Well it seems like Charlie Harper, the character formerly acted by Charlie Sheen, will be meeting his demise after all, making sure he will never be back ever.

At first Chuck Lorre said that he didn’t plan to kill off Harper and that seemed to make the most sense. After as many seasons as the show has run, it would seem to me that they would forced to then write mourning into the script, which would take away from the comedy, or risk just sounding really fake. Cryer is Charlie’s brother in the show and so there is bound to be some heavy loss there even if they didn’t get along. Disappearing could have avoided that.

Of course, as we said in a previous article, in the last episode that he filmed for Two and Half Men, the plot had given Lorre the perfect out. Charlie Harper was flying to Paris with a woman. It would have been so easy to just leave him in France and they could’ve had a one sided phone conversation here and there.

But instead, Lorre decided that now he wants to kill him off. I guess it will keep lawyers from being able to give Charlie the opportunity to come back at all if the character is dead. My guess is that there is also some kind of contractual reason for it, although that hasn’t been confirmed. But it’s hard to get paid if your character no longer exists in the show at all.

Of course, news of Harper’s demise has the net abuzz with what method they will use. A flaming ball of fire that used to be a plane would seem to be the most appropriate choice because it would correlate best with the previous episode and provide continuity. But then if they want to reflect Charlie, both Sheen and Harper, partying while driving would probably work as well. And they could get a drinking and driving PSA in there in the process.

The other reason for the visit from the grim reaper is that they want to introduce Ashton Kutcher as someone who buys the house from Harper’s estate. This really doesn’t make any sense. If he bought the house, why in the heck would he let the other one and a half men live there? Charlie’s reason was they were family, unless Kutcher is some long lost cousin or something. An idea from the soap operas perhaps?

Anyway, Two and Half Men will make its season debut in the fall. And we’ll find out what happened, unless it’s leaked way before then.