The Seven Most Shocking “Potter” Alumni Deaths Since the Battle of Hogwarts
Warning: Spoilers for How to Get Away with Murder, Game of Thrones, and others.
This past week, the Twitterverse exploded when ABC’s breakneck thriller How to Get Away with Murder finally revealed who was #UnderTheSheet this whole time: Wes Gibbins, portrayed by Alfred Enoch (Dean Thomas). Of his death, Alfred comforted viewers when speaking with Entertainment Weekly:
You find out he’s dead, but what happens from the moment he leaves the police station till then? That’s still to be unpacked and explored.
While many Potter stars have enjoyed prolific careers since the series, their characters have disproportionately often met with terrible fates – even though many of them survived the Battle of Hogwarts, Hollywood had different plans for them.
Keep reading for seven of the most shocking on-screen deaths suffered by Potter alumni post-Potter.
1. Wes Gibbins, How to Get Away with Murder (Alfred Enoch)
The third season of HtGAwM began with a flashforward where viewers immediately discovered that a main character was going to perish in a fire. The show progressively gave more and more hints as to whom the unfortunate soul was, finally going in for the kill with Wes in its crosshairs.
As the show unravels the mystery of his death, Potter fans can still catch Alfred on the show in the form of flashbacks.
2. Catelyn Stark, Game of Thrones (Michelle Fairley)
Michelle Fairley is better known for playing the Stark matriarch in Game of Thrones than Hermione’s mother in Potter, but Catelyn Stark takes the cake when it comes to shocking deaths.
Much like with Wes, the Internet blew up when the Red Wedding simultaneously slayed two Starks of Winterfell in the HBO drama’s trademark combination of gruesome and outrageous.
3. Andrew Henry, The Revenant (Domhnall Gleeson)
While 2015 was a landmark year for Domhnall’s career, his on-screen counterparts were less fortunate. Being left for dead in the sci-fi thriller Ex Machina was bad enough, but The Revenant saw Domhnall’s Andrew Henry brutally shot and subsequently desecrated.
While certainly not the most grisly scene in The Revenant by a long shot (no eviscerated horses were involved, for one), Domhnall still suffered an unforgiving demise.
4. Osha, Game of Thrones (Natalia Tena)
Natalia Tena’s Tonks, tragically, didn’t survive the Battle of Hogwarts – but her unfortunate fate did not end there. To be cast on Game of Thrones is basically a grisly death sentence from the get-go.
Osha, the wildling played by Tena, fared no differently than most others on the HBO drama. Osha was suddenly stabbed by the sadistic Ramsay Bolton – just as she was planning to kill him at the same moment.
5. Arthur Kipps, The Woman in Black (Daniel Radcliffe)
The Boy Who Lived… only to die at the end of the first post-Potter movie he starred in. The traditional nature of 2012’s The Woman in Black clued viewers in early on to the fact that Kipps was likely not going to survive.
Nonetheless, the movie was still able to shock viewers by lulling us all into a false sense of security, before having the once-savior of the wizarding world abruptly meet his demise.
6. Dreyfus, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (Gary Oldman)
Apes and Potter alumni are not the best of combinations. Poor Tom Felton perished on screen in 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes; if that were not enough, Gary Oldman’s character Dreyfus met a similar fate in the 2014 sequel.
In the film, Dreyfus, the human leader, detonates himself to destroy the ape stronghold, marking the latest in a truly unfortunate slew of dramatic demises for Oldman across his decades-long career.
7. Walder Frey, Game of Thrones (David Bradley)
While unlikable enough as Mr. Filch, David Bradley was not popular with Game of Thrones audiences as Walder Frey, especially after slaughtering the Starks at the infamous Red Wedding.
His eventual triumphant death was gleefully disgusting. Though Arya Stark slit his throat in a pretty Westeros-standard MO, the pie really took the cake: Arya had baked his sons into a pie that she fed to him before the slaughter. Only on Game of Thrones.
What do you think of the #UnderTheSheet reveal? Did we miss any shocking post-Potter demises? Sound off in the comments below!
