Six Feet Under: Why Lisa's Death Is The Series' Weirdest Mystery

Whenever television characters disappear into thin air, fans are often left wondering what happened. Sometimes, these individuals are never mentioned again; sometimes, they're replaced by suspiciously familiar new faces who function similarly within the plot. Lisa Kimmel (Lili Taylor) never ends up being replaced within the narrative of "Six Feet Under," yet her sudden departure from the series continues to cast a confusing pall over the show's legacy.

Lisa is Nate's (Peter Krause) wife and even gives birth to their daughter, Maya, before the weight of Nate's undying affection for Brenda Chenowith (Rachel Griffiths) leads her to suspect he's cheating on her. Towards the end of Season 3, Lisa suddenly disappears. Nate becomes increasingly frantic, concerned about Lisa's shaky mental health, when he learns that her body has washed up on a beach. Nate buries Lisa in accordance with her wishes; when her sister Barb (Julie Dretzin) figures out Nate has given them another person's ashes, she confronts Nate, and some form of the truth emerges. Hoyt (Jeff Yagher), Lisa's brother-in-law, admits that he and Lisa were having an affair, that he didn't want her to tell Barb, inadvertently hints that he murdered Lisa ... and then commits suicide.

It's a jaw-dropping situation that's bizarre, to say the least, mostly because it has little grounding in the plotline surrounding it. Having Lisa cheat on Nate when his fidelity concerns her makes little sense. The mystery is also never completely solved, and Hoyt's actions — though maybe not his guilt — remain ambiguous. That makes Lisa's death feel like a non-event. Were the writers simply trying to show that life is brutal and short? Or were they trying to get rid of Lisa? It's a question that continues to baffle Taylor.

Lisa's passing confused even Lisa's portrayer, Lili Taylor, who told The A.V. Club in 2010 that it came to her as a complete surprise. "I didn't know any of it. I don't think that they really knew." Taylor told The A.V. Club that actors working on "Six Feet Under" weren't kept abreast of their characters' upcoming storylines in order to better accommodate the writers' room. While the writers' hopes of keeping the story under wraps may have helped surprise the audience, Taylor admitted to the A.V. Club that she struggled to construct Lisa's interior life properly from the bits and pieces she learned via her scripts. If she had the chance to go back and redo the experience again, she said she'd take more time to build up Lisa from the inside out.

Lisa — who helps provide several of the most heartbreaking "Six Feet Under" moments — has a rich afterlife and haunts Brenda and Nate throughout Season 4, and her existence acts as a harbinger for Brenda's eventual misery. Nate can't manage to stay faithful to Brenda. Once the two of them marry, neither of them can cope with her miscarriage, and he cheats on her with Maggie (Tina Holmes), the Quaker daughter of George Sibley (James Cromwell), his stepfather. At the end of the show and in the middle of a rendezvous with Maggie, Nate has a stroke caused by a brain hemorrhage, which leads to his untimely death. If "Six Feet Under" teaches its viewers anything, it's that irony is always a dish best served by death.

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