so much frustrating in Torchwood’s handling of queerness it’s difficult to know where to begin. (Although Karman Kregloe did an excellent job writing about it back in the day.) The show paid lip service to the idea that most of its leads were bisexual, but the only people who got to have fulfilling sexual and romantic lives were the men. Captain Jack Harkness is a pansexual Han Solo who swashbuckled his way through dozens of men, and he was a gift to television. What’s so maddening about Tashiko’s character is that she could have been a gift too. The answer was right there, and the show hit upon it the first time it showed her face light up when she saw Mary. But, for reasons best knows to Russell T. Davies, it chose to go back to the darkness.-Elaine Atwell Snoop, The Wire (2008)

When you are part of a gang that deals in high-priced street drugs, the probability of violence in your life is fairly high. Felicia “Snoop” Pearson (also her real name) kills people as part of her job, putting hits out, participating in drive-bys against rivals and disposing of bodies like she’s taking out the trash. Stephen King once referred to her as “the most terrifying female villain to ever appear in a television series.” If you’re going to be a villain, you might as well be the baddest one around.

Perhaps it was to be expected that this kind of life would be shortlived, but that didn’t keep us from gasping when, in Season 5 of The Wire, she is shot by the person she is set out to kill that night. Snoop steps to the younger Michael Lee and he pulls out a gun. She asks, “How my hair look, Mike?” He says, “You look good, girl,” and then shoots her.

Snoop was a gay villain, but on a show where no one was wholly good or evil. Each character was a product of their environment, and Snoop’s sexuality was never discussed or made any kind of issue. Only the men on the show would be upset about their straightness being called into question, while Snoop was treated as one of the boys, sharing in their conversations about “pussy.” She was on the show for three seasons out of five, and she stole every second she was on screen. Not too bad for a first time actor who was literally typecast, discovered at a club and brought in to play a verison of herself.-Trish Bendix Sarah Barnes, Hollyoaks (2009)

Hollyoaks is a long running British soap opera that has featured a few queer women over the years, most recently Tilly and Esther. Sarah Barnes (Loui Batley) was originally part of a different gay storyline, when her fiancé cheated on her male best friend. Eventually, Sarah began exploring her sexuality, which really came to a head when she had a one-night stand with good friend Zoe (Zoe Lister). The two don’t pursue the relationship, but deeper feelings linger. After playing the field and dating men, the bisexual Sarah meets and falls for out lesbian Lydia (Lydia Kelly). All is well until jealousy rears its ugly head.

It’s a tale as old as time: Girl meets girl, girl suspects girl of cheating, girl becomes an obsessed psycho, girl cuts girl’s parachute. We’ve got two tropes working here, instead of just one! Lydia suspects that there is something going on between Sarah and Zoe, and her fears are confirmed when she hears Sarah confess her love to Zoe while they are all on holiday. Lydia decides to sabotage Zoe’s parachute before an afternoon of skydiving, but ends up cutting Sarah’s cords instead. Sarah plummets to her death, in a most dramatic fashion. Later, Lydia tries to pin the whole thing on Zoe, but eventually her name is cleared.-Dana Piccoli Jenny Schecter, The L Word (2009) Explaining to an audience of lesbians why the death of Jennifer Schecter (Mia Kirshner) sucked has proven to be a difficult task—and unsurprisingly so. Remember back in 2009 when we were tallying up The L Word characters who claimed the death of Schecter episode after episode? If my memory serves me correctly, most of us were cheering in agreement when Bette and Tina and Nikki—and the list goes on—were wishing the ultimate punishment on the once shy and reserved young lesbian. But, I’m not convinced any of us actually bargained for what another L Word death would do to the show.

When we first met Jenny, she was young, innocent, and quite clueless. That was OK with us. Many of us could relate to her naivete. When she came out and continued on her journey of becoming a lesbian who could be comfortable in her skin, we were still OK with that. Even her bouts with odd behavior and dark drama were acceptable to most because we were allowed some insight on her childhood trauma. Then, came the odd and dramatic behavior that could not be explained. She gained some fame and notoriety and turned into a complete brat who lost all regard for the people who were there for her before Jennifer Schecter became a mildly famous celesbian author/screenwriter. Part of the responsibility of a script writer is to ensure that the journey of a television character should make sense to its viewers. Is it possible for characters to experience a dramatic transition and become very different than how we saw them in the beginning? Of course, but it requires extensive thought and consideration when bringing the character from their beginnings to their new selves. And we, as the viewers, need to feel a part of the journey. I don’t think many of us felt connected to Jenny’s transition. We didn’t understand it and it made us like her less and less. And it wasn’t the good kind of dislike—we didn’t love to hate Jenny; we just plain old hated her.

If we felt such a strong dislike for the Jenny of seasons 4-6, why did we care that she fought Bette and Tina’s pool and the pool won? Shouldn’t we have been rejoicing when that fateful error in construction brought Jenny to the proverbial meeting with her maker? I think The L Word viewers clung tightly to the hope that the writers would right their wrongs and find a way to do her character justice in the final season. Maybe we would finally realize why it was necessary for Schecter to allow Sounder II to pee on the conference room table or how on earth she could blatantly disrespect the godfather of rom coms, Gary Marshall.

Jenny’s death sucked because it felt like the joke was really on us. Viewers like me who couldn’t find the gumption to let go of The L Word and move on to greener premium cable pastures saw all of the time we’d wasted–with our eyes glued to the television and hearts and minds committed to the “girls in tight dresses who drag with moustaches”–floating in the pool right alongside the princess of darkness. Time and time again we told Ilene Chaiken how we desperately wished we could quit her, but we somehow held onto the hope that Schecter would come full circle. It often felt like a bad metaphor for Bridget McManus’s song about loving your girlfriend “until the lease runs out.” In season 1 when Jenny climbed into Tim’s car to start her life in L.A., we signed a six year lease with The L Word and never could find it in our hearts to break it. And when Lucy Lawless arrived to investigate the death of the infamous drama queen, we felt just like we did that time our ex finally moved out and left us scrubbing the cat pee stained carpet alone. –Emily McGaughty Silvia Castro León, Los hombres de Paco (2010)

Of all the tragic deaths on this list, the one I object to most strongly is that of Silvia Castro León, la pelirroja of Los Hombres de Paco. This may be unfair, since Silvia was not written off because of callous writers who had simply run out of things for her to do, but because Silvia’s portrayer, Marián Aguilera, simply wanted off the show. I don’t care. My reason for holding an insurmountable grudge against this death is much more personal; I didn’t discover LHdP until a couple of years ago, at a time when I was already burnt out on lesbian deaths and disappearances, and desperately needed a happy ending. What I got, what we all got, was a bloodbath.

