'Person of Interest' season 5 spoilers news: Series adds to TV's list of recent lesbian character deaths
In one of its final episodes, CBS sci-fi crime drama "Person of Interest" angered its LGBT fans by seemingly employing the "Bury Your Gays" trope that had so angered many in recent months.
In its 100th episode, the Emmy-nominated series killed off its genius hacker Samantha "Root" Groves (Amy Acker), who was hit by a sniper bullet while saving the life of Harold Finch (Michael Emerson), the creator of the show's mass-surveillance computer system known as "The Machine."
Root, who had feelings for former assassin Sameen Shaw (Sarah Shahi), is the latest in a long string of lesbian characters on television to be killed off this year.
While LGBT characters have only just become more common on television, the 2015-2016 season has been very disappointing for the LGBT community due to the spate of lesbian character deaths that began with Lexa's (Alycia Debnam-Carey) controversial and untimely demise in The CW's post-apocalyptic survival series "The 100." This was followed shortly after by the death of lesbian character Denise (Merritt Wever) in AMC's "The Walking Dead" and other LGBT deaths in shows such as "The Vampire Diaries."
Many fans complained that the lesbian characters had only been killed off to further the storyline of a straight male character or, worse, for no good reason at all. LGBT viewers demanded for better storylines for LGBT characters on television and, for some time, it did seem as though the "Bury Your Gays" trope had been buried for good.
Until, that is, "Person of Interest" aired its latest episode.
Defending the reasoning behind Root's death, "Person of Interest" creator and executive producer Jonathan Nolan said that the character's demise had been planned long before the "Bury Your Gays" controversy.
"We teased this moment three years ago at Comic-Con," Nolan told Entertainment Weekly.
The "Person of Interest" boss also spoke about Root becoming the voice of The Machine after her death, saying, "It's an evolution of Root's character."
"Her story has always been about getting closer to The Machine," he explained. "That's literally what she trying to do in the first season finale and she finally gets her wish to sort of become The Machine."
In an interview with TVLine, Acker dished on how she felt about Root taking a bullet for Harold.
"I mean, that would be the way I would want to go," she said. "To me, she was never really afraid of dying."
"I'm glad that Harold made it," she added. "That makes me happy!"
"Person of Interest" airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET on CBS.
