This post contains spoilers for Modern Family Season 10, Episode 5, “Good Grief.”
Rest in peace, DeDe Pritchett. On Wednesday night, Modern Family finally revealed the character death it’s been teasing since last month. The unlucky winner? Shelley Long’s DeDe, who is Jay’s ex-wife and Claire and Mitchell’s mother. As the Dunphy family found out this week, DeDe died in her sleep during a trip with her women’s group to Greenland.
Last month, Modern Family co-creator Christopher Lloyd teased that the long-running ABC comedy would kill off a “significant character,” leaving fans to guess who that might be. Many theorists pointed to Stella, the family’s French bulldog. Instead, apparently, it’s DeDe, who has only appeared on the long-running series eight times total—far less frequently than Stella. Then again, overstating the significance of a character death is not exactly a new gambit in television; The Simpsons fans might recall when the show spent months hyping up the death of a so-called major figure on the show, only to find out that the person in question was . . . Krusty the Clown’s father.
When asked why the writers decided to introduce a death this season, Modern Family co-creator Steve Levitan told The Hollywood Reporter in a postmortem interview, “It occurred to us that death is a giant part of the family experience, and while Phil (Ty Burrell) had lost his mother in a previous episode, we’ve never seen the entire family have to deal with such a loss. It seemed like an interesting thing to have happen.” Why did the show choose DeDe? “She’s directly involved with three of our characters and she touched everybody’s life in some interesting way. It seemed like the right character to put everybody through something.”
“I don’t think we started with, ‘Let’s do a death episode—who can we kill?’” Levitan added. “It came from [a conversation of], ‘What would happen if DeDe died?’ That’s how it started. I don’t know that this was part of it at the time, but I lost my mom suddenly two years ago and that experience of getting that call and gather as a family was very fresh to me.” In the future, Levitan said, there will be an episode in which DeDe’s widower brings various family members some items she left for each of them.
Perhaps the most fascinating thing about this death is that it comes as Modern Family itself prepares to shuttle off this mortal coil. Right now, the series is in its 10th and last contracted season; the writers have concocted a season finale that can, if need be, double as a series finale. But according to Levitan, both the studio and network are on board for more Modern Family—which means the Dunphys could live to see Season 11 and beyond. “There are a couple hurdles that have to be climbed. We’ll see if it all comes together. . . . Hopefully, there will be a few developments this year that give us new places to go should we decide to continue on.”
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