Untimely demise aside, Pepa and Silvia’s love story is one of the greatest lesbian romances in television history. I found them while trawling YouTube one day, and any lesbian with experience at that pastime knows that you catch ten weird German soap operas with bad subtitles for every one show with reasonable production quality and good kisses. But Los Hombres was that show, and I watched it the way god intended: with every non-lesbian storyline edited out. Like, sometimes other characters would come onscreen and make serious faces and you got the sense that there was drama, or a bomb exploding or whatever, but it all existed only to pale in significance to two beautiful Spanish women who really wanted to kiss each other. In terms of chemistry, I don’t know that we’ve ever seen PepSi’s equal. And part of that was that the show’s producers’ willingness to let the two of them behave like an actual couple. There was none of the closed-mouth/closed-door kissing that still plagues us on American television. They were constantly kissing, and touching, and sneaking off to the forensics lab to have dubiously hygienic sex. I remember pointing at my laptop screen and saying, “Finally! Someone is doing it right!”

There was drama, of course, and they briefly broke up, but you never doubted that these two would end up together. I never doubted it anyway, as I merrily worked my way through their YouTube videos. Perhaps there were warnings in the comment section that I should temper my enthusiasm, but if so they were in Spanish. It seemed only right that their love would culminate in a wedding at which everyone would eat a great deal of ham (ham was HUGE on this show) and I looked forward to the occasion greatly. Instead, the wedding was attacked by criminals, who gunned down Silvia, and we were forced to watch the grotesque scene of her bleeding out in her white wedding dress while Pepa tried frantically to operate on her. Writing about it now, I still can’t quite believe it. Because nobody actually died on that show. People survived multiple gunshot wounds and radiation poisoning and all sorts of crazy shit, and they always lived through it. Except Silvia.

I understand that actors want off shows sometimes but there were so many other ways they could have handled that. Silvia could have gone on an undercover assignment for a year. Or gone into a coma. OR SHE JUST COULD HAVE STAYED ON THE GODDAMN SHOW. IT ONLY LASTED ONE MORE SEASON ANYWAY. Instead, the writers, who up until that point had been so kind and so generous with their lesbian fans, decided to kill a beloved character in the exact way calculated to cause the most trauma and pain. They betrayed us. And that was the most unkindest cut of all. –Elaine Atwell June Stahl, Sons of Anarchy (2010) June Stahl (Ally Walker) was an agent for the Bureau of Tobacco, Alcohol, Firearms, and Explosives who rode into town to investigate the Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club of Charming, California. Her character was portrayed as bisexual/lesbian, and yet her first scene in bed with another woman, in Season 1, was cut from the episode but can be seen on the DVD. Stahl was an evil, conniving agent who betrayed everyone who crossed her. In fact, Stahl was so evil that, in Season 2, she killed her own girlfriend to protect a set of lies she conjured up. If that isn’t insane, then I’m throwing in my writer’s card.

Stahl played an important role in Seasons 1-3 because she caused problems within SAMCRO. She crossed the line one too many times that it was surprise she even survived as long as she did. Stahl became obsessed with bringing SAMCRO down through her many lies, which in turn caused deaths and chaos within SAMCRO, that it caused her own demise.

Her death was payback for the death of Donna. Stahl painted Opie as a snitch and Donna died as a result of it. So, as karma would have it, Stahl was killed by Opie in the same manner as Donna. He held Stahl in her car at gunpoint as she begged and pleaded for her life. “This is what she felt,” Opie said just before shooting her in the head, brain guts everywhere.

Stahl’s death was important because her character progressed the storyline of each season. She was an ATF agent with a plan to take down SAMCRO. She just went about it in a dirty way that, eventually, ended her life. Stahl was an agent first and foremost. Yes, it did suck that another lesbian in a television series had to die. If she was a good agent, would her life have been spared? If she had been a straight female, would her life have been spared? Many lesbian characters are portrayed as evil or conniving and tend to have their lives cut short. What’s so hard about keeping around a lesbian character until the end? But, Stahl had it coming to her all along. In this situation, it wasn’t so much that she was a lesbian killed off, but more so an evil character whose time ran out. –Erica Feliciano

Queen Sophie Ann Leclerq, True Blood (2011)

I first came across True Blood while bored at my parents’ house in Michigan several years ago. I’d heard a lot about the new HBO series-blood! camp! romance!-so I found it on demand and devoured the entire first season in one long day, which turned into one long night. I fell in love with the people and beings of Bon Temps, despite an immediate distaste for Bill Compton. Sookie Stackhouse and her best friend Tara Thornton were enough to get me invested, not to mention the flashy flambuoyantness that was Lafayette.

So when Evan Rachel Wood was cast as a vampire queen in Season 2, I knew I was an official Truebie. A fan of Evan’s since watching Once & Again with my mom when I was in high school and graduating to Thirteen when I was more like 17 but loving the truth behind the heightened gritty teen experience film, I couldn’t wait to see what Evan would be doing back on the small screen for Alan Ball.

She did not disappoint. Sophie-Anne Leclerq was all glamour, like any good vampire queen should be. Hailing from Northern France and donning silky whites with her blood-orange hair, it was impossible to hate her despite the nasty things she had planned for Sookie and the other fae. (We didn’t so much mind the things she had planned for Cousin Hadley.) After appearing in Seasons 2 and 3, usually blinged out and in her gorgeous Louisiana mansion, Sophie-Anne met an untimely demise in the second episode of Season 4 when she was shot with silver bullets and instantly turned into a bloody explosion coopted by (of course) Bill Compton. (Before she died, she called him a “fucking traitor.” He is.)

