Honestly I almost want to argue that they aren't even characters enough to qualify for fridging. We get to meet them for one fairly frantic scene at most and then they die. They're really not characters, they're plot devices, ways to make you think Ethel's shady. I think Ethel's tea shop lair is a great set piece, all her victims are cool and interesting, no question. The actual story connected to it though? That feels so anemic. It all passes by too quickly to make an impression. We meet Ethel and she's weird. We run into Ethel and the brothers and pick a side. Either we kill the brothers or they run off and get killed after filling us in about a bit more of Mayrina's story. We arrive at the tea house and only then do we actually see Mayrina, being force-fed pie with no idea her brothers are dead. Then we deal with Ethel one way or another, and if we kill Ethel and save Mayrina, we see her wheel her husband's body home. There's no grounding, no chance to really connect with anyone. It doesn't feel like a tragedy, it feels like the writers are trying to make me sad.
By the way, where the hell does she live that she thinks wheeling his body back is at all something she can physically do? There's no civilization for probably miles. She doesn't go to the druid grove and I think the implication is she doesn't even really know it's there. She doesn't have camping gear or food, so we have to assume she's going to just fend for herself for miles with her husband's corpse in a wheelbarrow.
