‘The Americans’ season 4 kills huge character — but why now?
We spent a lot of time discussing character deaths, and also the right and the wrong way to do it. For one, we think it always cuts off some of the expectation if you know there’s a death coming. This was the failure with “The Walking Dead” this past weekend (one of many), or the issue with “Arrow” making their big move tonight.
For “The Americans,” they did it 100% right, and for those of you who are interested in seeing how to properly remove a character from the equation, this is it. You don’t put a ton of fanfare around it, like you’re promoting some sort of big carnival show or like the character death is for shock value. Also, you have the guts to take out someone extremely important to the story, and they did that with the Nina character (played by Annet Mahendru) being executed. It was shocking, extremely sad, and a game-changer for the entire series.
As it turns out, this was also something that was quietly planned and not brought on by any particular thing. Take a look at what executive producer Joel Fields said about the end of Nina’s arc to Entertainment Weekly, where it became easy to feel for her in her predicament:
“She was a character with one could emphasize, as we hope all our characters are, and she got even more emphatic as the story progressed. But it wasn’t like we made a sudden decision to kill her. This was something we were working toward over many seasons. For us, this was something we had been plotting since season 2. The question was how long would it take to play out. It hewed pretty closely to our plan but we expected to play out sooner. “
We’re glad that the character lasted as long as we did, and we hope other shows learn some lessons when it comes to having a death happen organically, and also have it be traced back to so many different touchstones that came before it. These are things that viewers follow and appreciate rather than thinking that this was some sort of ratings stunt.
What did you think about the end of Nina? Share below.