A member of the circle has fallen, but did viewers of The Secret Circle even care?

In The Secret Circle episode “Slither” the character of Nick, played by Louis Hunter, was killed off because of a pesky demon possessing him. This death occurred in The Secret Circle season 1 episode 5.

It’s interesting to note that the character of Vicki Donovan (Kayla Ewell) on The Vampire Diaries had a surprising death which shocked TVD fans. (Spoilers ahead!) She was turned into a vampire by Damon (Ian Somerhalder) and killed by Stefan (Paul Wesley) on The Vampire Diaries season 1 episode 7, “Haunted.”

Kevin Williamson is the co-executive producer of the show, and he is also an executive producer for The Secret Circle. The coincidence of these two shows that both air on The CW, and both deal with the supernatural, which have an unexpected death in the first ten episodes has not worked as well the second time around. With The Vampire Diaries, fans cared about Vicki and the death was truly shocking. But Williamson doesn’t want to come across as a one trick pony. Killing off Nick wasn’t necessarily predictable, but there’s no positive payoff. The IMDB commenter Supernatural23 commented on The Secret Circle page to say that killing Nick was an “epic fail” and “Not needed, depression. One less hot guy, I am losing excitement for this show.”

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By now, we know that Louis Hunter always knew his character would be killed off. But that doesn’t affect the way the story was received. The writer’s should have made us care more about him. We didn’t know much about Nick, and it was hard to care when they tried to remind us in “Slither” how both of his parents were killed. While Adam was the boring guy, Nick has the promise of being the interesting one. But we hadn’t seen a lot of him yet. No main storyline involved him…except the storyline in “Slither” where he ended up dead. Nick was relegated to the blonde sorority girl at the start of a horror movie that no one ever bothers to remember. To kill a character so early on isn’t a bad move, except when there is no fan connection to the character and the death seems wasteful.

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And let’s be honest, The Secret Circle can’t survive with one main male cast member. Four girls and one guy on a TV show that is predominantly watched by teenage girls isn’t going to work. The easy thing to do is to bring around another male teenage character, but with Cassie being the new girl in town, it’s hard to see how that would work without seeming forced. (Yet this is what they’ll do anyway.) Things are especially tricky because Nick was part of the circle, and not just anyone can replace him. The first several episodes of TSC established how important Cassie’s presence was – so much so that her mother was murdered just to get Cassie to Chance Harbor. But if Nick can be replaced, then Cassie could also be replaced. And suddenly, she seems so much more special. She isn’t chosen, or necessary, she was just local. And given how saintly and boring the character of Cassie Blake (Britt Robertson) is, maybe she’s the character they should have killed off.

So now we ask you, Small Screen Scoop readers, what did you think of Nick’s death in The Secret Circle “Slither”?

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