The Gilded Age Season 3’s Shocking Death Critiqued By VFX Artists

VFX artists are unimpressed by how the biggest death in The Gilded Age season 3 is visually depicted. At the end of The Gilded Age season 3, episode 6, John Adams (Claybourne Elder) is fatally struck by a fast-moving horse carriage while crossing the streets of New York City.

Even though this accidental death proved to be deeply shocking and devastating when audiences first saw it, VFX artists Jordan Allen, Niko Pueringer, and Sam Gorski of Corridor Crew are amused by the lackluster visual effects during the dramatic scene.

While Adams is supposed to be killed by the force of the speeding horse, Gorski notes that “The horse doesn’t even hit him”, which leads to Corridor Crew joking that Adams was really killed by a sonic shock wave from the horse. In addition to issues during the actual collision, Gorski points out how there was not enough visual buildup to the horse carriage’s arrival:

The horse doesn’t go 0 to 60. The horse has probably been running. So, we would have been seeing an out-of-control horse and people yelling down the street by now.

But what doesn’t make sense is why is he going legs up first? You watch all these shots of people getting hit by carriages in real life, and they don’t go legs up first. They go under the wheels.

Another issue Pueringer highlights in the scene is the use of green screen plates, where everyone else in the scene is walking side to side or standing still instead of walking toward the camera. Allen builds on this by noting how the extras do not react to the speeding carriage or Adams being struck.

Niko Pueringer: Separate from the horse hitting him, the other thing that bums me out about this shot is how every single green screen plate is only walking side to side. There’s not a single green screen element of a person walking toward the camera. Everybody’s walking side to side or standing still. One of the reasons for that is when you have green screen cards, you’re basically dealing with a cardboard cutout of a person, and when a person walks towards and away from the camera, you get depth, and you get their feet on the ground at different perspectives, and it breaks the illusion of the cardboard cutout, whereas they just moved side to side or stand around.

Jordan Allen: The activity of everyone else in the scene is another thing that detracts from the realism of it. They’re not doing anything on set to alert the talent that there’s some kind of explosion or something to look at. Everyone else is just acting like nothing happened.

Adams’ death is intended to be surprising and emotional instead of eliciting an amused reaction as it did from Corridor Crew. It was a defining moment of The Gilded Age season 3 and had a major impact on the events of episodes 7 and 8.

While visual issues with the collision, the use of green screen plates, and the extras not reacting feels glaring to Allen, Pueringer, and Gorski, these elements have not stopped The Gilded Age being more popular than ever. Season 3 had an all-time high Rotten Tomatoes critical score of 95% and an audience score of 85%.

The day after Adams’ dramatic death in episode 6, HBO Max announced that it had renewed the series for season 4. HBO Programming’s EVP Francesca Orsi praised the “undeniable viewership heights” that the show reached during season 3, and this was before episode 7 or The Gilded Age season 3’s ending had been released.

The Gilded Age is not a Game of Thrones-esque show where major characters are frequently killed off, which made Adams’ demise all the more shocking. That being said, there are lessons about visual storytelling that the show can learn from Corridor Crew‘s breakdown, and they can be applied in ways that go beyond main character deaths.