While Sophie was on the show, the death count was a lot lower than it ended up being by the series end, so her demise was truly sad. But with Evan Rachel Wood only on the show as a recurring guest star, it was bound to happen. Still, it doesn’t mean we missed her special brand of sass any less. And somehow, I managed to stick with the show until the very end.-Trish Bendix Nan Flanagan, True Blood (2011)

Another reason to keep watching True Blood? Jessica Tuck played a perfect ice queen as the voice of the American Vampire League and the Authority. A true bitch we came to love (as was the case with most of the lesbian characters on True Blood), Nan had more time in her life for business than pleasure, but enjoyed feasting on a human woman every now and again. She lived for 817 years, which isn’t too shabby, but we only had her ruining the lives of Bon Temps’s undead for four seasons.

Nan’s end came when she confronted Bill Compton about his getting her fired from her highly-coveted position. Bill mercifully stakes her as Eric Northman kills her guards. Bill Compton is officially on our shit list for hate crimes against power lesbian vampires. Because the women were totally in charge on True Blood. Not only women, but queer women. Women who were unapologetic about their relationships and interests. Did they really have to die for their causes? –Trish Bendix Gaia, Spartacus: Gods of the Arena (2011)

It’s dangerous to live in the time of Spartacus, especially if you’re a woman. Gaia (played by the gorgeous and always lustable (Jaime Murray) was a longtime friend and lover to Lucretia (Lucy Lawless), but used her feminine wiles to distract men from their evil ways. That included Tullius, who decided to use Gaia to prove a point, and murdered her for sport, sending Lucretia to receive the “message.” This all happens after a huge orgy, which is very much the Spartacus way.

Lucretia declared revenge as she kissed Gaia for the last time, and begins to wear Gaia’s red wig in her memory. Gaia might have left Lucretia and the show, but her presence remained a strong one for the rest of the season. The good news is that we have enjoyed Jaime Murray on several other shows since. She’s survived on most of them (so far).-Trish Bendix Angela Darmody & Louise Bryant, Boardwalk Empire (2011)

Having spent 10 years in Chicago and learning a lot about its historic speakeasies and highly illegal ways around Prohibition, I started watching Boardwalk Empire from its premiere. While the show focused largely on the goings on in Atlantic City, there were many ties to Chicago’s mobsters like Al Capone and the back and forth was compelling enough with skillful actors like Steve Buscemi and Michael Pitt.

But the real pull for me was Angela Darmody (Aleksa Palladino). Angela was living a relatively peaceful life after she assumed the father of her child, Jimmy, had died in the war. But when Jimmy came back alive, her life had to change, including her affair with her lover, Mary Dittrich. A painter who longs to flee with Mary, a photographer, for a new life in Greenwich Villiage or Paris, Angela has dreams of leaving Atlantic City. Her heart is broken when Mary leaves town with her husband and without saying goodbye.

In Season 2, Angela meets Louise Bryant at the beach. Louise is from San Francisco and dares to show some skin while sunbathing, causing a stir. Angela and Molly immediately like one another, much to their detriment, as their last night together ends in a bloodbath. One of Jimmy’s rivals, Manny Horvitz, shows up while Jimmy is out of town. Instead he finds Angela stepping out of the shower, shooting both of the women and leaving them lying next to one another on the floor.

Angela and Louise were in the wrong place at the wrong time, murdered to prove a point; to teach Jimmy Darmody a lesson. On a ruthless show about gangsters, these kinds of things are par for the course, but it was nonetheless a shock to see it all go down so quickly. It felt like a punishment for Angela’s being happy, almost; that she had found love after losing her first out of fear, and even with Jimmy having his own extra-marital flings, Angela was the one receiving the shot. She was missed forevermore on the series, at least by those who continued to watch. I didn’t last much longer.-Trish Bendix Nadia, Lost Girl (2012)

The first time we met Dr. Lauren Lewis’s (Zoie Palmer) secret comatose girlfriend Nadia (Athena Karkanis), is while she lies helplessly in a special vacu-seal medical pod. Lauren pledged allegiance to Light Fae in order to keep Nadia in stasis until she could find a cure. After five years, Lauren has found herself deeply attracted to Bo, and feeling terribly guilty about not only being unfaithful to Nadia, but of being unable to heal her as well. When it’s discovered that Nadia is not ill, but under a curse, it’s Bo that goes on a mission and removes the curse.

After a brief time together, Nadia becomes suspicious of the longing looks exchanged between Lauren and Bo. Nadia’s behavior becomes strange, and she becomes violent. Possessed by the Garuda, and losing herself more and more everyday, Nadia attacks and then begs Lauren to end her suffering. When Lauren refuses, Nadia attacks her once again, and this time Bo intervenes, stabbing Nadia and killing her. The death causes a massive rift between Bo and Lauren at first, but the women ultimately grow closer, and their relationship becomes much deeper. While it was sad to see Nadia so tortured by those demons, it’s a tricky role to be the person who comes between a show’s OTP. Why couldn’t they have sent her off on a helicopter like Riley? –Dana Piccoli Cat, Lip Service (2012)

It took me months to get over Cat’s death. Not only did it kill the relationship between Cat (Laura Fraser) and Frankie (Ruta Gedmintas) and any possibility of Cat (or Frankie, or any other character, really) from ever blooming into totally developed characters-her death simply killed Lip Service, a relatively fresh and intriguing Glasgow-based series about adult lesbians. Of course, this wasn’t really anyone’s fault. Laura Fraser was already signed on for Breaking Bad, which would overlap the second season of Lip Service. The same was the case for Gedmintas, who went on to do movies and the Renaissance drama series, The Borgias. Here’s what happened: Season 1 was shot in October 2010, and after the series renewal was announced, filming didn’t begin on Season 2 until May 2011. Finally, in April of 2012, Season 2 was all set to air-nearly a year and a half later. Maybe we expected the characters to have longer hair, deeper dialogue, more intricate crises-but we were treated instead to almost immediate death.

