It’s a sobering moment for Dead To Me fans, who have become so used to the dark fairytale element to the series; sometimes, there isn’t an easy way out. Sometimes life is cruel. And sometimes – more often than we’d like to admit – it deals the very worst cards of all to the people we love most.

This blow hits all the harder when you consider the fact that, while she was filming the third and final season of Dead To Me, Christina Applegate was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, an autoimmune disease that disrupts communication between the brain and body. Production shut down for about five months as she began treatment, and she was forced to grapple with the fact that she was fighting an incurable illness.

“There was the sense of, ‘Well, let’s get her some medicine so she can get better,’” she recalls during an interview with The New York Times. “And there is no better. But it was good for me. I needed to process my loss of my life, my loss of that part of me. So I needed that time.”

Applegate adds: “Although it’s not like I came on the other side of it, like, ‘Woohoo, I’m totally fine.’ “Acceptance? No. I’m never going to accept this. I’m pissed.”

Dead To Me season 3 finale: how Christina Applegate’s MS diagnosis makes that devastating ending even more powerful