Degrassi: The Next Generation Fans Look Back at Heartbreaking Character Death, 18 Years Later: ‘Never the Same’

It’s been 18 years since one of Degrassi: The Next Generation‘s most heartbreaking episodes.

On Jan. 26, 2007, the beloved Canadian teen series aired “Rock This Town,” which features the death of beloved character J.T. Yorke.

On Sunday, Degrassi fan account @degrassichats posted about the emotional moment, writing, “it’s been 18 years since we lost JT Yorke.”

Multiple fans responded with comments like, “And it still hurts to this day,” and “I was never the same.”

The episode featured a house party in which J.T. (Ryan Cooley) talks to his best friend, Toby Isaacs (Jake Goldsbie), about realizing he has feelings for his ex and longtime friend, Liberty Van Zandt (Sarah Barrable-Tishauer).

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As he goes out to find her, he walks out front and down the block, where he sees two students from a rival school, one of whom is peeing on his car. When J.T. turns around to get into his car, one of the students stabs him.

Liberty finds him injured and alone and calls for help, but the next scene at the hospital reveals his injuries were fatal, crushing the longtime friend group. The character’s death reverberates over episodes as the school mourns the lovable goofball.

In a 2007 interview with TVAddict.com, Cooley revealed that the writers decided to kill off his character, which he was at peace with because he was contemplating leaving the show to attend college anyway.

“My last episode was shot in August, and knowing that I wasn’t coming back made it easier for me to decide to go to university,” he shared.

It presented a challenge however, not only in how he’d play out the character’s last days, but how he’d keep the news from the costars he grew up alongside.

“We were trying to keep it very hush-hush, so much so that we didn’t tell anyone on the set. The only people who knew that I was leaving was myself, my agent, the writers and Degrassi executive producer Linda Schuyler,” he said.

“It was pretty hard. It was especially hard for me not to tell my co-actors, because normally there are not a lot of secrets when it comes to storylines. It was difficult to shoot from May to August without telling anybody, but I think that people kind of had an idea,” he said. “It was going around the set that somebody was going to get killed off the show. But I tried to keep the secret as well as I could.”

Though portions of the Degrassi cast have reunited over the years, Cooley has since left the entertainment industry behind. Today, he is vice president of Konrad Group, a digital agency and product innovation firm.

In a 2017 interview with Refinery29, Sarah Barrable-Tishauer, who played Liberty and today performs as DJ Me Time, talked about reconnecting with Cooley.

“I actually just recently made contact with Ryan again for the first time. I hadn’t talked to him in a long time. I think it’s like you went to school with or elementary school with,” she said.

“Once you make that reconnection, it’s really nice. I don’t actively see anyone, but we certainly catch up from time to time. We’re all super busy doing different things.”