I still remember where I was when Cat died. I was sitting on a couch in Florida eating popcorn and writing a piece for Curve magazine on why everyone should tune in to watch Lip Service‘s anticipated new season. Episode Two aired on April 27, 2012, the sign of the Taurus, a day that will live in infamy. There it was: Cat’s birthday, Cat’s inability to come clean to her girlfriend, Detective Sam Murray about her affair with ex girlfriend Frankie, foreboding white lilies on the table, and the torn decision to stay or go, to give Frankie a second/third/fourth chance or stick with her loving, honest Sam. She meets Frankie for one last tryst-a little bedroom peep show in a red corset and the reminder that Frankie will wait for her, she loves her.

Cat barely makes it across the street-dead on the pavement (eyes wide open, just to really fuck our days up) with her cell phone shattered, her last text from Frankie telling her that Tess (Fiona Button) won’t tell anyone she saw them together. I have friends who only got into Lip Service after it was finally made available later that summer on Netflix. The texts I got-“Episode Two?!” I’d just respond quickly with a sad face (pre-emojis) because I knew where they were at in the mourning process (and also knew that if I didn’t text back right away they’d surely think I’d been hit by a car, too.) I mean, yeah, the other characters had flair (especially Heather Peace, duh) but Cat and Frankie were supposed to be the sexy question mark/exclamation point on the entire drama.

Sometimes I’m up late at night, and I wonder what Lip Service creator Harriet Braun is feeling. When she made the announcement that the series had been cancelled in 2013, I felt as defeated as she must. We interviewed Braun previous to the second season airing, and at the time, she spoiled that there would be a dramatic rollercoaster ahead. Looking back on that now, I can see why she put such emphasis on the other actors and their place in the new season-their comedy, as a beacon of hope that the remainder of the season would be fixable and revived. But we all knew what the writing on the wood said, the wood with Cat and Frankie’s carving on it: “Some things shouldn’t be destroyed.” And this was it, Lip Service was destroyed. This untimely end sucked for us queer folk because in 2010, Lip Service was perfectly wedged into lesbian television utopia. The L Word had just ended its long run, and the natural transition led many of us into the scissory (yeah, I said it) depths (that too) of a whole new set of identifiable, seemingly relatable girl lezzies, and some dudes. People who ogled over Frankie compared her to the likes of Shane. The web was spun, however over-the-top any of the sex scenes seemed or whether we knew enough Scottish slang. We wanted more. But, no one wants to watch Heather Peace discover that her dead girlfriend, who died on her own birthday, was having an affair with her ex. Nor did we want to see Frankie kneeling over Cat’s grave instead of her vagina. –Kim Hoffman Wendy, American Horror Story: Asylum (2012)

Truth be told, we didn’t know a heck of a lot about Wendy (Clea Duvall) but we sure would have liked to. She was a teacher, and the girlfriend of reported Lana Winters (Sarah Paulson) who was blackmailed by Sister Jude into dooming Lana to the asylum. Soon afterwards, the distraught Wendy was murdered by Bloody Face (aka Dr. Thredson), and her body was left for Lana to find on the floor of his workshop.

When Lana later writes a memoir of her trials at the Asylum, she refers to Wendy as her “roommate”. It was still very much the time of the “love that dared not speak its name” but what a sad legacy for poor Wendy. –Dana Piccoli Lucretia, Spartacus: Vengeance (2012) Lucy Lawless is one of our faves, which is why it’s so hard to see her in peril. But as Lucretia in Spartacus: Revenge, she’s making her own decisions on the violence she enacts on others and herself. In a very dramatic and surprising Season 2 finale episode, Lucretia steps backwards off a cliff with her baby still in her arms. It’s a suicide and murder that no one saw coming, especially Ilithyia, who is there to witness it all.

Lucretia was bisexual, as she was married to Batiatus and slept with several other men, but had a strong love affair with Gaia (Jaime Murray). She also came to enjoy Ilithyia, but used it more as a power play than an actual romance. Because while Lucretia enjoyed sex, it seems her primary motivation was always power, and that wasn’t necessarily a good look for bisexuals. But in the times she lived, it was par for the course.-Trish Bendix Maya St. Germain, Pretty Little Liars (2012)

Nobody forgets their first love-especially if their first love is a bisexual, ganja loving girl next door (just ask anyone who ever crushed on me…HEYO!). Maya St. Germain (Bianca Lawson) made her first appearance on Pretty Little Liars in the pilot episode, where she convinced sweet innocent Emily Fields (Shay Mitchell) to smoke a joint with her. She continued to challenge Emily to break out of her comfort zone and rebel against the girl she thought she was supposed to be. Emily Fields was a character in desperate need of a catalyst, and Maya was exactly that; she shook Emily to the core and made her realize the truth she had struggled so long to keep buried. In a world built on lies, Maya was a breath of fresh air. Sure, not all of her decisions were great (it’s Mrs. Fields, not Pam, dear) but her free spirit and open heartedness created a safe space for our girl Em to come out. Emaya gave us shared scarves, photo booth first kisses, overly emotional online journal entries, and the oceanic themed bedroom we all wish we had lost our virginities in. With this relationship, PLL really nailed the awkward, tentative nature of two girls falling in love.

