Following in the footsteps of so many other shows and movies on social media this week, Deadly Class star Jack Gillett shared a piece of fan art that featured his character, Lex, along with a caption parodying the “Avenge the fallen” tagline from Avengers: Endgame character posters. It is a particularly appropriate idea for a “crossover,” since Joe and Anthony Russo, who directed Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, served as executive producers on the first season of Deadly Class, and Marvel Cinematic Universe veteran Benedict Wong plays Master Lin on the show. You can see the image, along with some comments by Gillett, in the Instagram post below.
Earlier today, the social media accounts for Skybound’s The Walking Dead made a series of similar posts. Unlike the characters from The Walking Dead who ended up with their heads on pikes last week, though, Gillett’s character was shot in the chest and dropped like a sack of potatoes. Granted, things seem pretty bleak for Lex, but characters on TV have survived worse, and Gillett himself tagged the Instagram post with the fan hashtag “#SaveLex.”
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Gillett made what might be his final appearance on Deadly Class last week when the season finale ended with Lex taking a bullet. It was an episode where danger lurked around every corner; Marcus (Benjamin Wadsworth) and a group of students from King’s Dominion sought out Chester “F–kface” Wilson (Tom Stevens) in the mansion he had essentially taken hostage following a King’s Dominion party in order to gain intel on Marcus. The raid on “F–kface Manor” went as well as could be expected: it was not without bloodshed, but by the end of the episode there were no fatalities on the King’s Dominion side. Saya left the battle in a rage after a conflict with Marcus, leaving Billy and Petra inside while Maria and Marcus headed toward the road outside.
They were carrying the head of Chico (Michel Duval), since that’s really what the whole raid was about: Chester had said that he would send the head to El Alma del Diablo, along with a detailed account of who had killed Chico, if Marcus and company did not assent to his demands. So when they rounded the corner to see El Alma del Diablo (David Zayas) and his men, things started to get ugly pretty fast. They got uglier still when Lex (Gillett) rounded a corner and was immediately shot in the chest. Then — credits. Lex is a character who got more development on screen than he had in the comics, and ultimately died in much the same way.
“Lex is a character that I loved and wished I had more time to develop [in the comics,]” showrunner Rick Remender told ComicBook.com. “The problem with any of these things is attention span in comic books. The fact that there are still human beings willing to go to a comic book shop, and pay $4 for a floppy single issue, and then collect it, and then religiously follow it — we’re very fortunate. Comic books is a wonderful community in that not many people get to do that, and then have an audience go to that much trouble to acquire the stories. However, it’s also something where, because Wes can only draw so much and I can only write so much, we’re putting out an average of 10 issues a year. When you add up the real estate of that and how much story you can get through, you really only get to do the choice, creamiest bits, and you have to be very mercenary in your choices, and so a lot of the time … like the first 12 issues of Deadly Class, I had outlined it, and at one point I think the original outline saw that at 20 issues. Now, I cut away every single not essential element, so that we could get to the meatiest, creamy bits faster, which on a new series that’s untested, unproven, and doesn’t have a built-in audience like Deadly Class was when we started the comic, you really can’t linger and drift too much, because people don’t know the book enough to know that oh, they’ll come around. This’ll pay out. You have to give them pay out.”
While it seems likely, there is no official word on a second season for Deadly Class yet. You can currently catch the first season of the series, which is based on an Image Comics series by Remender, artist Wes Craig, colorists Lee Loughridge and Jordan Boyd, and letterer Rus Wooton, on SVOD services for purchase, or free on SYFY’s website.
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