Does Sara Tancredi Die On Prison Break?

“Prison Break” was one of the most popular shows of the early 00s, and recently got a second life thanks to streaming. It’s a show that — like “24” and “Lost” — helped popularize serialized narratives in network TV. Instead of standalone episodes that made it easy for casual viewers to dip in and out, “Prison Break” told an ongoing story where every episode directly built up to the next one. This forced viewers to keep tuning in every single week expecting actual resolutions to the story.

The show follows two brothers, Lincoln Burrows (Dominic Purcell) and Michael Scofield (Wentworth Miller), whose lives are upended after Lincoln is wrongfully accused of murdering the vice president’s brother. When Lincoln is quickly sentenced to death and incarcerated in a high security prison, Michael takes it upon himself to commit armed robbery to get sentenced to the same prison as his brother. It’s not just because he misses him, though; Michael has a plan for the two to break out of jail.

“Prison Break” was a show full of exciting twists and riveting reveals that took the TV-viewing world by storm. Though the show started running out of steam after its first two seasons, it did last for four seasons and a movie before getting canceled — and then got another season before getting canceled again.

Throughout the seasons, “Prison Break” introduced plenty of memorable characters only to kill them off with miserable, shocking deaths. Characters that audiences had learned to care about, to root for. One such character is Sara Tancredi, played by Sarah Wayne Callies. Introduced in the very earliest days of the show, she became a central part of the story and the prison break team before a sudden departure. But did Sara actually die in “Prison Break” — or was it a fake-out?

Sara Tancredi is first introduced as the physician at the Fox River State Penitentiary. Michael first meets her when he fakes a diabetes diagnosis in order to get constant access to the infirmary at the prison as part of his escape plan. She quickly becomes attracted to Michael, and when Michael tells her about his plan to escape the prison she actively helps him by unlocking the door to the infirmary.

Unfortunately, Sara becomes a suspect in helping the group escape, leading to her leaving her home and trying to find Michael, running from the cops and Agent Mahone (William Fichtner), and being tortured by Paul Kellerman (Paul Adelstein). Soon enough, Sara becomes part of the plot to prove that Lincoln is innocent, and they blackmail the president in order to get a pardon for all of them. When that fails, Sara, together with Michael and Lincoln, leaves the country and heads for Panama with them. The second season ends with Sara shooting an agent trying to capture the brothers, and Michael taking the blame. 

Then, in season 3, Sara is kidnapped by the mysterious and powerful organization known only as The Company, and Lincoln is given Sara’s decapitated head in a box as punishment for not working with them.

Though Lincoln had allegedly seen Sara’s actual head in a box, it was revealed in the very first episode of season 4 that she was still alive. She had actually escaped her kidnapping, and the Company sent a fake head was sent in order to gain leverage over Michael and Lincoln. After Sara finally reunited with the brothers, the three set out to bring down the Company once and for all, and season 4 ends with a glimpse of Sara being pregnant with Michael’s child. This gets expanded in “Prison Break: The Final Break” which shows their wedding, as well as the Michael’s apparent death.

When “Prison Break” was brought back for a fifth and final season, we got to catch up with Sara. Believing that Michael was dead, Sara had moved to New York and married a man named Jacob (Mark Feuerstein). Sadly, he turns out to be the rogue CIA operative in charge of the cell 21Void and responsible for Michael’s latest incarceration.

Even if “Prison Break” largely avoided being impacted by the writers’ strike of 2007-2008, it wasn’t exactly smooth sailing for the Fox drama. Executive producer Matt Olmstead once told TV Guide that the writers’ initial pitch to the network was rejected, so they decided to pivot and find a new motivation for Michael. This led to Sara’s temporary departure from the show as a head in a box. “In order to make the season work, we really didn’t have any other motivation for Michael,” Olmstead said. “We determined that this was the right thing to do in order to really jolt the series.”

Initially, Callies was asked to be in a handful of episodes rather than continue to be a series regular for the whole season. Her contract stipulated that she had to return only if it was for an entire 22-episode season, so returning for fewer episodes meant that some negotiations were in order. Since Callies was pregnant and living in Canada at the time, it made it difficult to relocate for filming. Rather than come up with a way of having Callies appear in more episodes, Olmstead and the team suggested reducing her role more and more (which she then rejected, unsurprisingly), down to even suggesting just having her appear via a phone conversation.

After season 3 of “Prison Break” got a negative reception, the producers decided to bring Sara back from the dead — which is not exactly uncommon in the show.

After “Prison Break,” Sarah Wayne Callies was cast as main character Rick Grimes’ wife, Lori Grimes, in “The Walking Dead.” She remained part of the main cast for the first three seasons of the show until she was once again killed off — though at least she wasn’t fake-decapitated this time. Following the monumental success of the zombie drama, Callies joined the cast of the dystopian sci-fi drama “Colony” opposite Josh Holloway, where she played a secret Resistance operative and bar owner.

On the film side, Callies starred opposite Nicolas Cage in “Pay the Ghost,” a supernatural thriller about a man looking for his kidnapped son who is suddenly plagued by ghostly images. Most recently, she played the role of Birdie in the Hulu limited series “The Company You Keep” alongside Milo Ventimiglia. Sadly, not only did the series get canceled, it was also unceremoniously deleted from Hulu.