Warning: As a potential Death Trope for successful examples, many unmarked spoilers are ahead.
Burn the Witch! in Live-Action TV series.
- American Horror Story:
- On Coven, the Salem Witch Trials are discussed, and a present day witch is burned at the stake for having the ability to bring people back from the dead. The witches also burn their own at the stake if they are convicted of murdering another witch.
- More witches are burned in Apocalypse.
- In an episode of Bewitched, the characters are transported back in time to old Salem. Someone ends up tied to a stake with kindling piled around their feet before the episode is out. Ironically, it was Darrin who ended up accused of witchcraft for having used a match. Bewitched spent several episodes in Salem, either 4 or 8. It was a sizable chunk of that season.
- The Blackadder episode "Witchsmeller Pursuivant" had fun with this trope. The titular "witch-hunter" convicts Edmund and his associates of witchcraft in an absurd Kangaroo Court, and they are sentenced to be burned alive. However, the Queen provides them a doll that resembles the Witchsmeller, who catches fire himself while they're unharmed. The episode implies that the Queen is the real witch.
- In an episode of The Borgias, Cesare and Machiavelli witness the burning of an accused witch by peasants outside Florence. Savonarola is later burned as well, but for heresy.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- In "Gingerbread", Buffy, Willow, and Amy are almost burned at the stake in a Witch Hunt organized by Buffy's own mother because of a demon posing as two dead children who reappear every fifty years to use More than Mind Control to convince a town to kill the "bad girls" (witches). The demon is European, so the burning is actually accurate. Oddly enough, the (averted) burning takes place inside the city hall. Apparently the ventilation system is really good. And has really big air vents. Of course, the demon that was orchestrating the whole thing didn't care if its mob asphyxiated itself. The more dead, the better.
- Anya, a former vengeance demon who was alive during the actual Salem witch trials, notes that real witches could use their powers to escape. "So, really, it was only bad for the falsely accused — and, well, they never have a good time." This was shown in "Gingerbread" when the only qualified witch turns herself into a rat to escape (unfortunately she stays that way for three years, as no-one knew how to turn her back). Willow (who's only dabbling in witchcraft at the time) is left tied to the stake along with Buffy.
- Averted in the episode "The Witch", but a deleted line in the shooting script had Giles consulting his books on the best way to find a witch, only to come up with the drowning test. He admits that his texts are somewhat outdated.
- Charmed:
- "The Witch Is Back", had the Halliwell sisters' ancestor burned at the stake in Salem. The same mistake is made in the second or third episode, in a documentary that Piper watches on TV.
- "Morality Bites" had the Halliwells traveling forward in time to keep Phoebe from being burned at the stake after they did something that would have led to massive witch hunts in the future.
- Subverted in "All Halliwell's Eve" when the sisters are sent back in time to colonial Virginia. When they are accused of being witches, they are hanged.
- In the fourth season finale dealing with a modern witch hunter, the witch he targets is to be burned at the stake. Of course in this case, she doesn't know about her powers and therefore can't fight back. The Charmed Ones - who can - are tricked into thinking she is the witch hunter.
- Referenced in Chewin' the Fat where Ronald, "the second worst actor in the world", lands a movie role as a Puritan villager demanding the burning of an accused witch. As usual he ruins the scene despite having no lines.
- Criminal Minds: The Unsub of "In the Blood" is obsessed with the Salem Witch Trials and believes that he is killing witches. His first few victims are either crushed or hanged, and the team manage to stop him just before he burns a woman at the stake. The episode does point out that no one was burnt to death at the Salem trials.
- Cursed (2020) is full of witch-burning of the Fey by the Red Paladins, either torching entire villages, or chaining them up and burning them at the stake to make their point.
- An episode of the first season of The Dead Zone television show had Smith going through a small town where a murder with satanic vibes had been committed. Since he displays knowledge of the crimes via his powers, they think he did the murder. They put him on trial for witchcraft so he can't leave the town while they search for evidence to pin him with. An angry mob ends up carrying him out of the courtroom to burn him at the stake for the murder, because a child and her mother was involved, and another girl was missing.
- Doctor Who:
- In "The Dæmons", the Doctor is nearly burnt at the stake by Morris Dancers. He's saved by the local "white" witch.
