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© HBO
Viewers were stunned by a major twist in the popular TV drama on Sunday night - but the show is just one of many dropping this particular kind of bombshell

Warning: this blog contains major spoilers for The Good Wife season five, episode 15. Please also be aware of spoilers for Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, Boardwalk Empire, Grey's Anatomy, Breaking Bad, Scandal and Mad Men. Do not read if you are not up to date with the most recent episodes of these shows.

These days, no television character is safe.

On CBS last night, The Good Wife's Will Gardner was gunned down by an unstable client, who had grabbed a security guard's weapon and unloaded into the courtroom, before trying to kill himself. (The barrel was empty.) Despite the showrunners recently revealing that actor Josh Charles had approached them about leaving the show almost a year ago, the sudden death of one of the series' biggest leads was an enormous shock - but Gardner is just one in a long line of bombshell TV exits.

Game of Thrones set the tone for this new wave of bloody executions in 2011 when it killed off Sean Bean's Ned Stark towards the end of season one. In doing so, the series established itself as one unwilling to coddle its audience: lead characters were going to die, and every episode would be an adventure in risk-taking. Watch the show, and you sign up for getting knocked sideways by events like the Red Wedding.

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© AMC
Though it is perhaps less surprising, given its apocalyptic setting, The Walking Dead is another practitioner this new norm, with Sophia, Dale, Shane, Andrea and Lori exiting the show in its first four seasons. However, the violent mid-season four finale was its Red Wedding equivalent, as Hershel lost his head.

More unsettling was the death of Jimmy Darmody at the end of Boardwalk Empire's second season. Darmody had deliberately crossed Nucky Thompson and was doomed to die by his hand. Yet despite logic dictating his demise, the murder was no less jarring, and still managed to pack a punch - Michael Pitt was a star, after all.

The most memorable scenes of a TV show often centre on an unexpected exit. Mad Men's fifth season ended with the suicide of partner Lane Pryce. I'm still not over the death of George O'Malley, who departed Grey's Anatomy via a bus accident in season six. Hank was taken out before the end of Breaking Bad, leaving viewers as stunned as Walter White. Just last week, Scandal lost its much-loved press officer James Novak, who was shot to cover up another murder.

Television's long, drawn-out narratives used to offer a false sense of comfort against the big beats of two-hour movies. Now, shocking twists are necessary ways of driving the action. They hold our increasingly short attention spans, and let ravenous online communities of fans dissect exactly what they just saw at length. Sudden deaths fuel ratings and discussion. Michelle King, one of The Good Wife's showrunners, said in a recent interview that "the surprises in [episode] 15 play out in 16 too", which should give fans plenty of time to absorb the aftermath.