Nashville 5.09 review: The show just made a huge mistake - here's why

*This article contains spoilers: Nashville season 5 episode 9*

If you’re reading this, then I’ll assume you already watched the latest episode of Nashville, “If Tomorrow Never Comes,” episode 5.09. I’ll also assume that you’re pretty annoyed and confused right now, because I know I am. One last spoiler alert: Rayna James is no more. Yes, after escaping her knife-wielding stalker and seemingly surviving a car accident, she succumbed to internal injuries at the end of episode 9. The circumstances leading up to her death allowed for a truly great hour of TV: emotional, well-acted and featuring a number of great deathbed goodbyes. That being said, I think it was a huge mistake for the show in the long run.

To call Rayna Nashville’s lead undersells her importance. She was the glue that held the show together, the one character who managed to keep it grounded. This was the case even in this episode; when Deacon arrived at the hospital, she wryly asked “Can you believe this?” offering the show a much-needed touch of self-awareness. Due in no small part to Connie Britton’s balanced performance, Rayna consistently made Nashville keep one toe in the sand of realism, especially when soapy elements threatened to overwhelm it, and I have no idea how the show functions without that.

It’s worth noting, Nashville has a co-lead in Juliette Barnes (and Hayden Panettiere has proven herself just as capable as Connie Britton), but the best version of this show needs both Juliette and Rayna. To put it in perspective, there was a stretch of not great episodes last season where Juliette was MIA. Nashville suffered in her absence, needing her fiery yang to Rayna’s cooler yin, and, unfortunately, I think that goes both ways. Juliette is oftentimes an exhausting character, experiencing emotional highs and lows in the span of one episode, and that’s easier to swallow when she has a steady counterpart in Rayna. Rayna had emotional moments throughout her journey, absolutely, but they were typically more measured and less frequent than Juliette’s, and the show was usually smart enough not to have both women face an emotional crisis at the same time.

Rayna’s death also feels like an extreme case of missed opportunity, one that’s going to be hard to put aside going forward. In the case of Juliette and Rayna, we barely scratched the surface of what was possible for their relationship. Sadly, this is the case after four and a half seasons that should have been centered around their tumultuous rivalry and eventual friendship. Instead, after the first season, Rayna and Juliette’s shared scenes were few and far between.

Similarly, Rayna and Deacon finally achieved romantic bliss in the first ten episodes of season 5, and, while it was a joy to watch them co-parent and flirt and support each other emotionally the way I wish they had for the entire series, it’s extremely disappointing that those ten episodes are all we’ll get. Ditto for Rayna’s relationship with her girls: she and Maddie were just starting to understand one another as adults, while Daphne was, at last, enjoying some stability at home, stability that unfortunately came to an end with this episode. Plus, at the end of the day, Rayna herself deserved better. She was a strong, talented, caring woman who had a rough life and earned far more happiness than what she was given. As a result, it’s hard to imagine looking at a scene or storyline without considering how it would have been improved by Rayna’s presence.

And, unfortunately, the promo for the next episode does nothing to assuage my worries. I have no interest in watching a custody battle, for one, and the other characters’ storylines have become less engrossing as season 5 has gone on. As I mentioned in last week’s review, I don’t love what happened to Scarlett and Gunnar’s relationship, and, while I’m enjoying Juliette’s gospel storyline, it’s also become fairly predictable. I’m absolutely rooting for Nashville to come back from this, but I’m also not holding my breath.

How do you guys feel about Rayna’s shocking death? Let me know in the comments!

More Nashville articles:

Nashville 5.08 review: We want the old Gunnar back! Plus Rayna’s stalker showdown