- The Sisterhood of Karn attempts to execute the Doctor by burning him at the stake in "The Brain of Morbius".
- Tegan is nearly burnt at the stake as a sacrifice in "The Awakening". By Civil War recreationists.
- It's not literally burning at the stake, but the Doctor is nearly thrown out of the airlock in a Burn the Witch moment in "Midnight".
- "The Woman Who Lived": The immortal Ashildr mentions the residents of one village she lived in tried to drown her as a witch after she saved them from scarlet fever. She held her breath and swum away undetected.
- "The Witchfinders" involves a lot of suspected witches being drowned in a ducking chair by a landowner leading a frenetic witch hunt. At least some of the victims are being killed because the landowner, who's possessed by an evil alien she thinks is Satan, is trying to save her own skin.
- Farscape. When Noranti (an Ambiguously Evil but definitely cuckoo old woman who likes playing with potions) is introduced to the series, D'argo (who as an alien should not be aware of this trope) suggests burning her.Crichton (confused): You burn your old people?D'argo: No, it just sounded like a good idea.
- In the Firefly episode "Safe", River incurs the wrath of the settlers of Jiangyin when her mind-reading powers are misunderstood as witchcraft. Interestingly, the village elder doesn't believe in witchcraft, but when she reveals he killed the previous elder he loudly changes his mind. She is about to get burned at the stake along with her brother Simon when the Big Damn Heroes show up in the moment that named the trope. Amusingly, Mal agrees with the townsfolk that River's a witch. His objection is that she's also part of his crew.Mal: Yes, but she's OUR witch. [KA-CHINK!] So cut her the hell down.
- Forever Knight. In "For I Have Sinned", Vampire Detective Nick Knight is shown to have witnessed Joan of Arc's burning for heresy, and feels guilty for fleeing when she called on him to hold up a cross for her to gain courage from. The Villain of the Week is a religious Serial Killer who ends up tying a woman to a cross and lighting it, so Nick has to Face Your Fears and rescue her.
- Game of Thrones:
- Invoked by Daenerys as both a punishment for deceiving her and for a bit of Blood Magic of her own. Mirri Maz Duur tells Daenerys she will use magic to heal her husband Khal Drogo from sepsis, which technically she does, but she also renders Drogo permanently comatose and causes the stillbirth of their son Rhaego (due to a prophecy that Rhaego would conquer the world). Daenerys has Mirri tied to Drogo's funeral pyre and throws her dragon eggs in as well, using her as a human sacrifice to hatch them.
- Inverted by Melisandre, a witch who burns people in sacrifice to the Lord of Light, who's like a fire god. Axell Florent is burned by Melisandre along with two others for worshipping the Seven in secret.
- Ghosts, a 1995 BBC horror anthology show (not to be confused with the later Ghosts (UK)) references this trope in the episode "The Chemistry Lesson." A man goes to an inexperienced young witch for a love spell; she helps him steal a bracelet belonging to the woman he loves, and bury it under a stone circle where witches gathered. He later finds out that the site became cursed after the witches were burned there.
- In Good Omens, just like in the original novel, the witch Agnes Nutter is burned by the townsfolk of Tadfield, Oxfordshire, and Witchfinder Major Thou-Shalt-Not-Commit-Adultery Pulsifer. It's pointed out that much of what she's done was to help her townsfolk (curing sickness, trying to improve their overall health by introducing jogging), but they're all Ungrateful Bastards and decide to burn her. Knowing it's coming, she prepares herself and leaves behind a book of prophecies for the next 350 years, before walking out and allowing herself to be burned, though not before filling her skirts with gunpowder and roofing nails, turning herself into a claymore mine.Agnes Nutter: Gather thee right close, good people. Come close until the fire near scorch ye, for I charge ye that all must see how the last true witch in England dies. And let my death be a message to the world. Come. Come. Gather thee close, I say. And mark well the fate of those who meddle with such as they do not understand.
Thou-Shalt-Not-Commit-Adultery Pulsifer: [spotting the gunpowder] Oh, bugger.
