Peacock Show to Kill off Character After Actor’s Death

A Peacock show is preparing to say goodbye to a character following an actor’s death.

Next week on Days of Our Lives, the long-running soap will officially be killing off Drake Hogestyn’s character, John Black.

Hogestyn passed away in September following a battle with pancreatic cancer. He appeared in over 4,200 episodes, from 1985 to 2009 and 2011 until his final appearance on Sept. 9, 2024, just weeks before his death. In November, executive producer Ken Corday explained to Soap Opera Digest that Hogestyn, who had to step away because of his worsening condition, had actually signed off on John’s fate before his passing.

“We were rolling the dice because it’s difficult to tell a story of someone’s death or a character’s death while the actor is still alive; albeit [Drake] was fighting, like a tiger, a very difficult disease,” Ken Corday said at the time. “And I made the choice to, ‘Okay, let’s tell the story.’ He hadn’t been on [the show] in nine months. We needed a reason [for John’s absence].”

“He and I were in contact,” he continued. “I wanted to make sure Drake signed off on this, and he was totally in favor of it. He trusted me. Had Drake, God willing, beaten this, he would’ve come back, and it would’ve been something different. But [the story] had to be told. It was extremely difficult and painful for us to tell it — for the cast, for everybody. Drake was a big part of the show. The consummate actor. Always a team player and pretty good-looking, too.”

Now the time has come. Peacock released a promo for John’s goodbye, which sees the family visiting him in a hospital room, but his face is covered in bandages after seemingly being involved in a shooting. Everyone says their goodbyes, and it’s clear that it’s not just the characters who are saying goodbye to John, but the actors saying goodbye to Hogestyn.

“While we wanted John to have a heroic and meaningful exit, we wrote the story with the fervent hope that Drake would be able to return someday,” the writers said about the storyline. “John had already been off for over nine months, and there were only so many missions the man could be on. Realizing he might never come back, while praying he would, we needed to craft an exit that honored John, Drake, and the fans.”

New episodes of Days of Our Lives air weekdays on Peacock.