Warning: SPOILERS for Bridget Jones: Mad about the Boy

Fans of the Bridget Jones film series who haven’t read Helen Fielding’s source material for its latest movie, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, have a cruel surprise in store for them. Mark Darcy, Bridget Jones’ knight in shining armor from the first three movies, is dead. Colin Firth’s iconic symbol of good old-fashioned British gallantry and manhood has been killed off, and Bridget has been left mourning the loss of her dream man.

Just as this news was greeted with shock and outrage upon the publication of Fielding's novel Mad About the Boy 12 years ago, viewers expecting to see Firth back by Renée Zellweger’s side as Bridget’s husband are up in arms. The marital bliss that awaited the series heroine and the father of her newborn son William at the end of Bridget Jones’ Baby has been torn to shreds. In Mad About The Boy, Bridget is alone again, struggling with being single and returning to the dating game. As for why that is, it's all because of an event that occurred offscreen.

Mark Darcy Died On A Humanitarian Mission 4 Years Before Mad About The Boy's Timeline

He Went Out With Dignity, Doing What Was Important To Him

Mark Darcy was a barrister who took on international human rights cases related to humanitarian causes, which came in especially handy when Bridget found herself framed for drug trafficking in Thailand during Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. It’s also Mark’s humanitarian work that got him killed, however. He died stepping on a landmine in Sudan, where he was negotiating the release of some aid workers who’d been taken hostage.

His death is never shown in Bridget Jones: Mad about the Boy, as it occurred four years before Bridget’s latest romantic ordeal begins. In a way, this narrative choice spares fans of the series – and of Colin Firth’s Bridget Jones role in particular – the additional horror of having to see the man of Bridget’s dreams suffer his gruesome fate. It also spares Mark the indignity of dying onscreen, keeping his noble death a pure abstraction at arms’ length, which helps to retain the overall idealization of his image in the series.

Why Mad About The Boy Really Killed Off Colin Firth's Mark Darcy

Helen Fielding Needed Bridget Single Again

Helen Fielding’s decision to kill off Mark Darcy in her novel Mad about the Boy meant that this latest Bridget Jones movie adaptation had to follow suit. That meant saying goodbye to Colin Firth, the actor who’s played Darcy throughout the movie series and who actually first inspired the character, after Helen Fielding saw him as Mr. Darcy in the BBC’s 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. Firth’s Mark Darcy does still appear in the fourth Bridget Jones, but only in the form of an apparition. He’s otherwise most notable for his absence throughout the rest of the film.

When fronting up about her reasoning for getting rid of Darcy in 2013, Fielding said that she wanted to portray Bridget Jones as a single mother. The problem was, “Mark Darcy would never leave her,” she explained. “He's too much of a gentleman.” (via needed to kill Mark Darcy, making the fourth Bridget Jones story a widow’s tale. Fielding also drew on her own life experience, exploring her feelings about the premature death of her father, and the pain it caused her mother.

"This is a story about Bridget moving on and rebuilding herself rather than an epic tale of true love. Bridget already had her happily-ever-after many times over at this point." - Mary Kassel - ScreenRant's review of Bridget Jones: Mad about the Boy

Given that the creation of Mark Darcy as a character is inextricably intertwined with Firth as an actor, he was the hardest person to share the news of Mark’s death with. When Fielding called Firth to break it to him, he apparently told her, “You’ve killed the wrong one.” (via Variety)

How Mark's Death Changes Bridget In Mad About The Boy

She's Back In The Game, But Older And (Not Much) Wiser

Mark’s death has clearly taken its toll on his wife. In Mad about the Boy, Bridget seems different how previous films in the franchise portray her character. She’s extra neurotic, more unsure of herself than ever, and wracked with anxiety about aging alone without her husband. She’s taken to applying Botox to her face, and is struggling to adapt to the conventions of social media. On the other hand, enough time has ed since she lost Mark for Bridget to work through her grief.

The whole point of Bridget Jones: Mad about the Boy is that she’s a single woman in her fifties with two children, navigating the perils of romance in ways that made her such an appealing heroine to begin with, but in completely different circumstances. It’s Mark Darcy’s death that allows Bridget’s life to take this trajectory, reliving her age-old misgivings about prospective romantic matches through new-fangled matchmaking means like dating apps. As much as it’s easy to miss Mark, we’d miss this version of Bridget if he’d kept her away from the world of dating for the rest of her life.

Sources: BBC Radio 4; Variety