[BOOM]- When Witchfinder Sergeant Shadwell is sending Newton Pulsifer (the above-mentioned Witchfinder Major's modern-day descendant) to Tadfield, he equips him with the usual implements of a witchfinder, including kindling to burn any witches he finds. Newton protests, but Shadwell is insistent. After Newton is brought to Anathema Device's cottage, she knows exactly who he is from her ancestor's prophecies, and the first thing she does it take away his kindling before admitting she's a witch herself.
- In Highlander: The Series, Duncan MacLeod escaped being burned. His also-immortal buddy was not so lucky. Apparently, when you can regenerate, being burned continually for hours is enough to drive you Ax-Crazy.
- Spoofed in a sketch from Horrible Histories called "Wicked Witches". The sketch is an advert for Witch-finders Direct who claim to find some innocent woman and blame your misfortunes on her and have her burnt to death. They might also send witches' cats to prison.Witch-finder: Do you have a cat?
Old woman: Yes.
Witch-finder: Then thou art a witch! - In the Inside No. 9 episode "The Trial of Elizabeth Gadge", Elizabeth is an old woman accused of witchcraft who will be burned at the stake if found guilty.
- Legends of Tomorrow:
- Averted in "Out of Time". Sara is stranded in Virginia during the Salem Witch Trials and accused of being a witch for "corrupting" the local women ("In my defense, they were happily corrupted"), and is nearly hanged by the locals. Complete with cries of "Hang the Witch!", which while possibly more accurate, is sadly a lot less catchy than "Burn the Witch!"
- Played with in "Witch Hunt". Constantine and Sarah point out that there was never any real magic in Salem, and they hanged witches instead of burning them. But now a time travel mishap means there is real magic in Salem, and Zari pisses off the townsfolk enough that they decide to bring back burning.
- Luna Nera: Pietro's father The Witch Hunter interrogates and burns Ade's grandmother on the Bishop's orders.
- MacGyver (1985): In "Good Knight, MacGyver", Sir Duncan attempts to burn Merlin at the stake after framing him for attempting to murder King Arthur.
- In Merlin (2008), people who are suspected of being witches are either burnt at the stake or beheaded.
- In "The Mark of Nimueh", Gwen is falsely accused of witchcraft, and has to be saved by the other characters.
- "The Witchfinder", where Gaius is almost burnt at the stake.
- In "Queen Of Hearts" Merlin escapes being burned at the stake when disguised as an old wizard using magic (it makes you wonder why more don't do that, or can't).
- There was a whole episode of Midsomer Murders (series set in a fictional English county) about burning witches; at the end, a descendant of a woman executed for witchcraft in 17th century told Barnaby that they never actually burned witches in the village, they just hanged them. Hanged, hanged, hanged. In England at least, burning was strictly reserved as a punishment for men committing heresy. However, for centuries it was on the statute books that for capital crimes women should be put to death by burning whereas men should be hanged.
- Motherland: Fort Salem:
- A reenactment of Sarah Adler being condemned to death at Salem is portrayed through an In-Universe play (more accurately, they're shown hanging accused witches, not burning them). She saves herself using magic however.
- Later on, Scylla mentions over a thousand women or girls were burned by a German city as witches in 1761 (after the witch burnings had stopped with our world there, but they diverged). She also says just last year a woman also was burned in the Philippines, so it still hasn't gone away entirely (however, this may have been a lynching, not a legal penalty).
- In the first season finale, the Camarilla burn several captured witches at the stake.
- An episode of Murder, She Wrote revolves around a woman who was burned for being a witch (yes, in Maine), her present-day descendant, and a con artist who's pretending to be the witch's ghost to drum up publicity for an unscrupulous writer. Unfortunately, she's killed, and her body is in a building that burned down, leading people to think her death was about suspicions of witchcraft. It wasn't. The real descendant's fiancé found out his fiancée's "sister" was a fake and killed her, then placed her in a building that was then burned by the writer.
- A friend of Peggy in Mysterious Ways survives what should have been a fatal motorcycle accident in Uganda, where she is trying to convince the local population to use modern medicine instead of witch doctors and the like. She is accused of being a witch because of her miraculous survival and blamed for a disease that threatens to destroy the village. The witchcraft accusation is mostly a smokescreen to get rid of her since the more traditional members of the tribe do not agree with her attempts to change their ways; Declan, Peggy, and Miranda travel to Uganda to save her from her fate.
