Published Jun 8, 2026, 11:50 AM EDT

Padraig is a Senior Features Writer and has been part of Screen Rant since 2017. Padraig is a writer, editor and retired Game of Thrones extra who has been writing about movies and TV online for over a decade. He has also written for The Irish Times, Den Of Geek, Little White Lies and many more. It’s pronounced Paw-rick, BTW.

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Back in 2001, the shock death of this 24 character quietly changed TV forever. In a post-Game of Thrones landscape, it’s hard to picture a time when television shows were reluctant to kill characters off. That was the case for decades, however, which is why the sudden death of Henry Blake (McLean Stevenson) on MASH became a watershed moment.

While Blake wasn’t the lead of this classic sitcom, he was an audience favorite. When Stevenson opted to leave MASH after three seasons, the showrunners decided Blake’s death would make a powerful statement about war itself. While it’s considered a landmark decision now, viewers back in 1975 were decidedly furious about Blake’s demise, with CBS being flooded with angry letters.

In the decades that followed, producers were still reticent to kill off important characters. There were some notable examples, such as Rosalind Shays falling down an elevator shaft in* L.A. Law*, but truly shocking demises were few and far between. Moving into the early 2000s, things began to shift thanks to shows like 24.

This real-time thriller followed the very stressful days of CTU agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland), who had to race against time to stop terrorist attacks. 24 had countless tragic deaths throughout its run, with Jack himself really being the only character who was safe. This formula began in earnest with the season one finale.

The original season was slower-paced than the ones that followed, as the producers and writers were still figuring out how to make a real-time thriller. That’s why *24’s *first year gives about as much time to Jack’s wife Teri (Leslie Hope) and daughter Kim (Elisha Cuthbert), who are kidnapped early in the season. Teri is very much a main character throughout Day One, and becomes quite adept at saving herself.

That’s why the season one finale is such a gut punch when Jack finds Teri’s bullet-riddled body. In the finale, Jack had learned his ex-lover and supposed closest ally in CTU, Nina (Sarah Clarke), was the mole he was hunting throughout Day One. When Teri stumbled upon her secret, Nina tied her up and killed her. The final scene sees the devastated Jack cradling Teri’s body, tearfully apologizing as the show’s first ever silent clock ticks down to the credits.

*24’s *silent clock became a staple when the show killed off a beloved character.

It was a bold move for a major network series to end on such a dark note. Both Teri and Jack had been through the day from hell, and the wise move would have been to either give them a happy ending or close on an ambitious note. In fact, a couple of happy alternate endings were shot for safety reasons, before it was decided 24’s first season had to end badly for Jack.

Again, this was a brave decision, but in contrast to the anger that greeted Blake’s MASH demise 25 years earlier, audiences and critics agreed that Teri’s murder worked best for the story. Soon, the impact of this moment would filter into other television series.

Within a few years of* 24’s* debut, shows like *Lost *or Six Feet Under began killing off beloved players. One of the most heartbreaking was Adriana (Drea de Matteo) in The Sopranos in 2004, and pretty soon, the floodgates were wide open. Pretty much every season of Breaking Bad featured a surprise death, as did The Wire or Grey’s Anatomy.

By the time* The Walking Dead* or *Game of Thrones *arrived, it almost became a given that heartbreaking deaths were on the horizon. Again, while it’s not a case that shows before 24 hadn’t bumped off important figures, it still feels like it broke a taboo. It made it clear to audiences that even supposed main characters weren’t safe and could die under the most abrupt or tragic circumstances.

24 itself featured plenty more examples of this trope in later years, with the assassination of President Palmer (Dennis Haysbert) or the execution of Ryan Chappelle (Paul Schulze). Teri Bauer’s death might not get the acknowledgment it deserves as a TV turning point, but it really should.

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2001 - 2014-00-00