JR Ewing To Get Grand ‘Dallas’ Send Off Tonight, Honoring The Late 'JR' Actor Larry Hagman

Actor Larry Hagman played one of television's greatest villains JR Ewing. His death in November 2012 had show writers trying to figure out the most respectable way to give 'good ole' JR Ewing a proper send off.

Hagman played JR Ewing for 14 seasons when the original 'Dallas' aired in 1978. Larry Hagman died in November at age 81 due to complications from leukemia. He and cast mates were in the middle of filming the second season of the 'Dallas' reboot.

Writers now had to deal with the problem how to write Ewing out of the show and give the character and the late actor the send off he deserves.

The writers decided to revive a famous mystery from the original 'Dallas': Who Shot JR?

The show's executive producer, Cynthia Cidre told UPI.com, "There were two ways to go - either J.R. died of natural causes, which seemed inordinately boring and not appropriate to the show or the character, or he died of unnatural causes, at which time you examine, he fell off a building, a helicopter blew up," Cidre said. "There's endless numbers of these and you come full circle to the point where you then decide to do homage to what happened originally, and then you try to do it one better. That's how we got back to who shot J.R."

In 1980, 93 million people tuned in to 'Dallas' to find out who shot JR.

While Ewing is on the phone with his son, played by actor Josh Henderson, you hear shots go off in the background. The funeral episode for JR Ewing will air tonight, March 11, on the TNT Network.

The episode will showcase cameos from original 'Dallas' cast members Charlene Tilton as Lucy, Ted Shackleford as Gary and Steven Kanaly as Ray.

Cidre also spoke with UPI.com about the emotion of the funeral episode, "A lot of what was said in the episode, I think fits both Hagman and JR Ewing. It fits the fictional character and Larry, and so the actors who also knew Larry are kind of doing like a parallel funeral for both actor and character...the episode will definitely be a tearjerker."

 Larry Hagman is also known for his role opposite Barbra Eden in the show 'I Dream of Jeannie' which aired between 1965 and 1970.