- Toward the end of the first season of Once Upon a Time, Regina has a nightmare that the residents of Storybrooke remember who they are. All the people she's cursed tie her to a tree, and Emma executes her with a sword provided by David as Henry tells her she did this to herself. It turn out that it was All Just a Dream, but when the residents remember who they are just a few days later, their reactions to her aren't horribly different. They don't actually burn her in the dream, but the imagery is definitely there, complete with several residents wielding torches.
- The Outer Limits (1995): In "A New Life", Daniel attempts to convince the other members of the religious community that they are being deceived and that Father is an alien. He is sentenced to burn at the stake by the assembly after Father frames him for attacking his own wife Beth, killing Jacob and trying to kill Father. With Thomas' assistance, he manages to escape before the sentence is carried out but he is later killed by the aliens, shapeshifters who have all assumed Father's form. The episode ends with Thomas, who has been condemned as a traitor for helping Daniel to escape, being burned at the stake as his frantic warnings about Father's true nature fall on deaf ears.
- Parodied on Parks and Recreation, where the citizens of Pawnee, Indiana have a historical mural dedicated to their burning of a stage magician... that happened in the 80s. The nineteen-eighties.
- QI skewers this, with Alan expressing the opinion that witches were burnt, and Stephen Fry explaining that, regardless of what you might have read in books - "and I use the term 'books' very loosely" - like The Da Vinci Code, two people may have been burnt for witchcraft, ever, and most accused witches were found not guilty.
- Stephen Fry jokingly shouted "Burn the witch!" when Victoria Corin's "anxiety dream" (in which Stephen Fry asked the panel, "Why was the March Hare so important to the Aztecs?") came true.
- When someone starts murdering members of a coven in the Rizzoli & Isles episode "Bloodlines", the first victim is burnt at the stake.
- BBC series Robin Hood:
- The midwife/healing woman Matilda is accused of witchcraft and dunked in the village pond. Somewhat subverted in that her accusers don't really believe she's a witch, but in fact want her to use her healing abilities to save the life of a political enemy. She refuses, and into the water she goes...
- In a later episode, the outlaws are deemed heretics and nearly burnt at the stake.
- In the audiobook The Witchfinders Kate is nearly burnt as a witch.
- Subverted in Robin of Sherwood where a suspected witch is sentenced to be hanged rather than burnt (and it is made quite clear that this is not a normal punishment, but is Guy of Gisbourne rigging the evidence against her as revenge for her refusing his advances).
- Sabrina the Teenage Witch:
- Played with in an episode where Sabrina's class visits Salem; everyone was given a little slip saying if they were a witch or not, and were supposed to find the witch. Sabrina loses hers without reading it. After all the predictable accusation hijinks goes down, the teacher announces that nobody had a slip that said "witch", as a lesson to the class about crazy witchhunts. Sabrina finds her slip on the bus home, which says "witch" on it. Salem... is not a good place for witches. It's also worth noting that when Jenny is "found guilty" of being a witch, Mr Pool says "you can pretend we hanged her" instead of burning. He was with the history teacher after all.
- A flashback to Zelda's time in the Middle Ages shows that the villagers found out about her being a witch, and accused her of making the crops fail. So she was ducked down a well to the degree that "to this day I don't care for swimming."
- A straight example in Season 4's Thanksgiving Episode, where the aunts conjure up 17th century pilgrims to cook Thanksgiving dinner for them. Naturally they're superstitious, and one gag has them tying Salem to a stake as if they're about to burn him.
- Salem: Mostly averted; as in the actual witch trials, convicted witches are sentenced to hang, with the exceptions of the Barker family and Giles Corey, who is pressed to death (to coerce him into entering a plea), as he was in real life. Hale says his entire family was burned at the stake, but Mary's response indicates this was in Europe, which is where it was historically used.
- In SiempreBruja, Carmen travels forward in time while being burned at the stake as a witch. She ends up in a hospital with burned feet.
