Is anything sacred anymore?

Lately, it feels like Hollywood has made a very specific, very intentional editorial choice: to kill off its main characters. That’s righ! The ones we’ve rooted for, grown with, sometimes hated briefly but always come back to. Gone. Wiped out. Poisoned, ambushed, ghosted by the writers’ room in the most shocking and sometimes unnecessary of ways.

Let’s talk about it.

Because I’ve had enough whiplash to consider billing Netflix and Hulu for emotional damages.

Take 9-1-1, that reliable adrenaline-fueled drama where disasters are bigger than logic and hearts are almost always bigger than the debris. We just lost Peter Krause’s character Bobby Nash—to a secret, fatal virus. Bobby. Our moral compass.  Did I miss a memo? Was there a countdown to prepare us emotionally? No. It was just: Bam. Rare virus. No cure. Bye Bobby.

And if you thought the prestige TV world would offer some protection, let’s pivot to The Last of Us. Pedro Pascal’s Joel, our rugged apocalypse-daddy, was a fan favorite. He was the show’s backbone. The human heartbreak filter through which the end of the world made some emotional sense. And now? Dead. Just like that. Thanks to Kaitlyn Dever’s Abby and a baseball bat to the skull. Trauma reactivated.

These aren’t just plot twists. These are narrative gut punches. And they’re becoming the norm.

So what gives?

Are the writers chasing shock value? Yes, that is correct.
Are we, the audience, a little jaded and bored? Probably.
Do we consume so much content that even a perfectly paced character arc needs to be blown up to trend? Absolutely.

But I also think something deeper is at play here. Hollywood, like the rest of us, is swimming in a sea of uncertainty. Maybe there’s a subconscious understanding that permanence is a lie. That beloved characters, like beloved institutions, don’t last forever. That even scripted lives get cut short.

This new wave of storytelling taps into a collective trauma we’re all quietly holding: pandemics, political instability, climate anxiety, existential dread with a TikTok soundtrack. There’s something achingly real about watching something, or someone suddenly disappear. Poof. Gone. Just like that. It mirrors life. It amplifies grief. It reminds us to hold things lightly because permanence is no longer promised, not even in fiction.

So no, nothing is sure. Not even Bobby Nash. Not even Joel Miller.

But maybe that’s the point. Maybe Hollywood is holding up a mirror and asking: How do you sit with uncertainty? Can you let go when the story demands it? Will you keep watching, keep hoping, keep feeling?

I still might need a moment though. Or a support group. Or at least a fictional grief sabbatical.