Why did these people die in Serenity?

Question

In the film Serenity several fan-favourite characters die:

Hoban Wash and Shepherd Book.

In particular, I felt that Wash's death seemed especially pointless - not a heroic end but just dead without even a closing speech, unlike Shepherd who at least got to make a few wisecracks.

What is the out of universe reason for this?

Was it just to heighten the tension, since almost everyone was injured at the end and could have died as well? Or did Joss Whedon want to refresh the crew in any future series?

Answer 1

About Wash specifically, Whedon himself said:

Dramatically, the more I worked on [the screenplay], the more it became clear that in order to make people feel that this was real, a certain shocking thing is going to have to happen.

Cited in this article which is entirely about Whedon's tendencies to do such things in many of his series, and the reasons behind it. I'm with him - heroic deaths are by now a ridiculously worn-out trope.

Note that he's also said that he would not have killed off Wash if the series had not been cancelled, so kinda the opposite of your speculation: he used the opportunity of not having to "conserve" characters to give the story more impact.

This shows a fundamental weakness of the series format: you want to continue using characters, so you can't have them die even if it would make for a better story. When writers want to have their cake and eat it too here, it leads to comic book death.