Maya’s death sucked big time, and not just because we lost another queer person of color on TV (although that never doesn’t suck). Unlike most of the serpentine, melodramatic demises that Pretty Little Liars has given us, Maya’s death was stark and almost shocking in its motivation. She got involved with the wrong guy, and when she tried to end the relationship he ended her life. Countless numbers of women have lost their lives in the very same manner. Yes, PLL is a show about girls in constant peril, but that single violent act mirrors a very real and terrifying problem in our world. Maya’s death (as far as we know) was completely unrelated to “A” or the central mystery. And like Joyce Summers’ death on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it reminds us that terrible things aren’t always the result of a demon or a prophecy or an initial wrapped in a black hoodie. Sometimes those terrible things are buried right in your backyard. –Chelsea Steiner Shana Fring, Pretty Little Liars (2013)

Shana Fring’s (Aeriel Miranda) life reads like my fantasy bucket list. Manage costume shop? Check. Date Paige McCullers? Check. Be an undercover agent for Alison? Check. Fall in love with Jenna and rock some violin/flute duets? Fucking check and mate. She even took Emily’s spot on the swim team, y’all. But Shana wasn’t just one of the million teen lesbians in Rosewood. She was childhood BFFs with Alison, a pre-cursor to Emily. We never really got to see what Shana and Alison’s relationship was like. Was she in love with Ali? Did Ali have feelings for her? (JK, Ali has feelings for no one, she is basically a walking horcrux of a human being.) We may never know.

In a way, Shana’s evolving relationship with Ali foreshadows the Liars relationship with her. Both Shana and the Liars shift from being protective of their long lost friend to being afraid of her. Shana was originally sent to keep an eye on Jenna, but her sympathies turn when they fall in love. Shana eventually joined the A team to avenge Jenna’s eyeballs, and I would have loved to see her pull some crazy Mona-style shenanigans. Unfortunately, Aria had to hit her with a prop musket and she fell four feet to her death. Someone who donned the black hoodie deserves better. –Chelsea Steiner Tricia, Orange is the New Black (2013)

If you’re half as obsessed with Orange is the New Black as I am, you’re marking Xs on your calendar counting down to next summer when you can call in sick to work three days in a row and binge on season 3 of the Netflix favorite. In the meantime, I drive my wife nuts re-watching seasons 1 and 2. I actually enjoy going back and seeing the show in a new way and noticing things I missed the first (or second, or third) time around. In my recent reuniting with Season 1 of OITNB, I was reminded of the adorable and endearing Tricia — the pretty blonde lesbian with a sweet spirit and an urban edge. Unfortunately, Tricia (played by Madeline Brewer) was a relatively unnoticed character until just before her death. When Mendez found her body lifeless after an overdose, we all learned that you really don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.

So, a largely unknown character on a hit series is killed off. Why do we care? Because it felt too real. Those of us who have found ourselves a little higher on the totem pole of privilege (white, middle class, solid family, etc.) got a dose of reality that we weren’t quite prepared for with Tricia’s story. Isn’t the justice system supposed to be…um, well just? If so, what exactly did Tricia do to deserve prison time? We know she was raped by her stepfather and homeless. Shouldn’t someone have helped and made sure she had access to education and a place to stay instead of being forced into a life of crime in order to survive? The answer to all these questions is yes. The justice system should be just, but it’s not. Someone should be helping the Tricias of the world, but for the most part, they’re not.

I can’t bring myself to argue with Tricia’s fate in terms of its connection to real life. And I can’t bring myself to criticize OITNB writers on her death. I’ve read Piper Kerman’s (the real Piper) memoir and have done a fair amount of research on what led her to write about her experiences in a women’s prison. Her ultimate goal, as I perceive it, in writing Orange is the New Black was to bring awareness to the general public about the injustices happening every day to our women while in prison—our women in poverty, our women of color, our abused women, our forgotten women. As much as I’d like to believe that prison inmates are incarcerated because they chose a life of crime over the alternative opportunities life has to offer, I know that’s not accurate. Kerman and the writers of OITNB have shown their viewers that our justice system isn’t that simple. A large portion of incarcerated individuals are there because they were not afforded the same opportunities that I, and many of you, have been. Being born to middle class parents who encouraged my talents and placed value on education allowed me to thrive and find success. The women in Litchfield (both literally and metaphorically), as a rule, didn’t have the same privileges as me. Stealing, hustling, and abusing drugs were as normal to them as my mom’s home cooked meal every night was for me.

If Tricia’s death from overdose was one more example of art imitating life, why did it suck? It sucked because, for many of us, it represents a harsh reality — a reality that we’d rather not face, let alone witness in our leisure time. I stand by the fact that Tricia was a character I would’ve loved to have seen more of. I’d like to know if she and Mercy would’ve stayed together despite Mercy’s release. Or if Tricia’s loneliness would’ve gotten the best of her and caused her to seek comfort in the arms of another inmate in Mercy’s absence. It would’ve been nice to see Tricia reunite with Allie—her friend from the street. And to watch her recommit to sobriety and maybe even kick Mendez’s ass would’ve been fabulous. But, we didn’t get the joy of watching Tricia get back on the wagon and find happiness and success—because, in actuality, this is not how life works for most of the Tricias out there.-Emily McGaughy Naomi Campbell, Skins Fire (2013)

Once in a while, if we are lucky, we meet a truly remarkable character. Painfully flawed, clever, beautiful, and unforgettable. It’s even more amazing, when we meet a couple that touches us so deeply. When Naomi Campbell (Lily Loveless) first laid eyes on Emily Fitch (Kathyrn Prescott), it was a love that should have lasted until the end of time. From drunken ball castle kisses, to blowbacks by the lake. From heartwrenching breakup to glorious reunion, Naomily was something special that fans could carry in their heart. And that was exactly how it was, until Skins Fire.

Damnit, Skins Fire.

In the summer of 2013, the Skins franchise was resurrected and Skins Fire debuted. The mini season focused on Effy’s continuing saga (spoiler: sex, insider trading) and Naomi went along for the ride as Effy’s roommate and now best friend. Fans were so excited to find out that Naomi and Emily were still a pair, even if Emily spent most of the time interning in New York. Then the Skins writers decided to do something drastic to amp up the drama. They gave Naomi cancer. And not just, “Oh this sucks, but let’s fight this thing” cancer, but the super, fast aggressive kind. All of that would be tragic enough on its own, but then they had Naomi be so stoic that she refused to tell Emily she was sick, until she was literally on her deathbed. Emily only found out that her love was dying, when they had only days or maybe even hours left together. Fans raged. What a terrible and tragic way to end the legacy of one of the greatest lesbian couples in television history. –Dana Piccoli Cristina, Tierra de Lobos (2013)

Isabel and Cristina, from the Spanish western Tierra De Lobos, have always had the cards stacked against them. First there was that whole issue with Cristina being Senor Lobo’s favorite prostitute in the town brothel. Then, Isabel discovered that Cristina had teamed up with Sebastian, the Lobo family nemesis, to use her as a pawn to get revenge for Mr. Lobo tossing her aside. But that was all before Cristina realized she was in love with Isabel.

