Shocked!

We’ve barely recovered from Matthew’s death on Downton Abbey, and now Will Gardner has been gunned down in a courtroom on The Good Wife.

I doubt viewers will mourn Will as passionately as they did Matthew, but devoted fans of the show — I think it’s the best drama on network TV — are shocked. How could this happen? It feels as if a member of the family has been murdered! Did they really have to kill him?

With TV, audiences are forced back to reality by the simple fact that the characters don’t exist only in our imaginations. They are portrayed by actors, and when we see those actors explaining to interviewers that they wanted to move on, play other roles, the spell is broken. We’ll grumble about the consequences to the storylines on the program, but we’ll stop feeling as if a friend has been murdered.

When an author kills off a beloved character in a mystery series, though, the negative reaction from readers is stronger, deeper, and possibly permanent. Remember the uproar when Dana Stabnow killed Kate Shugak’s lover Jack? Many readers swore they would never read another Stabenow novel, and while most probably returned to the fold after a period of mourning, I know some who have kept their heartbroken pledge and haven’t forgiven the author.

Karin Slaughter killed her Grant County, Georgia, police chief Jeffrey Tolliver in a particularly gruesome fashion, leaving his wife, Dr. Sara Linton, and a good many readers desolate.

This kind of reaction presents a dilemma for writers. We want people to care about our characters, to see them as real people. We love them too, far more than any reader ever will. But sometimes we have to take a new direction for the sake of our own development as writers. Slaughter has said that she grieved for Jeffrey, that she cried over the decision to kill him, but she felt it was necessary. Fans disagreed. The anger some readers harbor toward Slaughter shows through even now, years later, in occasional online comments and reviews.

A certain number of readers will cling to a sense of betrayal long after it’s obvious that removing a pivotal character worked wonders. I think Jeffrey’s death, for example, liberated both Slaughter and Sara Linton. Sara has become an integral part of the Will Trent series, based in Atlanta, and everything Slaughter has written since she moved Sara away from Grant County has been richer and more complex and meaningful. Her last few novels are the best Slaughter has ever produced. I would hate to have missed them.

Downton Abbey muddled along in the season following Matthew’s death, but we can hope it will improve next year. On The Good Wife, Will’s death should shake up everything, turn some relationships upside down, and give Juliana Margulies the acting challenge of her career. The title of the series will make sense again, as the focus returns to the relationship between Alicia and Peter Florek, who have a weird political marriage that has been given little scrutiny lately. I can’t wait to see what happens, and I doubt many viewers will stop watching because Will has died.

I wish readers could be that forgiving when a popular character in a book is killed off. If we can look forward to the next episode after a TV character dies, why don’t we feel that way about the next book in a series?

Do authors have a right to do what they wish with their own creations? Should a writer feel an obligation to keep things as they are, with all the familiar characters turning up regularly forevermore?

How much of their creative decision-making should authors cede to readers?