How did Brandon die in The Chi? The show never filmed it — the details arrived a season later

Season two left Brandon Johnson mid-storyline and season three opened at his funeral, with a closed casket and a photograph. Nobody on screen said how he got there for another year.

Brandon, played by Jason Mitchell, was the lead of Showtime's South Side Chicago drama from its 2018 premiere. Season two ended with him working with detectives against Otis "Douda" Perry. Season three, which premiered on 21 June 2020, opened with his mother Laverne (Sonja Sohn) delivering his eulogy, blaming the city for taking both of her sons — Brandon's younger brother Coogie was shot in the pilot.

What season three actually showed

Nothing. There is no death scene, no flashback, no on-screen account of what happened. Mitchell doesn't appear in the episode. The casket stays closed.

The season then moves on quickly. Alice Toussaint, set up as a significant figure, is dropped. The federal investigation into Douda — the thread Brandon's season two arc had been building — goes unmentioned. Laverne leaves Chicago.

Why there was no death scene

Mitchell was fired in May 2019, after season two had been filmed, following misconduct allegations from colleagues. Tiffany Boone, who played Brandon's girlfriend Jerrika, had reportedly asked to be written out in November 2018. Showrunner Ayanna Floyd Davis was among those who raised concerns. Mitchell's agent and manager both dropped him, and he has consistently denied wrongdoing, including in a Breakfast Club interview.

That timing is the whole explanation for the shape of the storyline. The writers had a completed season two ending Brandon's arc on a cliffhanger, and no actor available to resolve it.

The show had to dispose of its protagonist using only a eulogy, a photograph and a closed box. That's the budget you get when the decision is made in a meeting rather than a writers' room.

The answer arrives in season four

Episode six of season four opens with someone shooting Douda — by then the mayor of Chicago — on a rooftop while he waits for a date. He survives. The shooter reveals herself as Laverne, back in the city, who tells him he doesn't deserve to live after what he did to her son.

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Recovering in hospital, Douda tells his wife who shot him, and admits he was behind Brandon's death. His reasoning: Brandon had started talking to federal law enforcement, and he couldn't risk the exposure.

So the sequence, assembled across two seasons: Douda funded Brandon's taco truck, Brandon worked out what Douda actually ran, Brandon went to the feds, and Douda had him killed between seasons two and three.

Curtiss Cook, who plays Douda, told TVLine in 2021 that he'd been told his character would take a non-fatal bullet and had guessed at several shooters. When producers named Laverne, he said he got chills.

What it cost the show

The fix works as information and less well as drama. The confession is delivered in a hospital bed, to a character with no relationship to Brandon, about events nobody watched. Laverne, who had been gone for a season, returns to fire the gun and then exits again.

Douda himself survived until season six, when Nuck shot him — that one stuck.

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