When last we left Tom Hardy in the season one finale of MobLand, he was slumped in a chair with a butcher knife sticking out of his chest.
Turns out, more than a few people on that show may have had reason to leave it there.
Hardy, of course, plays Harry Da Souza, the reluctant fixer for mob boss couple Conrad and Maeve Harrigan — Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren — in Paramount+’s gritty London underworld drama. Or at least he did. Reportedly, Hardy exited the series shortly after it wrapped its upcoming second season, following long-simmering friction with the showrunners over lateness, script disputes and clashes over the series’ shift toward a more ensemble approach. He will not be appearing in a third season, assuming there is one.
That leaves MobLand’s makers with a problem — what to do with the body.
It’s an awkward spot, but television has been here before, plenty of times. Usually when an actor in a major role skedaddles a series in mid-stream — because of firings, feuds, contract fights, health crises or creative flameouts — the show finds a way to go on. Sometimes they simply kill off the character by pushing him in front of a train (take a bow, Charlie Sheen), sometimes they pull a Darrin (looking at you, Dick Sargent), sometimes they just send them upstairs never to be heard from again (remember Gavan O’Herlihy?).
Below, a brief history of emergency exits.
KILL ‘EM AND CARRY ON
When a star becomes too much trouble, television’s most time-honored solution is also its most satisfying: kill them. On Two and a Half Men, Charlie Sheen’s Charlie Harper got pushed in front of a Paris train by his stalker girlfriend. On Valerie, Valerie Harper’s character was killed in a car crash — and then, just to rub it in, the show was renamed The Hogan Family and Sandy Duncan moved into her house. On The Conners, Roseanne Barr’s Roseanne Conner died of an opioid overdose — about five minutes after Barr fired off a racist tweet. And when McLean Stevenson decided he was too big for M*A*S*H after season three, Colonel Henry Blake’s helicopter was shot down over the Sea of Japan on the way home from the war. Stevenson went on to star in a string of failed sitcoms. The show ran eight more seasons.
MEET THE NEW DARRIN
Then again, murder isn’t for everyone. The gentler option: keep the character, swap out the actor, and trust that the audience won’t notice — or won’t care. Dick York spent five seasons as Darrin Stephens on Bewitched before a spinal injury and a painkiller dependency took him off the set; Dick Sargent stepped in without a word of explanation, a move so brazenly unacknowledged it coined its own TV phrase — “pulling a Darrin.” The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air tried the same thing when Aunt Viv went from Janet Hubert to Daphne Maxwell Reid mid-run.
THEY WENT UPSTAIRS
Remember Chuck Cunningham? Nobody else does either. That’s because during a season two episode of Happy Days, Richie’s older brother — played by Gavan O’Herlihy — walked upstairs and was never heard from again. No explanation, no farewell episode, no acknowledgment that a human being had just evaporated from the cast. Even Henry Winkler, asked about it fifty years later, could only shrug: “He went upstairs and never came down…a mystery.” Family Matters did the same to Judy Winslow, who disappeared after season three. And on The West Wing, Moira Kelly’s Mandy Hampton was a full series regular in season one and simply ceased to exist in season two.
WHO NEEDS A STAR?
David Caruso was so sure he was too big for television that he quit NYPD Blue after season one to become a movie star. His subsequent film career lasted two movies. Jimmy Smits stepped into the precinct and many viewers decided they preferred the new arrangement. The show ran eleven more seasons. The Office lost Steve Carell after season seven and kept going for two more, sustained by an ensemble that had been steadily doing the heavy lifting all along. And Grey’s Anatomy has now outlasted so many of its leads — Patrick Dempsey was killed off in season 11, Sandra Oh gone a season earlier — that it has essentially become a different show that happens to share a name with the original. It is still on the air.