- Subverted in Sleepy Hollow: The grave of Ichabod's wife Katrina indicates that she was burned as a witch, but in truth, this never actually happened: she's really stuck in Purgatory and the grave is meant to mark the location of the Headless Horseman's head.
- Smallville's fourth season features the story of Margerite Isobel Theroux, a witch burned alongside two accomplices in 17th Century France. She comes back to possess her descendant, Lana Lang, to exact vengeance against the descendants of the woman who sentenced her to death. Which involved Kryptonian artifacts, for whatever reason.Isabelle: [in Lana] We don't have time for this.
Madeleine: [in Chloe] Time is the only thing we do have. Isn't that what you said right before the angry mob set us on fire?
Isabelle: [in Lana] You're really not gonna let that go, are you? - Sorry, I've Got No Head: The fate of anyone accused of being a witch by the Witchfinder, which is anyone who annoys or inconveniences him. This all happens in the present day.
- In the first few episodes of Stargate SG-1 season 9, this happens to Vala twice and Daniel once. Luckily it was just their minds inhabiting host bodies, so they came out of it okay for various reasons. The first time, to Vala alone, wasn't even for any good reason, either. She forgot a prayer and was accused of being possessed. Things sort of went downhill for the duo (and the galaxy) after that.
- In one Star Trek: The Original Series episode, Captain Kirk is declared to be a "witch" (that's what you get for appearing out of thin air and talking to a disembodied voice called "Bones").
- Parodied in the Star Trek: Voyager episode "False Profits" when the townspeople decide to honor their three deified Sages by sending them back up to Heaven on "wings of flame" as the prophetic poem central to their religious canon instructs them.
- The original-series Survivors has the community start down this road in the episode "The Witch", but, mercifully, saner heads rein in the hysteria before the (innocent if slightly strange) victim gets tied to a stake.
- On True Blood, the villainess Antonia is the ghost of a witch burned at the stake during The Spanish Inquisition thanks to vampires within the Catholic Church.
- The Twilight Zone (1985): In "A Message from Charity", Squire Jonas Hacker tells Charity Payne that he will have her burned as a witch after she manages to fight off his attempt to rape her.
- In Voyagers!, Bogg winds up tied to a stake when he shows up during the Salem Witch Trials (or a variant thereof), but the judge explicitly states that this is "without precedent in these colonies"; the other accused are sentenced to imprisonment and hanging.
- The Wheel of Time (2021): Eamon Valda burns a captured Aes Sedai from the Yellow Ajah at the stake, in keeping with his belief that they're evil witches deserving of death."Because we humans are meant to be of this Earth. To struggle and fight for everything we have. The Creator never meant for us to have access to so much power. You witches make a mockery of our very existence, walking like gods amongst men. The idea that the One Power comes from anywhere other than the Dark is absurd. So I have been called to stamp it out. Woman by woman by woman."
- Invoked in the BBC/Starz series The White Queen, when Margaret Beaufort refers to the fact that Queen Elizabeth (Elizabeth Woodville, not the more famous daughter of Henry VIII) had so far produced only daughters for King Edward IV: "That one produces only more witches for burning." This seems rather cruel since she's hoping for the deaths by fire of three adorable little girls. Of course, in the series, the Woodville women are all witches, although none of them are ever burnt for it. In Real Life, Elizabeth and her mother were both accused of witchcraft at different times, but the accusations were of course not actually true, nor were either of them or Elizabeth's daughters ever burnt to death.
- Witchblade: Joan of Arc was burned for heresy rather than witchcraft, but the series shows that she was a wielder of the Witchblade and seemingly went to her death when it abandoned her.
- Witches of East End: In some of Joanna's flashbacks, it's shown that her daughters were burned as witches in earlier eras.
- Xena: Warrior Princess season 6: Elijans (expy Roman Catholics in Ancient Grome) burn Xena's mother as a witch due to her tavern being haunted.
- The X-Files: Discussed in the episode "Chinga", which is set in New England and references the Salem trials. Jane, a former Sadist Teacher who was sacked, would very much like to invoke this trope for Polly's mother and burn her at the stake — for being an attractive woman and having an autistic daughter who Jane sees as a Creepy Child. Jane, Jane... it's Polly's Perverse Puppet that's the real problem.
