How and Why Jason Mitchell's Brandon Died

If you were a casual fan of the Southside Chicago drama series The Chi that premiered in 2018, you might have been a little confused when main character Brandon Johnson (Jason Mitchell) was suddenly written off the show. Season 2 ended with the character in a rough, tough spot, leaving fans wondering during the offseason how he was going to deal with all the chaos. The season 3 opener revealed that he won't be able to handle it at all. He died off-screen between seasons — or as “Simpsons” fans might say, Brandon died en route to his home planet.

It's not unlike what happened in the sixth and final season of “House of Cards” with Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey). he was revealed to have died off-screenthough the audience definitely knew that wasn't the writers' plan when they ended Season 5. It's always awkward when real-life circumstances invade a fictional world, and “The Chi” was no exception. If you want to know why Brandon died so suddenly, you first need to understand what happened to actor Jason Mitchell…

Hard to know exactly like that which happened because so many of the people involved seem to have signed NDAs or are otherwise just not that comfortable with giving away too much information. The bottom line, however, is that Mitchell was allegedly responsible for numerous behind-the-scenes sexual misconduct, most notably against co-star Tiffany Boone. Boone played Brandon's girlfriend, Jericha, but asked to be removed from the show due to repeated harassment of Mitchell. Hosted by Ayanna Floyd Davis talked about the situation in 2019:

“I discussed Tiffany's allegations with the studio's (HR) department and made HR presentations to the writers, cast and crew. After all, everyone was well aware of Jason's behavior and his many HR cases, including Lena (Waithe), the creator and executive producer of the show, who is very involved at the studio and network level… As a showrunner, I did my best to deal with his behavior, talking to the studio's HR department several times and telling one actress herself to call HR before I became the target of his rage and inappropriateness and had to report him to HR as well.

In May 2019, Johnson was officially fired from the series. Creator Lena Waithe also explained the decision a bit in an interview about The Breakfast Club Podcastexplaining how she had heard about Mitchell's troubling behavior after Season 1, confronted him and tried to resolve the situation with him to no avail. “There was definitely a conversation where I called him and got really real,” she explained. “”You have to treat every woman on set with respect. You have to have respect for everyone… Don't treat any woman differently than you would treat me.”

In the first two seasons, Brandon seemed to be on the upswing: slowly but surely achieving his dreams of becoming a chef despite the constant distractions of Southside life. In “The Chi” Season 1, he starts a food truck and quickly becomes one of the show's most likable, moral characters, serving as a much-needed mentor to younger characters like Kevin (Alex Hibbert). However, as Season 2 progressed, he caught the uneasy attention of Otis “Dude” Perry (Curtis Cook), a schemer who would soon somehow become the mayor of Chicago. Gradually, Douda is revealed to be the worst, and by the end of Season 2, Brandon has been arrested and fired by Jericha. He ends the season seemingly deciding to talk to the police and take a crack at Dowd, but we never see that play out.

How would this have been resolved if it weren't for Mitchell's behind-the-scenes transgression that interrupted the story? Many fans think that Brandon would have redeemed himself in “The Chi” Season 3, that he and the detective who arrested him (Alice Toussaint, played by Crystal Dickinson) would have teamed up to take down Duda. Maybe Brandon would have even gotten Jericho back, stayed out of jail, and ended up fulfilling most of his restaurant dreams.

Fans have also speculated that the Season 5 storyline with Emmett (Jacob Latimore), where he works at a restaurant with Duda, would likely have gone to Brandon had the character not been written out. Overall, Emmett, with his constant relationship drama and dreams of self-improvement, feels like he was given a lot of material in later seasons that would have otherwise been given to Brandon.

“The Chi” Season 3 opens with Brandon's mother Laverne (Sonja Sohn) speaking at his funeral, mourning his death and blaming Chicago's problems for taking him away from her. “I never should have raised them in a town that would rather see their likeness on a brick wall than see them graduate from college. . . . They were all I had and this town took them away from me.” It's a continuation of the show's many critiques of the city's systemic problems, except this time because, well, we know it's not Chicago's fault she's crying here; this is jason mitchell.

The rest of Season 3 moves away from Brandon's storyline significantly. The once important character of Alice Toussaint is abruptly dropped, as is any mention of the Feds being destroyed by Dowd. The show is strangely uninterested in explaining how and why Brandon died, though it finally does in the Season 4 storyline where Laverne returns to Chicago and shoots Dowd. (Unfortunately, he lives, but at least we know for sure that he was the one who killed Brandon.) The whole thing was just kind of a mess. The early seasons were often compared to “The Wire” in its scope and stylebut by Season 3, the show had killed any chance it would ever be considered in the same league.

The general consensus among fans is that the first two seasons were some of the best that “The Chi” had to offer, and that things started to fall apart a bit when Brandon was written off the show. Fans often wondered if recasting Brandon would have been a smarter choice, or if they could have found a way to end his arc a little more gracefully.

In addition to being cut from The Chi, Jason Mitchell was fired from the film's production in 2019. drama film “Desperados” and was dropped by his talent agency. Mitchell's dismissal from “The Chi” wasn't the end of his career — he's since starred in some lesser-known, low-budget films — but it certainly marked the end of him being a promising Hollywood up-and-comer. whose movies would receive rave reviews at the Sundance Film Festival.

That same year, Mitchell denounced the allegations against him that led to his firing from The Chi. In an interview for the Breakfast Club podcasthe said: “I really hate to say this because I'm all for the Me Too movement… I have two beautiful daughters that I'd love to be in this business with, so I'm all for the Me Too movement But I think in this situation Ayanna ( Floyd Davis) tried to use it as a really, really ugly weapon.

In May 2020, he was arrested in Mississippi on multiple drug and weapons charges. As a deadline reported at the time, “Mitchell was charged with possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute and two counts of possession of a weapon by a felon. During the traffic stop, Mitchell was found in possession of an AK-47 assault rifle, a Glock pistol and two pounds of marijuana, as well as the drug ecstasy, records show .

Mitchell addressed this situation a 2023 interview a few years later. “I was on my way to New Orleans to see family … and I just got in the wrong car with the wrong people,” he said. “It wasn't what it was, you know what I mean? … All those charges have been dropped, completely dismissed, I don't deal with it anymore, but at the time it was just pathetic and embarrassing. deal with it.”