Because their connection was so strong, Isabel and Cristina were able to move past their rocky beginning and embark on a clandestine love affair. Their pairing was so romantic, so true, that the couple gained international popularity and scenes between the two actors were subtitled in English, Italian and Russian. Adriana Torrebejano and Berta Hernandez won the Visibility Award at the 2013 LGBTQ Film Festival of Andalucia. It didn’t hurt that Crisabel, as the couple came to be called, had the hottest sex scenes!

Like all star-crossed lovers, Crisabel faced many obstacles. Their affair was discovered when Senor Lobo came across them making love in the woods and Isabel was sent off to a nunnery. (For real. A nunnery.) Cristina rescues her love from the abusive nuns, but the only way Isabel’s father will let her stay is if she agrees to marry the man he has picked out for her. It’s hard out here for a 19th Century lesbian couple. Crisabelians understood, even if we didn’t like it, that the roadblocks the writers were throwing in front of our beloved couple were historically appropriate and we hoped that their trials and tribulations would only serve to cement their bond. Yes, even when Cristina gets pregnant by Isabel’s husband.

Just when you thought this pregnancy would be the final blow that finally ends Crisabel for good, the two lovers find a way to once again persevere. Cristina becomes very ill and almost dies and the idea of losing Cristina forever is horrific to Isabel that she makes a plan for the two to run away and raise the child together. So after everything these two star-crossed lovers have gone through over the course of two seasons, it is perplexing and infuriating to watch it all end with a little shove and knock on the head just hours before the two were to leave town. There are so many things wrong with this ending. Isabel’s husband, Lt. Jorge Ruiz is drunk at the brothel and enters Cristina’s room in an attempt to sleep with her. She refuses him, which makes him very angry, but luckily the owner of the brothel shows up and saves the day. So basically what this means is that if a woman isn’t available for male consumption (male gaze, male fantasies, male satisfaction) she might as well be dead.

Later, Cristina and Isabel meet to go over their plan to leave town and as they kiss goodbye, Ruiz rides up on his horse and sees everything. Really? After being careful for so long would they really kiss on a main road? Also, How did they not see him? He’s pretty close to them and on a horse! I know it’s a fictional show, but they could have at least hid him behind some bushes to make it a little more plausible.

After Ruiz discovers the relationship he waits for Cristina in her room at the brothel. When Cristina opens the door and sees him there, sitting on her bed with a gun in his hand, she comes in and allows him to close the door. Let me repeat that. Instead of running out into the hallway and getting help, she steps inside the room with the spurned man holding a gun. Because that would happen.

Ruiz confronts her about her relationship with Isabel and tells her to stay away from his wife. He holsters his gun and is about to leave when Cristina decides that now is the perfect time to tell him that she and Isabel are in love. She gets in his face yelling and insulting him. I get it. Having to deny your love for so long must’ve been tough, but do you really think it’s a good idea to insult a man with a gun?

But don’t worry: Ruiz wouldn’t shoot her. He’s merely going to shove her away from him. After all, she’s being hysterical. It’s a complete accident that she hits her head on the dresser, which kills her instantly. Isabel arrives that night to find the love of her life dead on the floor of her bedroom. It’s ridiculous. Preposterous. Completely unnecessary. Go ahead and cry, Isabel. We feel your pain.-Eboni Rafus Alisha, The Walking Dead (2013)

She found love in a hopeless place, and fewer places on television are more hopeless that The Walking Dead. Alisha (Juliana Harkavy), a former Army Reservist, was the girlfriend to Tara (Alanna Masterson) who is blessedly still alive. You think dating is tough now, try eliminating 95% of the population, and see how few swipes you get on Tinder.

Somehow Tara and Alisha found each other, but unfortunately, they also found The Governor. Thinking he was a right and just fellow, they blindly followed him into a slaughter at the prison. When The Governor beheaded Hershel in front of everyone, Tara knew she’d been answering to a mad man. Alisha however, kept fighting. She was eventually shot in head by young Lizzie. –Dana Piccoli Alice Calvert, Under the Dome (2013)

Alice, we barely knew ye. When we found out CBS had inserted a lesbian pairing into their adaptation of Stephen King‘s novel, we were thrilled. Alice and Carolyn were moms to a teenage daughter, while also being professionals (Alice, a psychiatrist and Carolyn, a lawyer). Their road trip stop in Chester’s Mill had grave consequences, though, as the dome trapped them inside and the diabetic Alice was unable to survive without insulin.

Her impending death was hinted at several times, with her delirium almost getting her hit by a truck and, eventually, Alice became bedridden. She gets up to help deliver a baby, but becomes too weak and has a heart attack. Unfortunately her passing was the most camera time the couple has gotten on this show, as Carolyn continues to be MIA for most of Season 2. At least she’s still alive. –Trish Bendix Bullet, The Killing (2013)

As a fan of The Killing, I couldn’t believe my luck when I heard they were bringing on a character like Bullet. Firstly, homelessness is a huge issue for youth, especially among the LGBT population. Secondly, the actor they chose for the role (Bex Taylor-Klaus) had a look we rarely (if ever) see on television. Preferring masculine wear with a tough demeanor but kind heart, Bullet is an anomaly, which I suppose made her too good to be true.

Rachel “Bullet” Olmstead was a homeless queer teen on the streets of Seattle, just trying to keep herself and her friends alive. Based on the life of a real lesbian who was murdered in the ’90s, her story informed by stories of street kids who faced eternal danger in their struggle for survival. A beautiful androgynous, pale-faced skateboarder, Bullet still seemed to believe there was good in the world, despite the kinds of terrible people she would encounter in the dreary, rainy Pacific Northwest. When Callie goes missing and other young women are feared missing or murdered, Bullet reluctantly partners with the cops to find them and keep it from happening to anyone else.

