The Western genre is best-known for gunslinging heroes vanquishing fiendish villains who are set up to die from early in their stories. However, particularly in modern Western TV shows, there’s plenty of death designed to shock and surprise us, too. The Wild West takes few prisoners and shows no mercy to those caught in the crosshairs.

While some of the best Western TV villains of all time met especially shocking ends of their own, many of the most harrowing death scenes in the genre involve victims far less deserving of their fates. Over the past two decades, the revival of TV Westerns has cranked things up a notch, normalizing graphic acts of murder.

It’s true that tragic hero deaths have always been a part of Westerns , since the days when John Wayne was among the biggest draw

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