Once just wasn’t enough for Two and a Half Men.
For the finale of the intensely popular sitcom, creator Chuck Lorre revived Charlie Sheen’s character — who had been killed off in 2011 after the actor had a very public meltdown — only to kill him all over again.
The one-hour finale was labeled “an hour-long slap at its former star” by the Washington Post, after the episode made joke after joke about Sheen’s infamous collapse, his subsequent career and scandals.
In a production note, Lorre explained that Sheen had been invited to appear in the finale alongside former co-star Jon Cryer and Sheen’s replacement Ashton Kutcher.
Sheen, however, declined to appear, but the writers wrote him into the episode anyway, under the guise that the character hadn’t actually been killed in 2011. He’d simply been imprisoned by Rose (played by Melanie Lynskey), his one-time stalker. The producers then had the Charlie character — played by a Sheen look-a-like — only appear at the very end of the episode, shot from behind before being crushed by a piano.
Read next: Here’s What Jon Stewart Wants From the Next Host of The Daily Show
Get The Brief. Sign up to receive the top stories you need to know right now.