Unfortunately, Bullet was unable to keep herself out of harm’s way, and her honesty and eagerness to help Detective Holder eventually make her a target. Bullet is unceremoniously slain and discovered in the trunk of a car, giving Holder his emotional moment and even more drive to close the case. Fans paid tribute to the final image of Bullet with their own ink on their inside wrists with the pen tattoo “Faith” like Bullet wore, and how she was identified after her passing.

Her death was not in vain, but it was also not completely necessary. The plot could have advanced without it, but if TV has to hurt sometimes, this definitely poured on the pain. A visit to Bullet’s grave on the fourth and final season this year was a nice homage, but we would have preferred her in the flesh. –Trish Bendix Victoria Hand & Isabelle Hartley, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.(2014)

I’ll begin by being totally honest with you: the only comic books I have read in the past few years are some of the new Batwoman comics, Lumberjanes, and Gotham City Sirens. All I know about Victoria Hand and Isabelle Hartley in the Marvel Comics is what I gleaned from Wikipedia articles and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. recaps. That being said, it is my understanding that in the comics these two characters were, at one point, dating one another. I don’t know how they identified, but I know they fell under the LGBT umbrella somewhere.

But that’s part of the problem here: I have watched every single episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.LD., but if I hadn’t read recaps of the show on queer sites like AfterEllen, I never would have known that. I wouldn’t even have suspected the two characters knew each other, since they never appeared in the same season together, let alone episode or scene. Whether it’s because the show chose to erase their sexuality entirely, or because they brought them on and killed them off so quickly that their personal lives were irrelevant doesn’t seem to make much difference. It was either two comic-book-canon queer characters the show pretended were straight and then killed, or two canon queer characters that the show killed. And I say “pretended were straight” but I guess that’s a little harsh. It only works out that way because of heteronormativity (my favorite word and Cards Against Humanity card, because it provides me many humorous teaching moments).

Whatever the case, we net out at zero queer characters on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. And it’s one thing to not want to change the general trajectory of classic characters like Captain America or The Hulk (I’m still holding out hope for Black Widow), but it’s another thing entirely to have women already pre-written as loving the ladies and to avoid it entirely. Especially on a show with a good handful of original female characters, not one of which is queer as far as we know. And it’s a Joss Whedon show! He usually at least makes his lesbians deep and complex before killing them off! (Though, I’ll be honest: If he lets Skye or Simmons date a woman for any period of time and/or each other I will forgive him this wrong. JUST THIS ONE. I will never forgive him Tara.) And this is probably beside the point, but it’s still point-adjacent: Isabelle Hartley’s death cut deep because it was Xena. Haven’t we suffered enough at the hands of Lucy Lawless‘s ambiguously* gay characters?

In conclusion, the brief run and lack of depth of not one, but two queer female characters on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was just not OK, at least from where I’m standing.

*I wholeheartedly believe that Xena was in love with Gabrielle and would personally categorize her as an iconic bisexual character. -Valerie Anne

Reyna Flores, Matador (2014)

Reyna Flores (Eve Torres) was leading a double life. As a hard-nosed Latina journalist covering the inside world of professional soccer, she was frequently sexually harassed in locker rooms and put up with a bunch of bullshit to get her job done. She even had to keep her girlfriend at bay (although that’s probably stretching it and Reyna would likely call her a “friend’). It turns out, though that Reyna wasn’t just trying to be a good reporter-she was seeking revenge.

In the eleventh episode of Season 1 this past September, we see that Reyna has gotten here for another purpose entirely: She’s been tracking L.A. Riot owner Andrés Galan for murdering her father. We find this out after Reyna goes to shoot Galan during a game, and ends up getting shot several times herself. Galan survives, as does a tape Reyna has made, explaining why she’s done what she’s done.

“You know me as Reyna Flores, but that’s not my real name,” she says into the camera. “My name is Valeria Molinez. By now, you know what I’ve done.”

Reyna (aka Valeria) explains how Galan killed her father because he “championed a movement to unionize the Telecom Industry in Mexico.” Galan is power-hungry and, as Reyna says, “evil.”

“Today, I give you the truth about Andres Galan, my enemy who has now become my teacher,” she says. “He offered me a quote once for an interview, a quote that now guides me on my present course: ;Never pray for that which you have the power to execute yourself.’ Andres, it is my honor.”

Reyna died for the cause, while Galan continued to live on in greed. He has many other enemies, so eventually justice will be served. Unfortunately Reyna will not be around to see it carried out. -Trish Bendix Tara, True Blood (2014)

In a world where humans vampires, werewolves, shifters and faerie/vampire hybrids battle each other money, power and basic survival there is bound to be a tragic death or two. Over the past seven seasons, many of our beloved True Blood characters have met an untimely death. So why are we so upset about Tara’s demise in the Season 7 premiere? We’re glad you asked.

Tara was arguably one of the best characters on the show. Sookie’s best friend wormed her way into our hearts in the very first episode with her foul-mouthed, tell—it-like-it-is attitude. She kept it real, and we appreciated that. Even before the vampires came out of the coffin, Tara had been through a lot. But she was survivor. Whether it was cage fighting in New Orleans under the name of Toni or working as a bartender/dancer at Fangtasia, Tara has always found a way to not only survive, but also thrive, and create a new life for herself. Underneath that tough exterior she had a soft spot for her friends and family. Tara was never charmed by vampires the way Sookie was, but although she resented all the trouble vampires caused for her friend, she always had her back-defending Sookie and rescuing her more than once. Not to mention that she had some really great lines such as: “It’s been a while since I been attacked by a vampire, and guess what? It still sucks!!”

