TNT’s ‘Dallas’ season 2 spoilers: How Larry Hagman’s J.R. Ewing will die

Following the tragic passing of Larry Hagman in November following a lengthy battle with cancer, it was made pretty clear that the actor’s legendary character on “Dallas’ in J.R. Ewing was going to pass away, as well, during season 2. However, what was a little bit of a mystery until now was how we were going to see the character lose his life … and it’s pretty shocking.

Speaking to TV Guide Magazine in a new interview, executive producer Cynthia Cidre explains that J.R. is going to be murdered in an upcoming episode midway through the season, which is of course going to pose a question about his death that was asked so many years before on the original version of the show:

“We all felt having J.R. die of natural causes would have been completely inappropriate, not only to the character, but also to Larry Hagman.”

It is true that Hagman would have likely preferred to see his character go down in some sort of dramatic fashion, but will the show be able to pull of a “who shot J.R.?” storyline all over again? (Granted, we don’t actually know that he was shot.) We assume that this will be a story to play through the rest of the second season, and all we hope is that somewhere in the middle of the soapiness surrounding this murder mystery, the show still takes some time to reflect upon not just Hagman’s life, but how important this character was to the history of television.

“Dallas” is keeping a very tight lid on who from the series’ past could return for J.R.’s funeral. but we will hopefully have more information before the episode airs on March 11.

If you want to know more about the writing process for the “Dallas” team leading up to this episode, you can do so by clicking the link here.

Photo: TNT