We didn’t get to see her last moments. This sucks for two reasons: a) There is a lack of closure. We never saw it coming. We didn’t even get to say goodbye! B) The fact that we hadn’t actually seen her get killed, kept us holding on with the false hope that she wasn’t really dead. I mean, it wouldn’t be the first time someone we thought was a goner had actually managed to escape at the last moment. (I’m looking at you, Eric.) It made her loss linger with us longer.

She survived so much just to die right before the happy ending. An absent father. An alcoholic, drug addicted mother. The death of her first love, Eggs. Tara has lived through the most horrific circumstances you can imagine. There were so many times she almost died. And then there was that time she actually did. When she was shot in the head while saving Sookie’s life, we thought for sure that she was lost to us forever. But she came back to us as a vampire, and foolishly, we thought that meant that, with her super human strength and relative immortality, if she survived all that she had as a bartender, surely she could make it to the end of the series. Yet, just nine episodes before everyone else gets their happy ending, Tara met the true death.

Killing off the black best friend of the main character is so cliché. I guess in this case, we should have seen it coming. Too bad it doesn’t make it any better. –Eboni Rafus

Leslie Elizabeth Shay, Chicago Fire (2014)

Over two seasons on Chicago Fire, paramedic Leslie Shay (Lauren German) was hit by a truck, stuck with a needle, threatened with a gun, and impaled on some rebar. It became a running gag that she was going to suffer some kind of trauma every two to three episodes. Oh, Shay’s in trouble? Must be Tuesday. Until this season, like a cat with nine lives, she always pulled through.

From the first episode she established herself as the resident smart ass with a heart of gold and terrible taste in women. And oh lord did we ever love her for it. She and her roommate Severide were bros who occasionally shared lady dates. She and her fellow paramedic Gabriela Dawson had the kind of chemistry usually only ignored by shows like Rizzoli & Isles. So, when it became clear that the show was going to kill her off in this season’s premiere episode it was devastating.

The official word was that they were going to be killing the beloved Shay because her death would create the most drama for the rest of the cast. That may be true of you exempt from the runny both of the pretty by leads from consideration. Everyone at Firehouse 51 loved Shay and it was this (apparently) this fact that doomed her character. As sucky as it was to lose the only gay character on the show her death was even harder to take because after her death we got heartbreaking flashbacks to the first time Shay arrived at Firehouse 51. We saw her meet Dawson and Severide. We got back story that we never saw in the two previous seasons. It was like shooting Old Yeller while playing a home video montage of the little guy as a pup, running in slow motion and tripping over his adorable puppy paws. –Lucy Hallowell Sara Lance, Arrow (2014)

I started watching Arrow this summer, between Seasons 2 and 3. I had heard buzzing about queer ladies on the show, but honestly, but the time I was halfway through season one, I totally forgot that it was these rumors that got me to start watching in the first place. I was hooked; the show had everything I could want. It had vigilantes, it had heart, it had badass women, it had strong themes of friendship and familial love, and it had Felicity Smoak. All it needed was a little lady-loving to be practically perfect in every way. And in Season 2 Sara Lance, lady archer with a troubled past and a penchant for leather, came head to head with Nyssa al Ghul. It wasn’t until their lips locked that I finally remembered that I had heard whisperings of sweet lady kisses on this show, and it did not disappoint.

Nyssa, we came to learn, was an ex-girlfriend of Sara’s, a point she was not ashamed about in any way. Sara had been worried about her father’s opinions, but despite the fact that Detective Lance can be a hardass and a overprotective to the point of occasional male chauvinism, ultimately Sara’s father was just grateful that she had someone to care about her for the many years she was way from Starling City and presumed dead. In fact, the way it was all presented, it seemed that everyone was more concerned that Sara had been dating someone who is not only in the League of Assassins but the daughter of the leader of the League of Assassins. Eventually Nyssa went on her way and Sara struck up a lustful but brief fling with Oliver, but never was her relationship with Nyssa brushed off as a phase. It was only unimportant in the sense that it was in the past, a place that vigilante-types don’t tend to dwell. It was well done, in my opinion, and after Sara and Oliver severed their romantic ties, there was always that mustard seed of hope that Nyssa would come back or that Sara could find a new girlfriend.

Then they went and killed her. First episode of Season 3, Sara is welcomed back with arrows to the chest. Now, this is arguably one of the least offensive on this list in the sense that, in the comics, Laurel Lance is the Black Canary, so perhaps Sara had to die to light that fire in Laurel, to awaken her inner vigilante. Unlike some characters on this list, Sara seems to have been sacrificed for the larger plot, not just because the writers didn’t know what else to do with a “queer” character besides make her want a baby or changing her mind about liking women in the first place. But that only makes it marginally less frustrating. Fortunately, Arrow is bringing back Nyssa, at least for a bit. I’m hoping this will give us some insight into her and Sara’s relationship, past and present (well, past and recent past…) and perhaps Nyssa will exact the vengeance we all want for the Canary.

But once Nyssa goes back to the League of Assassins (or, HEAVENS FORBID, dies trying to avenge Sara’s death), will that be the end of queer characters for Arrow? Will Felicity, Laurel, and Thea keep on keeping on with their male love interests? Or will one of them end up being about as straight as Sara Lance? Speaking of which, don’t even get me started on the subtext shipping that fell off the roof right along with Sara. While mourning her death, I am also mourning the loss of Smoaking Canary. Never again will Felicity ogle Sara as she works out, and this hurts me. Long story short, losing Sara was a harsh blow, and the timing was bad, considering her death came in the wake of losing Leslie Shay (Chicago Fire) and Isabelle Hartley (Agents of S.H.I.E.LD.), making it three shows this season who killed off a queer character in their premiere episode. It’s starting to feel like a pattern, a pattern we don’t so much care for at all.

But here’s the thing: If you have enough well-rounded, diverse characters on your show, killing one character won’t amount to killing the entirety of a certain representation. I know not every show can afford to be like Pretty Little Liars, where when one lesbian dies, at least two more appear in her place, but if you’re in your third season of a show, you should theoretically be able to kill off whoever you want without having to worry about effectively erasing your LGBT representation. Just a thought. But that’s a different rant for a different day. -Valerie Anne

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